• GrymEdm@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Only if time travel is somehow involved. Here’s a National Library of Medicine article/book review on the history of HIV/AIDS.

    “The earliest identified isolate of HIV-1 comes from an unknown male in Kinshasa, Congo, in 1959. The first identified patient with HIV infection and AIDS was a Scandinavian man in the 1960s, who had visited west-central Africa. Then came sporadic cases among gay men in the United States and among Haitians in the 1970s, leading to the global explosion in the '80s and '90s and the literal decimation of peoples in several tropical countries.”

    I’d say don’t source the history of diseases from NFL players, but those who would take my advice seriously probably don’t need it.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s still not when it first showed up, that’s when they first identified it.

      The first case was likely 1920, maybe even the tail end of the 1800s.

      And back then, people just died from all sorts of shit and modern medicine was practically non-existent in the area. Even when it spread to more developed countries, it took a while to put the pieces together because it wasn’t like aids directly kills. The aids just made all types of shit more likely to happen and kill you. That’s why it felt like it spread so fast all over the planet. It was already there and people had it, they just weren’t symptomatic yet and wouldn’t be for months/years.

      I mean, look at the nightmare syphilis was for centuries. If AIDS had spread a century earlier no one would have known what the fuck was going on. It was bad, but it could have been so much worse.

      • ivy@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        Sure would have been nice if people like Ronald Reagan and Marianne Williamson hadn’t pushed people to rely on faith healing

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 months ago

      I legit appreciate the history lesson but you don’t have to debunk posts on nottheonion haha

      • GrymEdm@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        You’re probably right :) I have this compulsion where I always want to know WHY something is wrong, so when I hear something like this I run off to look it up.

        • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Nah, keep debunking. Just because we know the claim isn’t true doesn’t mean we know what is. For this one, we can’t invert the statement to find the truth. “The government didn’t create AIDS in the 1980s” is incredibly vague so I enjoyed your summary