Comment by LorenPechtel

The AIDS crisis happened because it was unknown and very stealthy--nobody knew there was a risk to be guarded against. And it certainly didn't help that because of the association with gays the government response was slow-rolled. Same thing we saw with Covid--the US response was slow-rolled because at first it looked like it was selecting for blue areas.

Without the gays it might have gone a long time as a blood vector without being identified. When it was a "gay" disease it was busy killing old people who got transfusions but were never identified as having AIDS.