Anyone else who was around back in 1980 during the first AIDS crisis having deja vu now

[uppityperson]

51. It was attention the wrong way. Gays, drug injectors, Haitians were the targets.

There was a horrible "joke" back then about the worst thing about htlv was trying to persuade your mother you were haitian. And those are also the reason there was not enough research and attention because it was sinful drug abusers who made their beds and needed to lie in them, them sinful gays and who cares about haitians anyway? So why bother do more than the basics once you figured out who those 3 groups were? (infuriating and awful, horrible)

Even among my friends, there was outright bigotry, lies, treating people nastily because of the "gay-disease".

And that is also why there was not enough research or attention.

It was the combination of fear mongering towards those 3 groups with lack of caring for those 3 groups.

I see similar here, blockade W Africa, and fear attacks and bigotry, more bigotry, toward people with dark skin who "may have come from or in contact with" WAfrica or someone with ebola or just because it makes a handy excuse to be able to act out bigotries.