Dvergar wrote:
Magic Johnson doesn't have AIDS yet. His early detection, ability to afford the medicine, exceptional health and condition, and luck, have allowed him to remain in the HIV stage.
AIDS has been a 'thing' for a very long time, it just didn't affect Americans until the 80s (and there were infections before the 80s, the fact that people don't die from AIDS but from opportunistic infections means there was no single cause of death to point to one underlying disease). It's explosion had to do with proper social climate. Look at cholera, before everyone started cramming into overcrowded cities with horrible sanitation it wasn't as much of a worry. It wasn't just suddenly created in the 1800s, it was just the proper social conditions to allow for the bacteria to rapidly spread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_AIDShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... AIDS_casesLooks like 1959 is the first "maybe" HIV case. In the history of civilization that doesn't seem like that long. I see your point about cholera. I just don't understand a few things:
1. How exactly it got transmitted from the monkeys - didn't it have to be blood to blood contact or sexual activity? Edit: They claim it was transmitted via "bushmeat" wish is where a person may have been bit or cut while butchering a monkey. Hmm.
2. Why it had never occurred before the 1900s - Europeans, etc. had been going to African Jungles long before then (I mean...we were grabbing African slaves in the 1600s).