What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Sheilbh]

I argued long and hard with Marty when he was here about Reagan and AIDS.  Funding for research skyrocketed.  The principle indictment was he didn't air public service announcements to tell people something they already knew, which was that unprotected butt sex could give you AIDS.

Have you read The Band Played On? I'd recommend it on the failure of the Federal government (and other bits of government) in their response. It's far more than public service announcements.

But they were important because people didn't know what caused AIDS. That was part of the entire issue and led to the really tragic treatment of people dying with people wearing full PPE, or isolating patients, or wrapping bodies in bin bags - because they didn't know how it was caught. And part of that failure was actually precisely the inability of the government to say "anal sex" or "semen and blood", instead relying on the euphemism of "bodily fluids" which also had the impact on ostracisation of gay people. The focus was on "high risk" categories of people and then euphemism - but there was a genuine fear of using the same toilet as a gay person or hugging them because "bodily fluids" may well mean urine or saliva or tears.

And the emphasis of Reagan's administration was protecting "innocent victims" of AIDS - which didn't include gays, drug users or Haitians.

On the research point alone - the early years it was some administrators in the Federal government squirreling for research money and re-directing it from other programs as and when they could. The later funding was secured by appropriations bills in Congress - primarily with Henry Waxman and Ted Kennedy doing incredible work - not through Reagan or his budget requests which consistently the AIDS funding disproportionately, but the CDC/health research more generally. But Congress was appropriating funds specifically for AIDS research - and there were points where they had to really aggressively push the administration to spend it - from 1983 onwards, but 1983 is four years after the first cases in the US.

[The Minsky Moment]

If you see personnel as policy - certainly appropriate for a hands off details guy like Reagan - then he gets credit for Baker and Brady at Treasury (the tax reform deal and the international debt relief plan) and Schultz at State.  But then there is Watt, Meese, Deaver, Poindexter, Gorsuch, Stockman - overall it isn't quite Trump level awful but it ain't great either.  If your big claim to fame is security and international affairs but somehow Oliver North becomes a big player in admin policy execution, something has  gone awry.

[Sheilbh]

Reagan ignored HIV because his religious fundamentalist base was cheering that God's judgement was being done. Ok now is that actually true? I don't know but it sure seemed like it.

I remember the rationale given at the time was that public service announcements about homosex would be inappropriate for children.

And right now in a by-election in this country there's a candidate who is pandering to Muslim fundamentalists on LGBT issues. It isn't because they're religious fundamentalists - he just thinks it is wrong to "teach children about anal sex".

It's the same rationale for Section 28 in the UK, for Putin's anti-LGBT law (against the "promotion of homosexuality to children") and Orban's. We tend to be better at calling it out when it's further from home.

Edit: Incidentally I would note that the US Surgeon General at the time, Everett Koop, was a very conservative Christian - who took time off his career to become a full time anti-abortion activist. However he recognised the fact that AIDS was a medical risk and issue. His response was probably the start of any significant movement by the Administration. He saw it as a public health issue and thought that people needed to know real information about it. He is really important and did very good work. That only started in 1986 - he has since said that he was trying to work on AIDS and wanted to do more from his appointment in 1982 because he thought it was a public health crisis primarily not a moral one but was prevented for political reasons.

[The Larch]

Well, the 80s were the age of moral panics and "won't somebody think of the children" kind of scandals after all. I don't think anyone misses that.

[Valmy]

If you see personnel as policy - certainly appropriate for a hands off details guy like Reagan - then he gets credit for Baker and Brady at Treasury (the tax reform deal and the international debt relief plan) and Schultz at State.  But then there is Watt, Meese, Deaver, Poindexter, Gorsuch, Stockman - overall it isn't quite Trump level awful but it ain't great either.  If your big claim to fame is security and international affairs but somehow Oliver North becomes a big player in admin policy execution, something has  gone awry.

Yeah I was fans of Baker and Brady. It was my expectation that guys like that would be back in charge that had me cautiously optimistic about Dubya. Sigh.

[Valmy]

Well, the 80s were the age of moral panics and "won't somebody think of the children" kind of scandals after all. I don't think anyone misses that.

Here in the US it was all about Satan. Satanic cults and Satanic panic. And all that is back with Q Anon! Yeah!

Ironically the biggest danger to children at the time was the Christian Churches, might have been a bit of projection going on.

[The Larch]

Well, the 80s were the age of moral panics and "won't somebody think of the children" kind of scandals after all. I don't think anyone misses that.

Here in the US it was all about Satan.

And AIDS being called "the gay plague".

[Admiral Yi]

But they were important because people didn't know what caused AIDS. That was part of the entire issue and led to the really tragic treatment of people dying with people wearing full PPE, or isolating patients, or wrapping bodies in bin bags - because they didn't know how it was caught. And part of that failure was actually precisely the inability of the government to say "anal sex" or "semen and blood", instead relying on the euphemism of "bodily fluids" which also had the impact on ostracisation of gay people. The focus was on "high risk" categories of people and then euphemism - but there was a genuine fear of using the same toilet as a gay person or hugging them because "bodily fluids" may well mean urine or saliva or tears.

Are you claiming there was a time when the government knew exactly how it was transmitted and declined to share this information with hospitals?

[Sheilbh]

Are you claiming there was a time when the government knew exactly how it was transmitted and declined to share this information with hospitals?

No. I don't know where you'd get that from, or how it's relevant given that hospitals weren't a major transmission vector.

Edit: From Everett Koop's profile on the NIH website - this is 1986:

Concerned that an in-depth review by Reagan's domestic policy advisers would lead to the removal of crucial public health information from the report, such as on condom use, Koop submitted numbered copies of the final draft to the Domestic Policy Council, which he collected at the end of the meeting with the explanation that he sought to prevent leaks of the report to the media. The stratagem was successful: after little debate and without further revision Koop released the report at a press conference on October 22, 1986. Twenty million copies were eventually distributed to the public by members of Congress, public health organizations, and Parent-Teacher Associations. In plain language the 36-page report discussed the nature of AIDS, its modes of transmission, risk factors for contracting the disease, and ways in which people could protect themselves, including use of condoms.

[Barrister]

And the long term effects of his cultural ideas around homosexuality and his using those amazing communication skills to create a generation of anti-progress hatred of the government that has directly led to right wing embrace of anti-science and anti-climate policies cannot be over-stated.

Yeah, I think we're done here.

[Valmy]

And the long term effects of his cultural ideas around homosexuality and his using those amazing communication skills to create a generation of anti-progress hatred of the government that has directly led to right wing embrace of anti-science and anti-climate policies cannot be over-stated.

Yeah, I think we're done here.

If only

It just keeps going on and on.

[Grey Fox]

and I got shit for saying that our current stagnation is the intended results of the Regean policies.

[Barrister]

I argued long and hard with Marty when he was here about Reagan and AIDS.  Funding for research skyrocketed.  The principle indictment was he didn't air public service announcements to tell people something they already knew, which was that unprotected butt sex could give you AIDS.

Have you read The Band Played On? I'd recommend it on the failure of the Federal government (and other bits of government) in their response. It's far more than public service announcements.

I would have thought that the last 18 months would have taught us how difficult it is to deal with a novel viral pandemic.

And HIV was dramatically more complex to figure out than Covid.  Covid is a coronavirus, a very common type of virus well understood.  HIV is a retrovirus which were only really discovered by the 60s-70s.

[The Brain]

dying with people wearing full PPE, or isolating patients, or wrapping bodies in bin bags

Was this commonly done by non-hospital organizations?

[Sheilbh]

I would have thought that the last 18 months would have taught us how difficult it is to deal with a novel viral pandemic.

And HIV was dramatically more complex to figure out than Covid.  Covid is a coronavirus, a very common type of virus well understood.  HIV is a retrovirus which were only really discovered by the 60s-70s.

Have you read the book? I really recommend it.

The point is that it really doesn't look that they struggled to deal with AIDS because it was difficult and novel pandemic is complicated, but because they didn't want to because of the people who it killed. And that isn't just the administration, it's also the media - the NYT were incredibly reluctant to cover it despite New York being one of the global epicentres of AIDS. People didn't want to work on a gay disease for fear they'd be pigeon-holed on gay issues which was a dead end whether your careers was politics, research, federal bureaucracy, media or whatever else. It took a long time - until the mid-80s before the magnitude of what was happening even started to outweigh reluctance to address it.