What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Berkut]

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.

You provided the right wing, conservative mythology of Reagan.

I picked it apart rather thoroughly.

You then chose to only respond to that last bit where I put forth the humanist, science based evaluation of Reagan.

We are "done" because you don't like to think about how your support for things has actual, real world consequences.

There are arguments to be made about that last sentence, to be sure. Reasonable arguments, in fact.

But no actual historian outside the right wing world (and no, the world of "not-right wing" is NOT left wing) subscribes to the story of Reagan as you told it.

[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.

You provided the right wing, conservative mythology of Reagan.

I picked it apart rather thoroughly.

[Sheilbh]

But roughly when?

I don't mean dates or anything

I attended college from 81 to 85.  AIDS was always at least a lurking issue.  At the beginning it was a terrifying issue.

Okay so I think you may be unconsciously projecting knowledge/views back especially for the early years.

I mean in 1981 it was starting to be reported in the gay press but - as The Band Played On notes - in that year there 3 articles (deep in the paper) about AIDS in the NYT. It was by then already the global epicentre of infections and deaths.

As I say the CDC really narrowed in on how it was spreading in 1982, it was known in 1983 but there wasn't a campaign for people to know about it (or to the extent it was - it was local public health people putting stuff together which happened in San Francisco especialy). So to be aware in those years would mean you were more on top of this than the sort of activist-y people in the LGBT communities of NY and San Francisco reading every article they could find - Gay Men's Health Crisis was only founded in mid-1982.

There is incredibly limited coverage until the mid-80s. The news breaking about Rock Hudson's diagnosis changed the landscape and reporting hugely in early 1985. In that year you started to have front page - but the US media seemed to move from broad indifference to not particularly informative panic, for example this famous frong page:


There was a similar piece in Time about "now the disease has moved out of the closet, how far will it spread?" and again it's using euphemisms:

But most of these explanations were abandoned as evidence grew that AIDS was caused by an infectious agent that could be passed from one person to another through sexual contact or in body fluids. The evidence included a "cluster" of nine patients in and around Los Angeles; each had had sex with people who later developed AIDS-related diseases. It was bolstered by the growing number of intravenous drug users infected by the disease. Addicts share germs when they share needles. Then came the clincher: cases of AIDS in hemophiliacs and later in recipients of donor blood. The pattern resembled that of hepatitis B, a blood-borne and sexually transmissible virus that is common among drug addicts, blood recipients and gay men. AIDS cases among Haitian men and women remained a puzzle until it was discovered that many of the men, though not homosexually inclined, had warded off destitution by serving as prostitutes to gay men. Earlier this year, Haitians were dropped by the CDC as a separate risk category for AIDS.
[...]
Just how immediate a threat AIDS poses to heterosexuals is much debated. The fact is, nobody knows. "There is nothing about the biology of the virus to lead us to think anyone is immune solely on the basis of the type of sexual partner," says Volberding of San Francisco General. "Heterosexuals are clearly at risk of acquiring the disease from sexual contact." The Burk family of Cresson, Pa., is a sad case in point. Patrick, 27, a hemophiliac, contracted AIDS from a contaminated batch of blood-clotting factor, which he requires to control his condition. His wife Lauren, 24, has since developed ARC and apparently passed the virus on to their 15-month-old son Dwight, most likely during her pregnancy. Daughter Nicole, 4, is the only one in the family left untouched by the disease.

It's not clear. It's squeamish and euphemistic - and the same article has the story of a doctor who treated AIDS patients being evicted by the condo board because of the fear that he might infect them. So I don't think it was fully limited to kooks. That's in 1985.

Edit: Incidentally - the Medical reporter for the NYT did an interview with the Atlantic which touched on a lot of this:

Cari Romm: What went into reporting that first story in 1981?

Lawrence Altman: When I came to work with the Times, I had time to practice medicine as well as write. In the spring of 1981, I had finished a tour at Bellevue [Hospital] and NYU ... It was just at the time when they had shot Reagan and shot the Pope. I had been intending to write about AIDS in the spring, but had to postpone it because of covering the assassination attempts. The first story I wrote was July of '81. [In June], there was a report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].

Making rounds at NYU, I'd seen cases—what was apparent in New York at the time was the preponderance of Kaposi's sarcoma [a cancer often associated with AIDS]. AIDS didn't have any name at that point as a disease, and the immune deficiency was only just beginning to be recognized. But there were a sizeable group of cases in gay men that were being reported. I'd also seen cases of generalized lymphadenopathy, the lymph nodes enlarged throughout the body. We had several patients with that, and in retrospect, they were developing HIV, but we didn't know that at the time. That would have been in 1978, '79, maybe '80.

Romm: And how was your article received when it came out?

Altman: In The Village Voice, there was an article blasting me for ruining the gays' [sic] July 4 weekend over something that had no good reason. [Ed. note: The Village Voice article, as Altman quoted in one of his own stories here, described "the despicable attempt of The New York Times to wreck the July 4 holiday break for every homosexual in the Northeast."] There may have been panic among a small group, but in the general readership, I don't think it caused a huge amount of excitement. The gay community was aware of something going on, and of the fact that there was a newspaper article about it. I'm sure it heightened anxiety, but I don't believe that it created any more anxiety than existed beforehand.

Romm: When did the tone shift? When did people start reporting AIDS as a big deal?

Altman: Rock Hudson's case [in 1985] made a lot of people who were following entertainment and celebrities and so forth aware of the disease. Some people have marked that as the point. I guess that's as good as any to say that more people were aware of it. Certainly, for the first few years of coverage, there were people I met who didn't know anything about the disease, Kaposi's, the hunt for the cause. I don't know if there were any more [of them] in New York than elsewhere, but I traveled frequently as part of my job, and I know I ran into people who hadn't paid attention to it or weren't aware of the importance of it at that time.
[...]

Romm: What do you mean by "denial mechanism"?

Altman: Early on, it became apparent through epidemiologists and the CDC that the agent—it wasn't known as a virus then—that the agent that was causing the cases could be spread through blood transfusions and blood products, but the blood-bank officials originally refused to believe that. They were dealing with small numbers at the time, but the small numbers were statistically significant and important, and that was an element of denial in that branch of the medical community.

[When the disease was still appearing mostly in gay men], there would be some members in the gay community who would get sick and show symptoms, and others who didn't. And they were trying to determine, "Well, okay, why wasn't I affected?" or, "This can only affect other people and it isn't something that's going to affect me." There was that aspect to the denial. There was denial that it was an infectious disease ... And until it began to be reported in women [in 1982], there were people who said, "Well, I'm not gay, so this won't affect me. Why is this a public-health problem?" without recognizing at the time that there was a virus, and that virus could be spread through blood transfusions and "bodily fluids" as the phrase became known.

Romm: Were you able to get more specific than "bodily fluids"? What terminology could you use to talk about how the virus was transmitted?

Altman: I think "bodily fluids" was used for quite a while. The journalism community was behind for quite a while in not being more specific about what "bodily fluids" meant. But also, public-health officials weren't explicit in what they meant by "bodily fluids." It was a time when the words "penis," "vagina," "sperm," "intercourse," "rectal intercourse"—those terms weren't part of the everyday public vocabulary. They may have been in private, but it wasn't as it is today. The phrase was, morning newspapers were "breakfast-table newspapers" and they were careful of the language that they used. It wasn't just the Times—I'm talking about journalism. That changed as the cases started mounting and it became more apparent as a public-health problem.

Romm: How did the terminology used to talk about the disease itself change? When did AIDS become the name?

Altman: There were various names before AIDS was used. There was GRID, for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. I'm not sure that anybody knows who came up with the phrase AIDS. It stands for Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome, that's clear, but I don't know that anybody has ever pinned down exactly who proposed it. Those things probably get lost in the hurly-burly of everyday working when things are hectic.

I think it just evolved. GRID came up fairly early as a name and then got dropped, and AIDS first came [in a CDC report in 1982]. It became AIDS from then on. The scientists recognized that it could affect more than gay men and that [GRID] wasn't an accurate term. It was insulting to gay men, given the fact that the virus was affecting other people.

Romm: How do you think public interest has changed over the years?

Altman: There were complaints that AIDS was getting too much attention early on at the expense of other diseases. But when you're dealing with a communicable disease, there's probably going to be a disproportionate amount of attention in news media, because that's something people can take action on and do something about.
[...]

[alfred russel]

The tax reform in 1986 was a big deal. It isn't just the rate reduction--it really overhauled the tax code and basically set up the regime we have today (at least in terms of personal taxes--less so for corporate).

[Berkut]

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.

You provided the right wing, conservative mythology of Reagan.

I picked it apart rather thoroughly.

People really get triggered when you point out the flaws in their faith.

[Berkut]

The tax reform in 1986 was a big deal. It isn't just the rate reduction--it really overhauled the tax code and basically set up the regime we have today (at least in terms of personal taxes--less so for corporate).

The question is not whether it was a big deal, the question is whether it was an accomplishment for the United States of America, such that doing so is evidence that the President responsible is deserving of recognition as a great *American* president - not as a great Repiblitrumpian President.

[Valmy]

The tax reform in 1986 was a big deal. It isn't just the rate reduction--it really overhauled the tax code and basically set up the regime we have today (at least in terms of personal taxes--less so for corporate).

Yeah it seriously screwed my Dad over. But we took it patriotically.

Too bad all the big promises that came with that tax reform were ultimately undermined.

[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.

You provided the right wing, conservative mythology of Reagan.

I picked it apart rather thoroughly.

People really get triggered when you point out the flaws in their faith.

Yup - you certainly showed me the error of my ways!

[Berkut]

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.

You provided the right wing, conservative mythology of Reagan.

I picked it apart rather thoroughly.

People really get triggered when you point out the flaws in their faith.

Yup - you certainly showed me the error of my ways!

I rather doubt that, sadly.

You really take this stuff personally though. Not sure why. He was just a human being.

[Razgovory]

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.

Nobody expected Reagan to go stroll into the CDC and figure out AIDS.

He was expected to give it the attention it deserved, and the attention the health officials and scientists were asking for it to get, rather then laughing it off as the "gay plague" and not giving a shit.

That is not "difficult" to do.

Okay, I don't remember this time period because I was born in 1981 but did Reagan really call it the "gay plague"?

[Sheilbh]

Okay, I don't remember this time period because I was born in 1981 but did Reagan really call it the "gay plague"?

No that and "gay cancer" were how it was called by some. It's official name was Gay Related Immune Deficiency - GRID - until, I think 82/83.

Reagan didn't mention it publicly until 1985 when it came up in a press conference and didn't include it in prepared remarks until 1987. By that point it had been an epidemic (according to the CDC) for 5 years and the "number 1 health priority" of the administration for several years. Just a priority he didn't mention.

[Barrister]

You really take this stuff personally though.

I'm not taking it personally at all.  Fuck you and have a nice day.

[Berkut]

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.

Nobody expected Reagan to go stroll into the CDC and figure out AIDS.

He was expected to give it the attention it deserved, and the attention the health officials and scientists were asking for it to get, rather then laughing it off as the "gay plague" and not giving a shit.

That is not "difficult" to do.

Okay, I don't remember this time period because I was born in 1981 but did Reagan really call it the "gay plague"?

His admin certainly did laugh it off - there are recordings of press conferences where his press secretary is cracking jokes about whether the journalist asking about the Presidents response had AIDS.

I think the knock on Reagan was mostly that he just stayed completely silent, and his administration was clearly uninterested in the problem.

And at the time, the right in America was VERY much all about the "gay plague" and how this was retribution for the sin of homosexuality.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - they did a film of the recording of that "gay plague" press conference and other press conferences:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzDn7tE1lU&t=43s

Edit: And again - this administration didn't increase funding for research they consistently tried to cut it and were reluctant to spend money. Congress appropriate funds for research.

[Valmy]

You really take this stuff personally though.

I'm not taking it personally at all.  Fuck you and have a nice day.

Love you BB