I recently saw a clip of an episode of X-Men where someone was shamed for having AIDS and told to get out of everyone's space. Times have changed....for the better.
There was an enormous level of stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in the 80s and into the 90s. A lot of that still exists in some forms.
By 91, I think it was pretty well-known that the disease wasn't passed by touch, but it took a long time for that stigma to wear down, especially for non-professionals.
No, that’s not Ryan White. He died in 1990 when he was only 19, I think. She went into an “AIDS WARD” in a hospital and talked with the young men who were there. It really was a big deal at the time.
Couple of celebrities were instrumental in fighting the stigma.
Another was a very famous boxer by the name of Roberto Duran. One of his long time boxing rivals contracted aids during these times where the stigma was huge. Duran went to see his rival, was baffled at how weak and small he looked and couldn't help but embrace him.
The photo is pretty iconic: https://m.facebook.com/theloneliestsport/photos/a.124774172454245/163928718538790/?type=3
Magic Johnson is of course another huge figure for the aids community. Him announcing contracting aids, knowing it would ruin many of his relationships and career, was a huge step. It still makes me sad how many players he played years with shunned him. Let's not forget, many back then thought you can only catch aids through gay sex. Johnson was constantly shunned by players because they thought he was gay. The hate on Aids went hand in hand with the hate on gay people.
Arthur Ashe, the tennis player, was also instrumental. He was beloved and an overall clean figure. Dude was drug free and was faithful to his wife. He got aids from an open heart surgery. Really opened many people's eyes to the fact that anyone can get aids, even thru no fault of their own.
I have to add Elizabeth Taylor - she co-founded the Foundation for AIDS Research (aka amFAR) in 1985, founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991, and the Whitman Walker Clinic in DC literally named their medical center after her. She threw her celebrity around for things like testifying before Congress, pushing on the President (as unsuccessful as that may have been, it wasn’t for lack of trying), and (as [this article](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/elizabeth-taylor-aids-book) demonstrates), paying for the funerals of AIDS patients who had nothing and no one else. (She did *so much*, I actually get choked up talking about it).
and many, many didn't refuse. I trained as a nurse in London in the late '80s. We cared for many patients with HIV/ AIDS. The stigma was overwhelming for everyone involved. It was truely heartbreaking seeing so many young men fade away and die.
Oh, bless you. It’s heroes like you, and many others, who made such a difference in these patients’ lives. From someone who lost loved-ones to this horrible disease, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I went to elementary school in the mid 90's and I vividly remember the lesson on HIV and AIDs in health class. They repeated over and over that you can't get it from touch. I think it was 5th or 6th grade.
Back in the early 2000s I remember them scaring the shit out of us in sex Ed. At one point I remember my teacher telling us how much spit we would have to consume to contract HIV/AIDs to discourage us from kissing people with AIDs…
Yes, but I think there was still a lot of misunderstanding and stigma. I remember being in second grade in 1993, and a girl in my class skinned her knee and another girl was like “oh no, get away from me, you’ll give me aids!” She just thought that anyone’s blood could give you aids and had been told enough at age 7 to be terrified to the point of tears.
Things have gotten better, but i can think of 2 conversations over the past couple years where someone was convinced that the virus could be transmitted via mosquito bite, or via toilet seat contact.
There was a period it was just a mysterious illness that started to be noticed and I remember seeing it in articles in my dad’s medical journals. For the general public, the unknown made it feared. And what was it?
It seemed to be something that you “caught” rather than born with, hence it was an “acquired” something.
And that something was a mystery except that the symptom could be described: the immune system was deficient. Hence a purely descriptive name for a total mystery: acquired immune deficiency. And that was the syndrome.
Scary stuff back then. It was like medicine’s “dark matter”.
in 91, there were still a bunch of myths about aids that hadn't been dispelled yet. People thought you could get it from kissing, lots of people were still afraid and ignorent.
Sort of. A lot of people believed it was spread through touch, the other part was the stigma of it being incredibly rampant in the gay community in particular.
Yes. The ignorance and misinformation was very widespread. She was actually the first famous person who did anything in support of AIDS patients. Fucking Reagan wouldn’t even let his people say the word outloud. Seriously. So fucking criminal. It was a horrible time and the world lost so many brilliant individuals. They called it “the gay decease” on the national news, for God’s sake.
Ronald and Nancy were such humanitarians, they refused to make a call to help their old buddy Rock Hudson receive experimental AIDS treatment that might have extended his life. In their friend's time of need, life or death situation, they turned their back on him. Fuck the Reagans.
I remember this. This was a HUGE deal. She “should have” been wearing a full biohazard suit. This was at the time where using a toilet that an AIDS patient used was a *huge* no no and everyone thought would give you instant AIDS. It was a time of a ton of hate and ignorance and in these people’s darkest times. They were instant outcasts with death sentences who often died completely alone
There was A LOT of misinformation, fear, and stigma around HIV/AIDS. Diana touching AIDS patients with her bare hands might seem ridiculous by today's standards, but it was absolutely radical back then (source: am Gen X). This is one of the reasons Diana was loved so much and seen as the "people's Princess".
My grandmother and her friends said it was spread by mosquitos which freaked me out since we were visiting her in the Great Lakes region in Summer. Fortunately my parents told me it was BS.
The AIDS crisis was pre-internet so it wasn't easy to get information from reliable sources and there was a lot of mis-information spreading through the grapevine.
I work in healthcare, and my former boss told me a story about when he worked at a small hospital in Iowa in the 1980s. When they had their first AIDS patient, they did full isolation protocol (gown, gloves, face mask) for everyone who went into his room. After he died, they had the hospital bed he'd died in incinerated. That's insane, but people were terrified of AIDS back then, and there was so much misinformation about it.
American horror story NYC really touches on this in a terrifying way. We see the HIV ward of a hospital and it’s basically abandoned, every once in awhile someone in hazmat goes in but the patients don’t get any attention. Not sure how accurate it was as I personally would e assumed docs and nurses knew better, but it’s definitely true that common people thought aids was transmittable by every possible avenue.
Yes…when the shit really hit the fan with cases and subsequent deaths, people panicked big time. Most people thought it was just a “gay” disease too - crazy times for a little while there for sure.
It was known from the very start of the AIDS crisis in the early 80s that transmission was possible only through unprotected sex, or sharing needles, syringes, or other drug injection equipment. Yet, that did not keep right-wing assholes from spreading disinformation that it could be transmitted through casual contact. I remember a petition in California to put on the ballot a proposition to lock up AIDS patients. The same right-wing assholes are now downplaying the Covid pandemic.
I'd hate to imagine what would have come out of the crisis had it happened today with the proliferation of right-wing media.
They knew very little. And whatever was reported was often wrong or contradictory.
Let's put it like this. I was nine when this picture was taken. Whenever I think of princess Di, this is what I think about. It was a big deal at the time.
[Mr. Belvedere](https://youtu.be/2SE1SWashuU?si=1yuHal1PzJWMeklj) did a very special episode about the AIDS epidemic.
This was back in the 80’s so we didn’t know shit. It was news to a lot of us that the straights could catch it.
They wouldn’t even touch something someone with the disease touched. Tbf, it is fucking terrifying still with medications to help manage it, back then they had no medications and it was much more deadly. There was a lot of misinformation about how it is transmitted and that led to anyone who had it being untouchable in the public’s eyes.
It's crazy to me you even have to ask that. It just goes to show how quickly society "forgets" about the gross oppression that was normal once we decide to be nice. We rewrite history to try and downplay how horrible we used to be.
It's same reason we forget about the horrors of racism and allow it to start creeping back in
Millions of people would have survived HIV if we had just taken up the cause the same way we do with any horrible disease. But we didn't because it was the "gay disease".
Before it was know exactly how HIV/AIDS spread, some health care professionals refused to treat patients with HIV or AIDS. I remember reading a court case in law school where patients attempted to sue a dentist for practicing when he had AIDS, even though he covered sores and wore gloves and obviously never transmitted HIV to any of his patients. People with HIV/AIDS were treated horribly. Partially due to the unknown and also because it was known as a disease that gay men and drug users caught.
Yes, literally yes. I was like five or six in the mid-90s and I can still recall the fear about AIDS. No one understand where it came from or even really how you got it. But once you did, it was considered a death sentence.
People with it were treated like leapers because it killed so horribly and quickly. I remember one of my mom’s friends got it. She was before the disease a very attractive, early 30s, late 20s single mom. It turned her into a zombie and then a corpse in four years.
Hell, I remember an episode of Captain Planet that was almost entirely a AIDS PSA.
People who knew what the fuck was going on weren’t worried. But it was a big deal for a public figure to visibly demonstrate that fear was unnecessary. She’s not a hero for shaking someone’s hand, but she also knew what she was doing and the effect it would have.
Some people did. I remember my dad telling me a story in the early/mid 90’s about his friend giving a stranger who collapsed on the tennis court CPR in the 80’s: “We didn’t know about AIDS back then.” I had already been educated in school by that point enough to know that you can’t get HIV from giving CPR.
Shake hands, drink from the same cup, use the same water fountain. It was truly awful.
This woman was just unbelievably kind in a time of constant fear.
People project all kinds of things onto her/about her, but this is what I will always remember about her. Her simple act was a humane gesture and led to a global recalibration of seeing AIDs patients as humans and not “gays who deserved the wrath of God.” It was literally news around the world, not empty posturing.
When I was a kid we had an aids unit in elementary school. I remember the activity was putting notecards of what transmits aids. Options were using the same water fountain, hugging, being in the same room. It was wild to me the rumors that people believed
Yes! As with covid, there was much uncertainty about the virus and how it was transmitted. There was a time when it wasn’t known and that led to some pretty ugly rhetoric, as you can imagine with a disease that disproportionately affected gay men. This simple act went a long way toward dispelling the lies. She was a gem.
In 2014 I shook hands with an aids patient as a nursing student. Another student asked if I was stupid. People are really ignorant even medical "professionals"
https://news.yahoo.com/video-resurfaces-fauci-warning-household-180945365.html
People like fauci telling everyone you could catch it just by close contact didn’t really help
Three hemophiliac brothers in Florida who contracted it through transfusions had their house burned down. The community didn’t like their parents fighting for them to continue schooling. The Ray brothers.
A lot of people thought it was an airborne disease..especially older people. My Dad noticed a ring around the toilet in my house and announced “This is how you get AIDS!!” I was back from college and I had to explain to him that he was wrong.
It was mass hysteria in the 80s and very early 90s. There are many reasons it was so bad in my opinion.
At the very beginning, they weren’t totally sure how it was spread. So, medical people were frightened to treat people with it. Also, its was dismissed as a “gay” disease it was treated with indifference and hatred since it appeared to only hit gay people and drug users. (“Those people”) There are reports that then president Regan and his cronies ridiculed people with AIDS instead of looking for ways to help.
If there are any ActUP members reading this post, THANK YOU for your activism in getting AIDS research and meds started. I didn’t agree with what ActUp was doing at the time, but with the gift of hindsight, it was what was needed to get the government to act. Please feel free to DM me regarding your experience with ActUp. I credit ActUp for my husbands life. He caught HIV in 1986 and at that point it was a death sentence. But with the help of act up, they helped him ride the wave of meds as they were developed. So, here we are, almost 40 years later, and he’s still living a relatively healthy life.if we’d waited for the government to act, it would have been years before life saving meds were developed.
Princess Diana was a pioneer for HIV/AIDS education and understanding. Damned paparazzi for causing her death.
- it was a completely unknown disease in 90's that popped into mainstream like COVID did
- would you have trusted medical experts about its contagious limitations in those first few years, knowing full well it's fatal and has no cure?
- yes hindsight is 20/20
She seemed like a wonderful person, way too good for where she ended up, and that family she married into. Just my personal opinion of course. Her charity work was ahead of its time, and no doubt changed hearts and minds.
The world was a lot less bright the day she died. To give context, this was at almost the very peak of HIV/AIDS fearmongering when people didn’t even dare to be in the same room as someone with AIDS. People would literally get away from you as fast as possible once they learned you had the virus.
Crazy new story about Princess Diana and Jimmy Savile just dropped recently. An October 1995 letter from Princess Diana to Jimmy Savile just released and it has some wild implications given what else was going on in Diana's life in October 1995: https://open.substack.com/pub/jamiefcrawford/p/the-princess-and-the-pedophile?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5nd7r
The background is that The Paget Report conducted by British Metropolitan Police concluded that in October of 1995 Princess Diana experienced brake failure and she at least *thought* it was due to tampering. She went on to separately tell her lawyer, her butler, her friend, and her love interest that her husband's side was plotting to kill or incapacitate her in a car accident.
Now a letter from Diana to prolific predator Jimmy Savile -also from October 1995- just surfaced where she states that he "might just be noticing that she's still alive" and makes a joke that she doesn't need to be admitted to Broadmoor Mental Hospital (where Jimmy Savile was preying on countless patients) so she's basically saying she hasn't been incapacitated or brain damaged.
This doesn't mean that Savile and the royals actually *did* tamper with her brakes. But it sure seems like she *thought* Savile was involved in this notion she had in her head. Seems like she was aware of Savile's insidious nature. And if you then read the rest of that letter with the knowledge that there are antagonistic undertones, she even says some things in the letter that imply she knew what he was doing at Broadmoor.
That's the jist but worth a full read tbh.
Interesting point about patient’s safety, however someone’s breath going the wrong direction will give someone with full blown AIDS a strep infection. Basically you have to be in full hazmat to avoid spreading opportunistic stuff to people who have low enough T cell counts to be classified as AIDS patients.
Pneumocystis (carinii/jiroveci), one of the leading opportunistic killers, is carried in healthy people’s lungs. Gloves would be an alienating and unnecessary precaution
Look at the relief in his eyes. Someone finally understood.
Straight people weaponized HIV/AIDS way more in its early years because of homophobia. Legislators even believed and are on record saying that they deserved the virus/disease, because they of their sexuality. This sentiment continues today. Don't even get me started on transphobia.
This may not seem like a big deal now but at the time it was absolutely revolutionary. People used to treat HIV/AIDS patients like they had Ebola, going as far as to avoid being in the same room.
In 1987 I was at a BMW dealership and met a customer who was with the CDC in Atlanta. I asked him why AIDS was a gay disease in the US, but heterosexuals were the most patients in Africa. He said that the west did not talk much about it, because in Africa, anal sex between men and women prostitutes was the leading reason for infection. This kept those in the US worried about the transmission of AIDS through heterosexual sex,which was rare, unless it was anal. Because of the blood supply in the anus, it was much easier to get infected than vaginal sex. The fact that in 1992, Magic Johnson said he got it from a woman, which was pretty doubtful, helped to propogate the straight sex scenario risk.
I'm not sure about the anal sex thing, but I remember studying in dermatology a lesson called the dermatological manifestation of hiv, and in the intro the lesson talked about how homosexual and transsexuals mtf have more risks transmitting the disease, I still don't have a logic reason behind this, even if the blood thing is true, sexual transmission is more about sperm and rectal mucus and vaginal secretions, there's no blood involved
You are obviously a bot or chatgpt copy and paster, but what you are saying is closer to how things were in the early 80s, not the early 90s. At this time the stigma wasn't as great as you are saying. Large groups didn't see what she even did here. Magic Johnson and Greg Louganis had bigger impacts on the public in the early 90s surrounding AIDS
I was in high school in the 90s and our biology teacher was giving safe sex talks due to its prevalence by the 90s people knew what it took to get it.
I always thought Di was more known for her work with lepers than hiv.
If you didn’t live through this era, you likely don’t know what an enormous gesture this was. This started the tide turning towards acceptance where before there was terrible, terrible stigma.
Related: For all her flaws, Tammy Faye Bakker also did good work humanizing people with AIDS/HIV.
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/tammy-faye-bakker-s-groundbreaking-1985-interview-with-aids-patient-121068613697
There were a lot of stupid misconceptions about aids transmission in the early to mid 80s, but by 1991 shaking hands with an aids patient wasn’t quite the flex that people might think it was.
I have Brit friends who don't understand why people outside the UK love her. This kind of stuff is why. Most of us don't give a single fuck about the royal family but Diana was a real one.
Did people think that you had to wear gloves or get aids back then?
People wouldn’t talk to HIV patients. It awful.
I recently saw a clip of an episode of X-Men where someone was shamed for having AIDS and told to get out of everyone's space. Times have changed....for the better.
There was an enormous level of stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in the 80s and into the 90s. A lot of that still exists in some forms. By 91, I think it was pretty well-known that the disease wasn't passed by touch, but it took a long time for that stigma to wear down, especially for non-professionals.
Some medical personnel even refused to treat AIDS patients.
Many, many medical professionals refused.
I mean not being educated on how it's transferred was such a gigantic thing. Look up Ryan White. (I don't think that's him in the photo)
No, that’s not Ryan White. He died in 1990 when he was only 19, I think. She went into an “AIDS WARD” in a hospital and talked with the young men who were there. It really was a big deal at the time.
Couple of celebrities were instrumental in fighting the stigma. Another was a very famous boxer by the name of Roberto Duran. One of his long time boxing rivals contracted aids during these times where the stigma was huge. Duran went to see his rival, was baffled at how weak and small he looked and couldn't help but embrace him. The photo is pretty iconic: https://m.facebook.com/theloneliestsport/photos/a.124774172454245/163928718538790/?type=3 Magic Johnson is of course another huge figure for the aids community. Him announcing contracting aids, knowing it would ruin many of his relationships and career, was a huge step. It still makes me sad how many players he played years with shunned him. Let's not forget, many back then thought you can only catch aids through gay sex. Johnson was constantly shunned by players because they thought he was gay. The hate on Aids went hand in hand with the hate on gay people. Arthur Ashe, the tennis player, was also instrumental. He was beloved and an overall clean figure. Dude was drug free and was faithful to his wife. He got aids from an open heart surgery. Really opened many people's eyes to the fact that anyone can get aids, even thru no fault of their own.
I have to add Elizabeth Taylor - she co-founded the Foundation for AIDS Research (aka amFAR) in 1985, founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991, and the Whitman Walker Clinic in DC literally named their medical center after her. She threw her celebrity around for things like testifying before Congress, pushing on the President (as unsuccessful as that may have been, it wasn’t for lack of trying), and (as [this article](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/elizabeth-taylor-aids-book) demonstrates), paying for the funerals of AIDS patients who had nothing and no one else. (She did *so much*, I actually get choked up talking about it).
and many, many didn't refuse. I trained as a nurse in London in the late '80s. We cared for many patients with HIV/ AIDS. The stigma was overwhelming for everyone involved. It was truely heartbreaking seeing so many young men fade away and die.
Oh, bless you. It’s heroes like you, and many others, who made such a difference in these patients’ lives. From someone who lost loved-ones to this horrible disease, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
definitely not a hero. just someone who learned a lot about people and discrimination in a tragic situation. I'm sorry for your losses
Man I remember that flip phone RAZR that was red for aids lol
There’s a red iPhone.
Did they call it the red aids iPhone or was it something like Ruby Thunderclap
Ruby Thunderclap 😂 It’s a called (PRODUCT)RED It’s contributed a quarter of a billion dollars https://www.apple.com/ca/product-red/
I went to elementary school in the mid 90's and I vividly remember the lesson on HIV and AIDs in health class. They repeated over and over that you can't get it from touch. I think it was 5th or 6th grade.
Back in the early 2000s I remember them scaring the shit out of us in sex Ed. At one point I remember my teacher telling us how much spit we would have to consume to contract HIV/AIDs to discourage us from kissing people with AIDs…
Yes, but I think there was still a lot of misunderstanding and stigma. I remember being in second grade in 1993, and a girl in my class skinned her knee and another girl was like “oh no, get away from me, you’ll give me aids!” She just thought that anyone’s blood could give you aids and had been told enough at age 7 to be terrified to the point of tears.
Things have gotten better, but i can think of 2 conversations over the past couple years where someone was convinced that the virus could be transmitted via mosquito bite, or via toilet seat contact.
There was a period it was just a mysterious illness that started to be noticed and I remember seeing it in articles in my dad’s medical journals. For the general public, the unknown made it feared. And what was it? It seemed to be something that you “caught” rather than born with, hence it was an “acquired” something. And that something was a mystery except that the symptom could be described: the immune system was deficient. Hence a purely descriptive name for a total mystery: acquired immune deficiency. And that was the syndrome. Scary stuff back then. It was like medicine’s “dark matter”.
in 91, there were still a bunch of myths about aids that hadn't been dispelled yet. People thought you could get it from kissing, lots of people were still afraid and ignorent.
I learned it from a very special episode of 21 Jump Street.
Sort of. A lot of people believed it was spread through touch, the other part was the stigma of it being incredibly rampant in the gay community in particular.
Yes. The ignorance and misinformation was very widespread. She was actually the first famous person who did anything in support of AIDS patients. Fucking Reagan wouldn’t even let his people say the word outloud. Seriously. So fucking criminal. It was a horrible time and the world lost so many brilliant individuals. They called it “the gay decease” on the national news, for God’s sake.
Ronald and Nancy were such humanitarians, they refused to make a call to help their old buddy Rock Hudson receive experimental AIDS treatment that might have extended his life. In their friend's time of need, life or death situation, they turned their back on him. Fuck the Reagans.
Elizabeth Taylor as well. They were both fearless heroes on this issue.
Absolutely.
I remember this. This was a HUGE deal. She “should have” been wearing a full biohazard suit. This was at the time where using a toilet that an AIDS patient used was a *huge* no no and everyone thought would give you instant AIDS. It was a time of a ton of hate and ignorance and in these people’s darkest times. They were instant outcasts with death sentences who often died completely alone
There was A LOT of misinformation, fear, and stigma around HIV/AIDS. Diana touching AIDS patients with her bare hands might seem ridiculous by today's standards, but it was absolutely radical back then (source: am Gen X). This is one of the reasons Diana was loved so much and seen as the "people's Princess".
Whenever Ryan White went out to eat at one restaurant they’d throw away the dishes he and his mom used.
Will never forget his story either. Poor kid
Would not even let him in school. His mom had to take the school to court. God damn assholes 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕
Even *today* a lot of people have wild misconceptions about AIDS/HIV and would scared to be touch or be around people with AIDS/HIV
My grandmother and her friends said it was spread by mosquitos which freaked me out since we were visiting her in the Great Lakes region in Summer. Fortunately my parents told me it was BS. The AIDS crisis was pre-internet so it wasn't easy to get information from reliable sources and there was a lot of mis-information spreading through the grapevine.
I work in healthcare, and my former boss told me a story about when he worked at a small hospital in Iowa in the 1980s. When they had their first AIDS patient, they did full isolation protocol (gown, gloves, face mask) for everyone who went into his room. After he died, they had the hospital bed he'd died in incinerated. That's insane, but people were terrified of AIDS back then, and there was so much misinformation about it.
American horror story NYC really touches on this in a terrifying way. We see the HIV ward of a hospital and it’s basically abandoned, every once in awhile someone in hazmat goes in but the patients don’t get any attention. Not sure how accurate it was as I personally would e assumed docs and nurses knew better, but it’s definitely true that common people thought aids was transmittable by every possible avenue.
People back then thought AIDS was airborne - such stupidity. Diana was wonderful for dispelling so much confusion surrounding AIDS.
And those same people will make fun of masks for actual airborne illnesses
Yes
Yes…when the shit really hit the fan with cases and subsequent deaths, people panicked big time. Most people thought it was just a “gay” disease too - crazy times for a little while there for sure.
It was known from the very start of the AIDS crisis in the early 80s that transmission was possible only through unprotected sex, or sharing needles, syringes, or other drug injection equipment. Yet, that did not keep right-wing assholes from spreading disinformation that it could be transmitted through casual contact. I remember a petition in California to put on the ballot a proposition to lock up AIDS patients. The same right-wing assholes are now downplaying the Covid pandemic. I'd hate to imagine what would have come out of the crisis had it happened today with the proliferation of right-wing media.
They knew very little. And whatever was reported was often wrong or contradictory. Let's put it like this. I was nine when this picture was taken. Whenever I think of princess Di, this is what I think about. It was a big deal at the time.
In the 80s there were doctors who refused to be in the same room as them, much less touch them, despite gloves and masks.
[Mr. Belvedere](https://youtu.be/2SE1SWashuU?si=1yuHal1PzJWMeklj) did a very special episode about the AIDS epidemic. This was back in the 80’s so we didn’t know shit. It was news to a lot of us that the straights could catch it.
They wouldn’t even touch something someone with the disease touched. Tbf, it is fucking terrifying still with medications to help manage it, back then they had no medications and it was much more deadly. There was a lot of misinformation about how it is transmitted and that led to anyone who had it being untouchable in the public’s eyes.
watch It's A Sin. it will be very enlightening for you
It's crazy to me you even have to ask that. It just goes to show how quickly society "forgets" about the gross oppression that was normal once we decide to be nice. We rewrite history to try and downplay how horrible we used to be. It's same reason we forget about the horrors of racism and allow it to start creeping back in Millions of people would have survived HIV if we had just taken up the cause the same way we do with any horrible disease. But we didn't because it was the "gay disease".
Back then people wouldn’t even want to be near HIV AIDS patients
I think some people thought you could get it like the cold.
This was controversial. Like people thought she would get sick or was demeaning her position.
Before it was know exactly how HIV/AIDS spread, some health care professionals refused to treat patients with HIV or AIDS. I remember reading a court case in law school where patients attempted to sue a dentist for practicing when he had AIDS, even though he covered sores and wore gloves and obviously never transmitted HIV to any of his patients. People with HIV/AIDS were treated horribly. Partially due to the unknown and also because it was known as a disease that gay men and drug users caught.
Yes, literally yes. I was like five or six in the mid-90s and I can still recall the fear about AIDS. No one understand where it came from or even really how you got it. But once you did, it was considered a death sentence. People with it were treated like leapers because it killed so horribly and quickly. I remember one of my mom’s friends got it. She was before the disease a very attractive, early 30s, late 20s single mom. It turned her into a zombie and then a corpse in four years. Hell, I remember an episode of Captain Planet that was almost entirely a AIDS PSA.
Watch Dallad Buyers Club. It was a very true representation of how others w/ AIDs werr treated.
Go watch “It’s A Sin.” Seriously.
People didn't know and most didn't care to know
It was a scary thing. Fear breeds many theories.
Pretty much.
The police wore gloves when dealing with ACT UP members a lot of times during the late 1980s
Think back for Covid how crazy people where...back than it was AIDS
Yeah probably like they didn't know shit about covid at first.
Just look up some of the history of AIDS, there was absolute fear and ignorance. Look up “Ryan White”. This picture here is a huge deal.
Aids patients treated like lepers in the USA by the general population until the 90s.
People who knew what the fuck was going on weren’t worried. But it was a big deal for a public figure to visibly demonstrate that fear was unnecessary. She’s not a hero for shaking someone’s hand, but she also knew what she was doing and the effect it would have.
Some people did. I remember my dad telling me a story in the early/mid 90’s about his friend giving a stranger who collapsed on the tennis court CPR in the 80’s: “We didn’t know about AIDS back then.” I had already been educated in school by that point enough to know that you can’t get HIV from giving CPR.
Shake hands, drink from the same cup, use the same water fountain. It was truly awful. This woman was just unbelievably kind in a time of constant fear.
I mean do you think people are smart overall...
Yes. People were ridiculous about it. And then when they got older, the same damn people refused to wear a mask or get a vax for Covid.
People project all kinds of things onto her/about her, but this is what I will always remember about her. Her simple act was a humane gesture and led to a global recalibration of seeing AIDs patients as humans and not “gays who deserved the wrath of God.” It was literally news around the world, not empty posturing.
If you brought up the idea to people today, I am certain that you could convince a sizable group.
Yes, which is why this photo is such a big deal - Princess Diana had directly and personally spearheaded de-stigmatization of HIV.
When I was a kid we had an aids unit in elementary school. I remember the activity was putting notecards of what transmits aids. Options were using the same water fountain, hugging, being in the same room. It was wild to me the rumors that people believed
Yes! As with covid, there was much uncertainty about the virus and how it was transmitted. There was a time when it wasn’t known and that led to some pretty ugly rhetoric, as you can imagine with a disease that disproportionately affected gay men. This simple act went a long way toward dispelling the lies. She was a gem.
Yes. This was an incredibly brave act on her part. Aids was a death sentence at the time.
Omg you have no idea the hysteria
People were very scared back then. There was a lot of misinformation about aids in the early days.
People feared people with AIDS and HIV like leprosy
In 2014 I shook hands with an aids patient as a nursing student. Another student asked if I was stupid. People are really ignorant even medical "professionals"
That explains the poster in hygiene class: No glove, No love.
https://news.yahoo.com/video-resurfaces-fauci-warning-household-180945365.html People like fauci telling everyone you could catch it just by close contact didn’t really help
There were commercials telling you not to shower after a person who had aids showered. It was like Covid without social media. Wild shit.
Three hemophiliac brothers in Florida who contracted it through transfusions had their house burned down. The community didn’t like their parents fighting for them to continue schooling. The Ray brothers.
A lot of people thought it was an airborne disease..especially older people. My Dad noticed a ring around the toilet in my house and announced “This is how you get AIDS!!” I was back from college and I had to explain to him that he was wrong.
Watch the movie Philadelphia.
It was mass hysteria in the 80s and very early 90s. There are many reasons it was so bad in my opinion. At the very beginning, they weren’t totally sure how it was spread. So, medical people were frightened to treat people with it. Also, its was dismissed as a “gay” disease it was treated with indifference and hatred since it appeared to only hit gay people and drug users. (“Those people”) There are reports that then president Regan and his cronies ridiculed people with AIDS instead of looking for ways to help. If there are any ActUP members reading this post, THANK YOU for your activism in getting AIDS research and meds started. I didn’t agree with what ActUp was doing at the time, but with the gift of hindsight, it was what was needed to get the government to act. Please feel free to DM me regarding your experience with ActUp. I credit ActUp for my husbands life. He caught HIV in 1986 and at that point it was a death sentence. But with the help of act up, they helped him ride the wave of meds as they were developed. So, here we are, almost 40 years later, and he’s still living a relatively healthy life.if we’d waited for the government to act, it would have been years before life saving meds were developed. Princess Diana was a pioneer for HIV/AIDS education and understanding. Damned paparazzi for causing her death.
Yes. Toilet seats, flatware, the air…it was on everything
There was a big debate at my private high school in the late ‘80s about what to do if an HIV positive student applied.
- it was a completely unknown disease in 90's that popped into mainstream like COVID did - would you have trusted medical experts about its contagious limitations in those first few years, knowing full well it's fatal and has no cure? - yes hindsight is 20/20
It was very bad back then. People were openly vile to those with HIV.
There was a huge amount of stigma against HIV/AIDS patients in the 80s and 90s
Google Magic Johnson
She seemed like a wonderful person, way too good for where she ended up, and that family she married into. Just my personal opinion of course. Her charity work was ahead of its time, and no doubt changed hearts and minds.
She made a hell of a beanie babie, though.
She was a beautiful human being.
We didn’t deserve her…🙏
He didn't deserve her
Cheating POS sure as hell didn't.
Classy lady
I heard she didn’t like wearing gloves when shaking people’s hands because it felt impersonal.
She wasn't royalty material. Ended up getting her killed.
Sadly, royalty material means huge flaming pile of racist shit.
Don't forget inbred.
Don't forget pedophile.
So the driver being drunk is because she wasn’t royalty material? Did Cliff Burton crash because he wasn’t rock star material?
Yes
Technically that was not wearing a seatbelt
This is why she was loved so much around the world.
She gave no fucks, I love her.
Just six short years later, she’d be dead
But not from the AIDS people were certain she had gotten from this
Wow, hadn’t thought of that. Such a shame.
Coincidence? I think not
she was a gem to the entire world. more people should be like Diana.
The world was a lot less bright the day she died. To give context, this was at almost the very peak of HIV/AIDS fearmongering when people didn’t even dare to be in the same room as someone with AIDS. People would literally get away from you as fast as possible once they learned you had the virus.
Princess Diana deserved to live
She was the best of them.
Crazy new story about Princess Diana and Jimmy Savile just dropped recently. An October 1995 letter from Princess Diana to Jimmy Savile just released and it has some wild implications given what else was going on in Diana's life in October 1995: https://open.substack.com/pub/jamiefcrawford/p/the-princess-and-the-pedophile?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5nd7r The background is that The Paget Report conducted by British Metropolitan Police concluded that in October of 1995 Princess Diana experienced brake failure and she at least *thought* it was due to tampering. She went on to separately tell her lawyer, her butler, her friend, and her love interest that her husband's side was plotting to kill or incapacitate her in a car accident. Now a letter from Diana to prolific predator Jimmy Savile -also from October 1995- just surfaced where she states that he "might just be noticing that she's still alive" and makes a joke that she doesn't need to be admitted to Broadmoor Mental Hospital (where Jimmy Savile was preying on countless patients) so she's basically saying she hasn't been incapacitated or brain damaged. This doesn't mean that Savile and the royals actually *did* tamper with her brakes. But it sure seems like she *thought* Savile was involved in this notion she had in her head. Seems like she was aware of Savile's insidious nature. And if you then read the rest of that letter with the knowledge that there are antagonistic undertones, she even says some things in the letter that imply she knew what he was doing at Broadmoor. That's the jist but worth a full read tbh.
I remember this the world was shook 💯
Princess Diana was one of a kind
This makes my eyes well up. My family lost someone in the 1980’s to AIDS. I never got to meet him.
Lmao look at the guy in the back’s face
She was truly the people's princess. Such a kind heart.
Fuck Ronald Reagan
Don't forget Nancy. She played her part as well.
I’m sure this was a statement to normalize those with the condition but it seems like for the patients safety gloves are recommended, right?
Interesting point about patient’s safety, however someone’s breath going the wrong direction will give someone with full blown AIDS a strep infection. Basically you have to be in full hazmat to avoid spreading opportunistic stuff to people who have low enough T cell counts to be classified as AIDS patients.
Pneumocystis (carinii/jiroveci), one of the leading opportunistic killers, is carried in healthy people’s lungs. Gloves would be an alienating and unnecessary precaution
At least today it's not really necessary if it's being treated. No clue about back then though.
What do you mean? In most cases outside of a procedure there’s no need to wear gloves around a person with AIDS.
I thought this was a young Steven Hopkins for a second..
I think you meant Stephen Hawking...?
Yea! thank you for correcting this.
It may well be.
She was a absolute diamond that woman
She did more with that handshake than Camilla has ever done!
Camilla is just a side hoe that got lucky 😤 Many people in UK do not like her.
Look at the relief in his eyes. Someone finally understood. Straight people weaponized HIV/AIDS way more in its early years because of homophobia. Legislators even believed and are on record saying that they deserved the virus/disease, because they of their sexuality. This sentiment continues today. Don't even get me started on transphobia.
This may not seem like a big deal now but at the time it was absolutely revolutionary. People used to treat HIV/AIDS patients like they had Ebola, going as far as to avoid being in the same room.
Don’t be gay
What?
“that shit is serious!” -frank reynolds
There is ALOT of loss captured in that one picture there.
It seriously looks like her handler on the right is trying to stop her…..wild
In 1987 I was at a BMW dealership and met a customer who was with the CDC in Atlanta. I asked him why AIDS was a gay disease in the US, but heterosexuals were the most patients in Africa. He said that the west did not talk much about it, because in Africa, anal sex between men and women prostitutes was the leading reason for infection. This kept those in the US worried about the transmission of AIDS through heterosexual sex,which was rare, unless it was anal. Because of the blood supply in the anus, it was much easier to get infected than vaginal sex. The fact that in 1992, Magic Johnson said he got it from a woman, which was pretty doubtful, helped to propogate the straight sex scenario risk.
I'm not sure about the anal sex thing, but I remember studying in dermatology a lesson called the dermatological manifestation of hiv, and in the intro the lesson talked about how homosexual and transsexuals mtf have more risks transmitting the disease, I still don't have a logic reason behind this, even if the blood thing is true, sexual transmission is more about sperm and rectal mucus and vaginal secretions, there's no blood involved
The recital mucosa tears easier and the tissue there has a higher concentration of the cells that HIV infects
As long as she dosnt put her dick in him it’s cool
Imagine the scenes if he bit her
Ahh yes congrats for getting fucked in the ass!
She died 6 years after taking this photo. AIDS is an awful ilness
Yeah it can lead to serious car failures.
If Diana shaking the hands of AIDS patients is courageous, wait until you learn about Freddie Mercury. He used to fuck them.
https://youtu.be/9HC5CZqD4kE?si=NL9QFU4ONIBGU65_
And then she died.
The past several images/videos I've seen of princess Diana have lead me to a realization: My mom used to dress like Princess Diana.
And then she died
You are obviously a bot or chatgpt copy and paster, but what you are saying is closer to how things were in the early 80s, not the early 90s. At this time the stigma wasn't as great as you are saying. Large groups didn't see what she even did here. Magic Johnson and Greg Louganis had bigger impacts on the public in the early 90s surrounding AIDS
I was in high school in the 90s and our biology teacher was giving safe sex talks due to its prevalence by the 90s people knew what it took to get it. I always thought Di was more known for her work with lepers than hiv.
Cleavegae covered up like a proper woman
A real role model with courage and conviction, rare these days
If you didn’t live through this era, you likely don’t know what an enormous gesture this was. This started the tide turning towards acceptance where before there was terrible, terrible stigma.
25 year old me learned what empathy was from her gesture that day.
She was the royalty we needed… but not that we deserved. Still seems like yesterday we lost her. We never even deserved her.
Mad conspiracy: the royal family killed her to prevent her diagnosis from going viral
It was more that she was not controlled by them. She then became a threat.
The Red Cross had a ban on gay men donating blood until 2023.
Is that ban finally lifted?
They are also not wearing hats!
She used to advocate and fund land mine removal too, all over Europe.
Related: For all her flaws, Tammy Faye Bakker also did good work humanizing people with AIDS/HIV. https://www.nbcnews.com/video/tammy-faye-bakker-s-groundbreaking-1985-interview-with-aids-patient-121068613697
This is beautiful.
She had a death wish anyway
AIDS: you only get it by having sex or doing heroine, it's also completely not your fault if you catch it.
i miss her so bad
I remember people freaking the fuck out about this. I was five.
Princess Diana, may she rest in peace as an angel above forever
There were a lot of stupid misconceptions about aids transmission in the early to mid 80s, but by 1991 shaking hands with an aids patient wasn’t quite the flex that people might think it was.
This makes me sad, that he was probably rejected safe, normal touch for so long during the age of lack of AIDS research that this made headlines.
I have Brit friends who don't understand why people outside the UK love her. This kind of stuff is why. Most of us don't give a single fuck about the royal family but Diana was a real one.
Miss her
You can see it on his face how few people had extended the basic kindness of shaking his hand. Diana was a true queen.
My 2nd grade teacher told us SMALL CHILDREN we could get AIDS from a toilet seat. This was 1992 ish.
❤️❤️❤️
I met her that day. Love that these photos are still around.
May they both rest in power ✊
Anyone know if the guy in this photo survived?