The story that Gaetan Dugas (hope I’m remembering the spelling right) was “patient zero” in North America was probably not true. It is true that he was a fairly early AIDS case, and what’s more, he passed it on - knowingly - likely to dozens of men.
But the idea that his visits introduced HIV to many major cities came about early on, before it was known how long HIV could incubate prior to symptoms appearing. He was actually years too late to be the source of AIDS in the cities he visited.
If sexual transmission were the only way, then yes. Keep in mind none of the precautions are completely safe, but proper precautions provide a high degree of safety.
But it also is transmitted through sharing needles and the blood supply, as well as occasionally in a medical environment through needle sticks. All those vectors would have to be taken care of as well.
Nitpick: yes, you can’t say that completely eliminating non-safe-sex would stop HIV spreading. However, it might do - if transmission rates through other methods were sufficiently slow or localised, it could die off. I don’t have any figures, just thought it was worth explaining.
Complete hijack: is it ok to describe sharing needles as a ‘vector’, I’d previously only used that to describe an animal which transfered a disease.
I don’t think that hypothesis was ever “touted” by anything resembling a reputable authority. If I recall correctly it was the subject of some sniggering speculation by standup comedians at the time, which is not the same thing.
I never understood why people made the connection: AIDS is spread by sexual contact in humans—>AIDS came from monkeys (or apes)–>therefore a human must have had sex with a monkey. The transfer could have happened a number of other ways, including people eating meat from apes or monkeys, or being bitten by one. Either one seems infinitely more likely to me.
I saw a documentary that followed some researchers studying the apparent immunity of some African prostitutes who were practicing unsafe sex. The purpose of the study was, of course, to determine what was conferring the immunity to HIV.
Turns out the prostitutes ended up contracting HIV, they were just ‘lucky’ not to have contracted it earlier.
Dont ask me why the researchers didnt just give them a box of condoms.
, so I could not devote more time to research the subject.