For HIV, there are plenty of estimates for the mutation rate based off a mixture of statistical bioinformatics and knowledge of genetics. But they are all inferences because we don't have many sequences from before 1988. This relatively ancient genome allows scientists to see how good their estimates are by looking at a genome that will have -20 years worth of mutations. Turns out the estimates are really good. I would then draw the link back to Covid where the mutation rate is estimated in the same way. So it's a good bet that the date estimated for Covid's emergence is pretty close to the mark.
You can see the paper here[0]. I think the actual paper would make a better link on HN, but I guess the press release is useful for those without a molecular biology background.
From the abstract:
"Our phylogenetic analyses date the origin of the pandemic lineage of HIV-1 to a time period around the turn of the 20th century (1881 to 1918)."
At that time humanity didn't even know what the virus really is -- they just knew that something in some liquid transmits some illness. The most advanced lab at that time could only get that liquid using the filters.
The two are different in likelihood by perhaps two orders of magnitude and one is malicious while the other not.
When we lump all accusations together and dismiss them all together based on their most radical claim, then we do ourselves a disservice.
While it's important to be fact based, it's also important to be investigate theories of greater likelihood.
Imagine a murder investigation where a detective won't interview suspects because there's no evidence against them. It becomes a catch-22.
Don't waste your time with them. You cannot reason people out of something they were not reasoned into.
That was already pretty much a certainty from the already known fragmentary genomes (also mostly from the DRC), as well as the phylogenetic analysis of known strains, groups and subtypes.
If it got out before the second half of the 20th century it apparently didn't manage to gain enough of a foothold to go pandemic[0]. Though the long incubation rate and somewhat mixed symptoms also make it somewhat uncertain.
[0] as may have been the case for Robert Rayford who looks to have been something of a terminal case rather than vector or victim of a more widespread infection
"There are older fragments of HIV out there, one from 1959 and one from 1960, also from DRC. But those pieces aren't as complete, and thus can't offer as much information about the virus' mutations. "
'Philadelphia' a fictional movie that touches on the social stigma associated with HIV and 'And the band played on' captures the politics of why it was ignored by Reagan and his supporters for so long and the sad politics and scientific infighting in the chase for a cure.
Both are incredible movies.
One thing worth being aware of with "And The Band Played On": it's quite old, and science advanced a lot after the book it's based on was written, so it's sometimes factually inaccurate (Gaetan Dugas didn't personally cause the pandemic, and the incubation period is longer than they thought then). It's not a work of history or a documentary, but it makes for fascinating viewing precisely because it was made so close to the events that the story it tells is not neat and polished with the benefit of decades of hindsight and narrative shaping. It's chaotic and emotional and raw and authentic and, inevitably, sometimes wrong about stuff that wasn't known then.
And out of the small portion of the book that talks about Dugas, I never got the impression that Schilts was trying the blame him for causing the pandemic, but rather that he was using him as a real life example of the type of man that existed in that era, who flew around the country having sex with thousands (yes thousands) of other men, whose behavior doubtlessly and unknowingly sped the spread of AIDS.
I have Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Philadelphia (the titular song of that film) playing right in this instant.
He said that even after it was understood that AIDS was not transmissible by touch, morgues would refuse to accept the bodies of gay men. When people knew they were at the end of the rope, they would ask their friends to throw their ashes over the fence into the white house lawn. That way as their final act, they could tell the government that their active silence was literally killing people and that even if they considered them others, they wouldn't be ignored.
It's heartbreaking, but I'd recommend anyone to listen to the interview if you don't know much about that period in history.
[1] https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shame-on-you/e/66787240
I’m not sure why I write this. I never really spoke of it before. I think I found your comment deeply moving.
The only other thing I do recall was some concern on this first case about folks showing up to disrupt the Funeral in part because most of the mourners were from the gay community. So I think they hired the an officer from the local PD to provide security but nothing happened.
In the podcast, the interviewee talks about how in some major cities there was only one funeral home which would serve that population. Those places have now become the only place some gay men want to handle their body when they pass as a sign of appreciation for their compassion during the AIDS epidemic.
It looks like the white house lawn is home to the remains of at least 18 gay men that died from AIDS.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-a...
The similarity with corona in 2020 is that so little was known, but for years, not months. The difference was that AIDS was 100% fatal until drugs were developed, and AIDS killed a generation of young adults rather than older people.
(There were interviews with a handful of men who were immune to the AIDS virus, but had to endure all of their friends and partners dying, and had to deal with inheriting a lot of possessions that reminded them of dead people.)
Almost all hemophiliacs in North America used pooled blood products from thousands of donors, so just about all of them died. (There's a Canadian film on Youtube that covers this.)
Because of that whenever I see those I think of the bigoted attitude that lead to their deployment and won't use them.
We had very little idea of what constituted "transmissible" and what did not for a period of time, and so while our parents had "free love" and The Pill, with the biggest risk being herpes, at least a section of my generation got "sex = death" internalized on top of all of the other apocalyptic gloom.
Of course, even what would be transmissible was subject to propaganda: on one side, you had people arguing for any gay sex being a risk, but on the other side, some activists insisted that heterosexual intercourse was exactly and precisely as risky as homosexual (male) intercourse. Quite a lot of misinformation floating around.
do you have any source for what you believe?
It shows the challenges of the press to have serious conversations about the disease with the Reagan administration.
Human nature at its most unfiltered.
The video really seems like par for the course and not surprising in the slightest...
Yes, the governments refusal to act on the AIDS crisis and the substantial stigma around the disease - resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead is "much different" from jokes about oral herpes on SNL.
It's an area under the graph thing.
You are comparing a sprinter to a marathon runner. It's hard to do the comparison justice using just one statistic.
I truly hope we manage a better response than the AIDS crisis, because a similar response to COVID-19 would be incredibly devastating.
Think about how often the average person has sex vs how often they’re around tons of strangers who are exhaling, coughing, etc.
Not to mention it takes quite some time for someone to die from an opportunistic infection as a result of being immunocompromised from AIDS.
In NY alone there have been 23K deaths due to covid 19.
911 had about 3K dead.
This was over 7 911 events in a matter of 3 months.
Nationally it's about 33 911s in 3 months.
I read that, looked at their statistics and backed out an estimate of number of years of life lost for AID and Heart disease. And yeah AID's was a really big deal unless you were a sociopathic old white male editor at the WSJ.
Reading what the Wall Street Journal thinks about SARS-COV2 shows they haven't changed a bit in 35 years.
A 90's film telling the story of how AIDS was ignored.
