Eithan Gaitano was probably a figment of Randy Shilt's imagination, rest his soul.
As I've written many times, the bug mutates at a remarkable rate. I flunked statistics in high school, but you can work backwards and somehow, the rocket scientists have figured out that this critter emerged sometime in the 1930s. Blood samples from patients who have weird diseases are routinely stored at CDC. There was a documentable case of AIDS here in the US around 1958 or 1959. Shilts wrote about a Danish nurse who worked in the Congo who died in 1966, if I'm not mistaken, again, confirmed HIV + based on stored samples.
The shit hit the fan here in the US in the early to mid 70s, when agent whoever he was showed up on our shores, and made a bee line to the local bath house. Using the 5-7 year extrapolation, the first AIDS case showed up in LA in 1981, so infections began spreading rapidly in the early to mid 70s. As Shilts pointed out, it wasn't a "gay" disease, but gay behavior at the dawn of sexual liberation (Stonewall is 1969), led to a dramatic amplification of the disease, allowing major dissemination.
An no guys, it wasn't spread by evil Republicans out to kill us. It was our own, irresponsible behavior that started the epidemic, and that same behavior is threatening a new generation today.
Nuff lecturing.
Dr Danny
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