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Comment by moistly | Hacker News Reader

> It’s no one’s business

I must assume you are unfamiliar with the history of Typhoid Mary. Public health is everyone’s business.

Except when it concerns risky sexual behavior, or so we were told just a generation ago.

Really? Has any public health authority said "it no one's business whether you have unprotected sex with strangers"? On the contrary, there were and there are many campaigns to get people to have less risky behaviors.

Campaigns to inform, yes! And that allowed those engaged in risky sexual behavior to make decisions for themselves. But shutting down the bathhouses and swingers parties and park bathrooms was considered a violation of rights.

Now contrast that approach with mandates and arresting store owners and closing businesses.

the lack of a strong public health response to the hiv epidemic was certainly NOT based from a place of respecting the rights of those who engaged in minority sexual behaviors, but the complete opposite - the mainstream culture didn’t particularly care if they, or intravenous drug users, lived or died.

to claim otherwise is ludicrous.

to claim otherwise is ludicrous.

Nonsense. From Arthur Ashe to Ryan White to Magic Johnson, there was continuous noise and encouragement around HIV prevention and research through the entire period. And narratives were manipulated then, too. Even into the early 90s, there was widespread public thought that HIV might be spread through saliva, even though the research was pretty clear it was spread almost exclusively via anal sex and intravenous drug use (and blood transfusions from an HIV+ donor).

What does that have to do with respecting human rights? The gp is correct in that most of society didn’t care about the “gay disease” hurting the undesirables so they didn’t put effort into fixing it. They weren’t refusing to use government or corporate power to enforce controls on behavior out of some noble intention to preserve the rights of the minority groups affected

What? Many countries wrote laws specifically forcing people with HIV to register themselves and to disclose it to sexual partners. In fact the relevant laws used for covid in my country where those written to combat HIV.

I’m in the USA and my comment was in that context - I forget sometimes that HN has a global audience.

Using the most extreme possible examples to justify a policy.

LOL. A global pandemic that causes extreme healthcare crises might require extreme policies. “Using the most extreme possible examples to justify a policy,” how laughable!

Next, read about Quarantine Acts. Most nations have them.

An outlier example from 1907.

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