Hacker News Reader

Comment by yostrovs | Hacker News Reader

I've been asking friends that believe in such punishments whether they would have punished gay people in the 1990s that got AIDS. Condoms are extremely effective at preventing transmission. Invariably no one wants to go there. Gay people with AIDS that didn't use a condom are to be cried over in our society, while those with COVID that didn't take the vaccine are to be punished.

View on HN

You can’t spread HIV just by sitting next to someone. Your analogy also doesn’t hold at all because countries DO punish people for knowingly infecting others with HIV.

You can spread HIV by having sex with someone and not using a condom. You might not even know you have HIV, so using a condom is essential in any case.

You can spread Covid to an entire roomful of people just by sitting in it. The two things aren’t even remotely comparable. To suggest otherwise is to repeat the homophobic prejudices of the original HIV pandemic.

Beyond the other obvious problems with your comment, you're also missing the fact that many of the people dying of AIDS died 10+ years after contracting the virus, substantially before any of the science on HIV spread was settled.

By the 1990s you would have had to live under a rock not to know to use condoms.

Dying in the 1990s of AIDS likely means you acquired the disease in the early to mid 80s, you clearly are unaware of the science behind the disease.

My comment referred to people who got sick with AIDS in the 1990s when 10 year olds knew the dangers.

Most people who "got sick with AIDS in the 1990s" contracted HIV in the 80s. You don't seem to know much about the difference between AIDS/HIV or the latency period.

You don't want to acknowledge the moral dilemma that I'm presenting and instead bickering about the details. I'm a medical professional. I know about HIV and AIDS. You're just being a boob.

you don't transmit AIDS, you trasmit HIV

and not sure who you're hanging with, but as a sexually active gay man I've never heard of no condom usage for anyone being seen as acceptable unless there is consent between all parties

Reply on news.ycombinator.com