As I write this, I am 69 years old, which is not a surprise to regular readers of the column, but relevant for this piece. It is relevant because it means that I am old enough to remember another pandemic, which started about 40 years ago and therefore, being an adult at the time, is in my adult memory.
I am talking about AIDS, if you haven't already figured that out. And I'm also talking about COVID-19, and I'm going to talk about hypocrisy because, well, I see that a lot. Only in this case, no one seems to be connecting dots.
I have to assume that a lot of people reading this were not around 40 years ago, or were too young to recall the news details. So I'm going to help you out a little, because those details are, as usual, where the devil is hiding. Let's snap back, if we could, to 2020 and COVID-19.
Specifically, I want to talk about "contact tracing", the practice of figuring out all those with whom an infected person has been in contact since their becoming infected with COVID-19.
I would say that, while conservatives are not particularly opposed to contact tracing, we are not so passionate about it as the left which, for whatever reason, seems to raise it every other word, possibly because the Federal government has not gone all nanny-state and tried to implement it with the almighty power of the government -- you know, power.
I suppose I see the point of both sides, but what I do or not see as far as COVID-19 tracing is less important than the disparity, where the left is so gung-ho on it. Why? Because now we're going to head back to about 1980. AIDS at the time was (listen close if you are under 50) an invariably fatal and very ugly disease that was almost totally in the gay community and among IV drug addicts and, aside from reused-needle transmission, was sexually transmitted (aside from a rare transmission through such means as blood transfusions).
The virus, HIV, was a nasty bug, and it is important to note that, as opposed to the COVID-19 fatality rate of about 1% of symptomatic patients, and about .05% of infections, the fatality rate for HIV infections was essentially 100% back then.
You would think -- and most sane people would as well -- that if you thought that contact tracing was a good public health measure for COVID-19 in 2020, you'd have practically insisted on it for the much more dangerous AIDS in 1980, right? Well, you would be so wrong.
The left was all "individual rights" back then, and violently opposed contact tracing for AIDS. Gee, I wonder why then and not now? It's not hard to figure that out. In the spirit of the times back then, "outing" someone as gay was not a good thing, and testing positive for AIDS pretty much labeled you back then as being gay. To their discredit, there were people who regarded AIDS as a plague visited on the gay community for their "sins." So I get it, I really do. But we were talking about a universally fatal disease in those days.
As an straight actor at the time, back then I saw its horrors nearly first-hand (as if you didn't know how many actors were gay). Unfortunate as it was, the fact that it was a death sentence for those who contracted it, was a great deal more important than the embarrassment to someone who was "outed" as a contact.
This all broke during the Jimmy Carter administration, when the Democrats had both houses of Congress and the White House as well, and could do what they wanted. With a large Democrat campaign-funding source being Hollywood (and its closet-gay community), can you make the logical leap to why the left, then running the government, was so reluctant to trace patient contacts? I truly dislike that kind of hypocrisy.
I've written often that with the left, it is all about power, and you can tell that when the hypocrisy is exposed. What I don't understand is why, even though it is 40 years since, not one article has come out pointing out the vast difference between the left's nanny-state approach to contact tracing for COVID-19 in 2020, vs. their knee-jerk "don't touch our gay donors" opposition to the same technique for a 100x more fatal disease in 1980.
So now there is an article. Comments welcome.
Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton
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