4 ms·
> Colonial governments were mostly out of Africa after the 1960s. HIV was probably spreading in the Belgian Congo in the 1920s. It likely spread to the US in t
by rovolo 5y ago
> Colonial governments were mostly out of Africa after the 1960s.
HIV was probably spreading in the Belgian Congo in the 1920s. It likely spread to the US in the 60s. It takes a decade for HIV to turn into AIDS, which is why we think of the pandemic as starting in the 80s.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> It takes a decade for HIV to turn into AIDS The median time is a little longer than that, but the range goes down to less than a year. We think about it as starting in the 1980s because that's when the diverse manifestations were recognized as a common syndrome, not because that's when symptoms first appeared in the US (in fact, there is a case retroactively identified as a death from full-blown AIDS in the US in 1969.)