Get out of that lake

Robert of the Chappaquiddick Kennedys, second of that name, made a slight name for himself in the 1980s as a HIV-skeptic. He wasn't entirely off-base. At the time.

I recall well into the 1990s sharing some of his skepticism. HIV did not always lead to AIDS, in full - at least, not in the West among Europeans. I was aware it looked different in Africa. So I wondered - for my part - if Africans were seeing some virus also immuno-deprivant which was not HIV, like "Flu Like Symptoms" are not always influenza.

Also over the 1980s we had a large scare about heterosexual AIDS which turned out overblown. Heterosexuals contract HIV when they are intravenous-needle users - or maybe when they have open sores (yo, le herp!) at the time they do what they do with someone else who's bleeding (la herpe, or maybe on le rag). Of course, by now we've ascertained that such a person has been exposed to G-d knows what else. As to AIDS itself for the average heterosexual: that whole scare went away, replaced by scares as made more sense, like... the herp, which nobody wants either. Nor does one desire any of that drug-resistant nasty which I shan't get into on this Friday night. (If you are out being more... productive this Friday night, please take due precautions.)

It was Kennedy's thought, or so I gathered second-hand, that HIV was correlated with whatever was causing AIDS but only inasmuch as so was herpes, Hepatitis B, HPV and other bugs not on file as of 1989. Not being a biologist himself, Kennedy despaired of fishing out which bug it was. I empathised.

Over the 2000s I got to trusting the Authorities that HIV looked like a decent suspect, as I saw anti-HIV drugs keeping, say, Andrew Sullivan alive after Farrukh "Mercury" Balsara had not survived the early 1990s. Were these drugs coincidentally suppressing some other virus? Was Sullivan a... false flaaaag?? Whatever, man. But Kennedy, bless his soul, stayed at it.

Kennedy must now deal with this report. HIV causes, indeed, AIDS and there exist, in fact, strains of this virus which cause AIDS faster.

As to whether any conservative trust a Kennedy, well... trusting Kennedys tends not to be a winning proposition. Ask Mary Jo.