Amsterdam announces significant results in PrEP trial

[Topthat]

No such thing as a “new” disease.   All of these viruses, bacterias, amoebas, etc exist in  nature.  It is just a matter of contact.   FOR SURE many people contracted hiv and died of aids.  Just no anecdotal record of it.  Dange, tuberculosis,  small pox, Viral hemorrhagic fevers covid on and on.   They need contact and a host.  

[BootmanLA]

9 hours ago, Jandrosgape said:

No such thing as a “new” disease.   All of these viruses, bacterias, amoebas, etc exist in  nature.  It is just a matter of contact.   FOR SURE many people contracted hiv and died of aids.  Just no anecdotal record of it.  Dange, tuberculosis,  small pox, Viral hemorrhagic fevers covid on and on.   They need contact and a host.  

That's not true either.

For one thing, bacteria and viruses mutate, and a virus that doesn't do much of anything for a thousand years can, in the right circumstances, mutate into something quite deadly. That's the path SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) took; a mutated virus entered the population in a densely populated, close-quarters kind of setting, and that plus trade and travel pretty much guaranteed its spread. This was absolutely a "new" disease, caused by a mutated form of an already-discovered virus type.

Or a very problematic virus, like HIV, that can cause significant problems and even death but which is ordinarily very difficult to transmit, can lurk quietly out there, doing very little harm overall until human behavioral changes (like the explosion of gay sex in the 1960's and 1970's and onward) provide a much more efficient method of transmission. Introduce a pathogen that can be transmitted sexually into a population with very high rates of concurrent partner change (ongoing sex with a bunch of different partners), and what once was an infection that affected, typically, two people - the original infected one, and his partner - becomes an epidemic.