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Rebecca Makkai's new novel " The Great Believers" looks at how AIDS not only ravaged the gay community in Chicago in the 1980s and '90s, but continued to impact lives decades later.

Makkai (@rebeccamakkai) joins Here & Now's Robin Young to talk about the book.
Videos of the ACT UP Chicago AIDS Protests On the imperative of a story about Chicago
"I'm from Chicago, and before I even knew the direction the book was really going to take, I wanted to write a Chicago novel. But as I started my research, I was kind of horrified by how little there was out there about the AIDS crisis in Chicago in specific. Even looking at some of the big, noteworthy, nonfiction books about AIDS, Chicago's not even in the index. And this is the third biggest city in America."
On her research
"Part of my research was primary sources because there weren't books out there. I was going into the library and looking at back issues of gay weeklies from the '80s. But the other side of it was that I was seeking out people. And everyone I talked to, I asked them at the end, 'Who should I talk to next?' Until I was talking to doctors, nurses, survivors, of course, journalists, historians, lawyers, activists and eventually found people who'd been diagnosed with HIV quite early on and were still with us - often people who did not expect to be with us, so their perspective on things was really interesting to me."

On the ACT UP protests
"I became certain that this scene, this protest, was going to be in some ways a culmination for my characters, especially for Yale, my main character, who's a very timid person. I needed to get him to the point where he would join this protest and be out there in the street. At the same time, I'm rewriting history in many ways, because although I wanted to write very much about real events, I didn't want to write about real people. For one thing, I reinvented the gay press scene in Chicago. I made different newspapers because I needed to have an editor. I couldn't have it be that actual person. I also reinvented the ACT UP leaders, and I put some other people in there.

"But there is a point where my characters look up, and five men have come out onto the ledge outside a window of the county building right in downtown Chicago and take off their Oxford shirts to reveal ACT UP T-shirts. And they unfurl this banner that says 'We demand equal health care now,' and then, one by one, they're violently dragged back into the building. This was something I was watching on YouTube. It's something that I heard about from a lot of people firsthand. And towards the end of my research, I actually got to meet one of the surviving men who was out there on the ledge, this activist named Bill McMillan, who was diagnosed very early and is still with us. And, I felt like I was meeting people who'd stepped out of the Revolutionary War. I felt like, I'd been reading about these people, studying them as heroes, as war heroes in my mind, and one of them is sitting across from me now in a restaurant showing me his scrapbook."
On the disease feeling like a judgment, and how that aspect felt for people
"I found myself, in many cases, sort of playing psychiatrist to the people I was talking to. I was often asking them questions like, 'Why do you think you're still here?' And no one's answer was ever medical. Everyone's answer had something to do with God, luck, family, psychology, something like that. No one ever said, 'Well, I've always had a really strong immune system.' And I think it's the kind of brutal randomness that makes you think in terms of fate and in terms of guilt, and the survivor's guilt that anyone still alive with HIV is burdened with. I was hearing stories of people who, before the test, were certain that they had it, and never even had it. Then the people who had the virus and made their wills, said goodbye to everyone, got ready, and they're still here. Then the people who didn't make it, who I couldn't interview, what might have gone through their mind, and at a time when so many people in the world were so eager to jump in and tell them it was their fault. And you're talking about very vulnerable people in so many cases who are primed maybe, unfortunately to believe that."

On conversation and concern about the line between alliance and appropriation in writing this book
"I'm a straight woman, and I'm writing about things I wasn't there for. But I felt like to do this, I needed to answer two questions for myself. And the first was, 'Can I do this well?' That's not for me to answer, but I felt like my answer to myself was, 'I think I can do it well if I research enough.' And the second question was, 'Is this stealing a voice from anyone in this community who would want to publish this kind of narrative, or do I have the opportunity with this to amplify those voices?' And, ultimately, my answer to that - the way publishing works, the more successful my book is, the more likely a publisher is to throw money behind a similar book in the future. And as I go around and talk about my book, I have the chance to recommend other narratives - first-person accounts, nonfiction books - as well as talking about the actual history of what happened. So there might be people who feel like they would not want a narrative coming from someone who wasn't there, but for people who are interested in a fictional account, I've done my best."
by Rebecca Makkai
Nothing Yale could find words for was worth saying.

Fiona told him to check out the upstairs when he got a chance. "It's Versailles up there."

Yale couldn't find Charlie in the crowd. Despite exuding tremendous height, Charlie was only a bit taller than average-and Yale was always surprised in situations like this not to spot his crew-cut head, his neat beard, his droopy eyes, above everyone else.

But Julian Ames was beside him now, down from upstairs. He said, "We've been going since lunch! I'm sloshed!" It was five o'clock, the sky already inking itself out. He leaned against Yale and giggled. "We ransacked the bathrooms. He has nothing, or else he's hiding it. Well, someone found some old poppers in the back of the fridge. But is there any point to poppers if you aren't getting laid?"

"No. Jesus. Poppers?"

"I'm asking seriously!" Julian pulled himself straight. He had a lock of dark hair in front that Charlie maintained made him look like Superman. ("Or a unicorn," Yale would add.) He brushed it out of his eyes and pouted. Julian was too perfect, if anything. He'd had a nose job when he left Atlanta-better for his acting career-and Yale wished he hadn't. He'd have preferred an imperfect Julian.

"I'm answering seriously. There's absolutely no point to doing poppers at a memorial."

"But this isn't a funeral, it's a party. And it's like-" Julian was close again, conspiratorial in his ear. "It's like that Poe story, the Red Death one. There's death out there, but we're gonna have a fabulous time in here."

"Julian." Yale drained the Cuba libre and spat an ice chip back into the glass. "That is not the point. That's not how the story ends."

"I was never one to finish my homework."

Julian put his chin on Yale's shoulder-a thing he was prone to do, one that always made Yale worry Charlie would glance over right then. Yale had spent the past four years reassuring Charlie he wouldn't run off with someone like Julian, or like Teddy Naples, who was now leaning out precariously over the railing, his feet off the ground, calling to a friend below. (Teddy was so small that someone could probably catch him if he fell, but still, Yale cringed, looked away.) There was no reason for Charlie's insecurity, beyond both men's looks and flirtatiousness. Beyond the fact that Charlie would never feel secure. Yale had been the one to propose monogamy to begin with, but Charlie was the one who dwelt on its possible unraveling. And he'd picked the two most beautiful men in Chicago to affix his anxieties to. Yale shrugged Julian off his shoulder, and Julian smiled dopily and wandered away.

The room had loudened, the sound bouncing off the stories above, more people flooding in. Two very pretty, very young men circulated with trays of little quiches and stuffed mushrooms and deviled eggs.

Yale wondered why the food wasn't Cuban, too, to match the drinks, but Richard probably had just one plan for every party: Open the doors, open the bar, boys with quiche.

In any case, this was infinitely better than that strange and dishonest vigil last night. The church had smelled nicely of incense, but otherwise there was little about it Nico would have liked. "He wouldn't be caught dead here," Charlie had said, and then he'd heard himself and tried to laugh. The parents had carefully invited Nico's lover to the vigil, saying it was "an appropriate time for friends to pay respect." Meaning, don't come today to the actual mass. Meaning, don't really even show up for the vigil, but aren't we generous? But Terrence had gone last night, and so had eight friends. Mostly to surround Terrence, and to support Fiona, who, it turned out, had convinced her parents to issue the invitation; she'd told them that if Nico's friends weren't invited, she'd stand up during the service and say so. Still, plenty of friends had bowed out. Asher Glass had claimed his body would revolt at setting foot in a Catholic church. ("I'd start yelling about rubbers. Swear to God.")

The eight of them sat shoulder to shoulder in the back, a phalanx of suits around Terrence. It would have been nice if Terrence could have blended in anonymously, but they weren't even seated yet when Yale heard an older woman pointing him out to her husband: "That one. The black gentleman with the glasses." As if there were another black guy in this church, one with perfect vision. That woman wasn't the only one who kept glancing back throughout the service to observe, anthropologically, when and if this gay black specimen might start weeping.

Yale held Charlie's hand low down-not as a statement, but because Charlie was so allergic to churches. "I see kneelers and hymnals," he said, "and five tons of Anglican guilt lands on my neck." So, far below anyone else's sightline, Yale had rubbed his wide thumb over Charlie's bony one.

Family members told stories only about Nico as a child, as if he'd died in adolescence. There was one good one, told by Nico's stoic and ashen father: Fiona, when she was seven, had wanted twenty cents to buy a handful of Swedish Fish candy from the bin on the counter of the convenience store. Their father pointed out that she'd already spent her allowance. Fiona had started to cry. And Nico, who was eleven, sat down in the middle of the aisle and, for five minutes, twisted and yanked at his barely loose molar until it came out. It bled-and their father, an orthodontist, was alarmed at the jagged root still attached. But Nico pocketed the tooth and said, "The Tooth Fairy's bringing a quarter tonight, right?" In front of Fiona, Dr. Marcus couldn't say no. "So can you give me a loan?"

The crowd laughed at this, and Dr. Marcus barely needed to explain that Nico gave the money straight to his sister, that it was another year before the permanent tooth grew in.

Yale looked now for Terrence. It took a minute, but there he was, sitting halfway up the stairs, too surrounded for Yale to chat with him yet. Instead, Yale took one of the mini quiches off a passing tray and slipped it to him through the balusters. "You look stuck!" Yale said, and Terrence put the quiche in his mouth, held his hand out again, said, "Keep 'em coming!"

Fiona had wanted to trick her parents, to exchange Nico's ashes with fireplace ones and give the real ones to Terrence. It was hard to tell if she was serious. But Terrence wasn't getting any ashes, and he wasn't getting anything else either, besides Nico's cat, which he'd taken when Nico first went into the hospital. The family had made it clear that when they began dismantling Nico's apartment tomorrow, Terrence would be excluded. Nico had left no will. His illness had been sudden, immediately debilitating-first a few days of what had seemed like just shingles, but then, a month later, moon-high fevers and dementia.

Terrence had been an eighth-grade math teacher until this summer, when Nico needed him around the clock and Terrence learned he was infected himself. And how would Terrence get through the fall, the winter, with no Nico, no job? It wasn't just a financial question. He loved teaching, loved those kids.

Terrence had some of the vague early symptoms, some weight loss, but nothing serious yet, not enough to go on disability. He'd taken the test after Nico got sick-whether out of solidarity or just to know, Yale wasn't sure. It wasn't as if there were some magic pill. Yale and Charlie had, just on principle, been among the first to get tested that spring. Charlie's paper had been advocating for testing, education, safe sex, and Charlie felt he had to put his money where his mouth was. But on top of that, Yale had just wanted to get it over with. Not knowing, he figured, was bad for his health in and of itself. The clinics weren't giving the test yet, but Dr. Vincent was. Yale and Charlie opened a bottle of champagne when they got the good results. It was a somber toast; they didn't even finish the bottle.
From THE GREAT BELIEVERS by Rebecca Makkai, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Makkai Freeman.

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Rebecca Makkai Tells Story Of Chicago AIDS Crisis In 'The Great Believers'

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Rebecca Makkai 's new novel " The Great Believers" looks at how AIDS not only ravaged the gay community in Chicago in the 1980s and '90s, but continued to impact lives decades later. Makkai (@rebeccamakkai) joins Here & Now's Robin Young to talk about the book.

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I was in seventh grade when the entire class pushed their desks to the other side of the room, screaming they needed to get away from me before I gave everyone AIDS. I tried to explain to my peers how AIDS was contracted, but they didn't care: because my neighbor was diagnosed, they were convinced I harbored the disease. (And they didn't even know that I touched my neighbor every chance I got, to prove to him, and myself, that I wasn't scared, that I loved him.)

A year later, a classmate apologized and asked how my neighbor was doing. "He died," I managed to say before completely falling apart.

In these moments the AIDS epidemic felt personal to me, but years passed, and people stopped talking about it. Rebecca Makkai's new novel The Great Believers revisits this time period and the devastation of the AIDS crisis. Makkai weaves 1980s Chicago with contemporary Paris in a tender, compelling novel about loss, friendship, tragedy, and redemption. It's a stunning tale that is harrowing yet funny, devastating yet hopeful.

I recently had the opportunity to chat on the phone with Makkai about her new novel, the AIDS crisis, and art. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

* * *
Rachel León As someone who lost someone to AIDS, I wondered if you too had a personal experience with losing someone to AIDS in the 80s or 90s?
Rebecca Makkai

I have a few friends who are HIV positive and my parents had some colleagues who died of AIDS, but it wasn't anyone I knew personally; I just knew it was happening. I was born in 1978 so as a kid, it seemed like the biggest most important thing that had ever happened. I also think as kids we didn't dismiss it as happening to those people over there. It felt much more immediate and I don't think we had the prejudice going into our view of things that adults might have had. So there was that, but also by the time we got to high school in the nineties, all of our Sex Ed was about HIV. I think when I talk to people very close to my own age, even when they didn't lose someone close to them, it makes a lot of sense that this would be something I'd be drawn to. Whereas for people quite a bit older or quite a bit younger they're left wondering why I'd write about this, which is so odd to me. Why are we not all writing about this? This is a huge thing that's happened in our lifetime.
Rachel León I was born in 1979, so that makes sense.
Rebecca Makkai

Yeah, so you get it. The reaction I'm getting from people, especially with people much older who weren't effected directly by the crisis, if I tell them what I'm publishing, they're like, 'Oh I remember that time,' as if I've just reminded them about something they haven't thought about in decades, which is probably the case. That's shocking to me. And with people younger than me, they're actually really interested in it, but they seem to know next to nothing about it. I didn't really think about this awareness as generational when I went into writing it, but based on people's reactions, there's something really specific to the kids in the late 70s who grew up with this on TV. Like if you were home sick and you watched Donahue and that was on, it's going to have a really big impact on you.
Rachel León So where did the idea of the novel come from?
Rebecca Makkai

The novel actually started with the art subplot. I started off wanting to write about an artist's model between the wars in Paris and that became less and less of the book. This person who was going to be a secondary character-this museum person to whom she was donating the sketches of herself-became more and more the center of the book. On the one hand, I didn't set out to write this; but I was willing to listen to where the novel wanted to go and where the gravity of the book was.
Rachel León I'm assuming a great deal of research went into this novel. What was the process like?
Rebecca Makkai

Yeah, I knew that if I was going to approach this at all, I had to get it right on several levels. I had to get it right emotionally, I had to make sure I wasn't mis-stepping, and I had to be right on a granular detail level. I wanted someone who had lived through this in Chicago in the 80s to read it to not to be taken out of it by some little thing that made it apparent to them that it was fiction. So I went about my research in several ways. One of them was trying to research on paper and online. There's quite a bit of direct personal account online. I also went to the Harold Washington Library and I read every back issue of The Windy City Times (a gay weekly paper) from 1985-1992. When people are writing the big books about the epidemic, it's always coastal and it's never about Chicago. I was expecting some big books of nonfiction that I could use as resources, and there just weren't any. There are personal accounts, certainly, but I was sort of astonished by the dearth. That's still a gap that needs to be filled.

And I did a lot of in person research. I started just by just reaching out on Facebook to my own friends asking if anyone knew anyone who knew anyone. At first I was just trying to find people who lived in Boystown in the 80s or people who had been deeply affected by AIDS in the 80s, and so I started off meeting with people who might have met one or two of those factors, circling closer and closer to people who actually had HIV in the 80s in Chicago, were out, et cetera. But I met with doctors, nurses, the art therapist from the Illinois Masonic AIDS unit, activists, journalists, lawyers, survivors, and just people who lived in Chicago in Boystown in the 80s and were gay and out. And so I have hours and hours of notes and audio recordings with these people. But really in the end I was weirdly grateful that I hadn't been able to find a ton of books because it forced me out into the world to do this research. If there'd been ample nonfiction accounts I might have felt I could stay home and just read those. I would have been missing a tremendous amount on the anecdote level and the detail level and on the emotional level. Just talking to people about friends they lost and hearing their stories made my writing a lot richer.
Rachel León The novel is certainly very rich. There are so many great characters in this novel that I don't think I could pick one I liked best, but I wondered if you have a favorite or one you enjoyed writing the most?
Rebecca Makkai

Oh man. I can't give too much away here, but I really like Julian actually. He's that friend everyone has who's kind of stupid but they love him anyway. Somehow he came really easily to me; he was someone who just sort of presented himself in scene. I was writing that initial memorial party scene and I didn't know particularly that this was going to be a long term character, I just needed to write someone coming up and greeting Yale-and this guy emerged as a tremendous flirt and very silly and very fun and then became a really major part of the book-to the point that I thought for a while about making him the narrator of it. It would be Yale's story but in the end would turn out to be narrated by Julian. I could also say that the main characters are my favorite. Your main characters are usually the ones that are closest to you-the closest to who I am, who have the most in common with me-but Julian was the most fun to write.
Rachel León One of the things that really resonated with me was the meditation on art and its enduring power. It also made me think about how you indirectly wrote about art in The Hundred Year House. Are you a secret art buff or is it something you gravitate toward writing about?
Rebecca Makkai

No, I'm not someone who knows a tremendous amount about art, but I really do love it. I love going to museums and galleries, but compared to people who really know about art, I know next to nothing, so it's not so much about that as the fascination of the 1920s Paris art world and the modern world galleries and museums, I'm really interested in it. Because the book was originally really going to be about Nora and the Paris art world, I did a lot research that I never ended up using, so I was reading biographies of some of these artists and just books about the art scene around World War I. I read a whole biography of Kiki de Montparnasse. That stuff ended up disappearing completely. But I had a lot of fun studying it. And I'd say the Art Institute is something that's always been very central to my experience in Chicago. I tend to think of myself as someone who doesn't know much about art, but I suppose in contrast to most people in the country, I spend more time thinking about it than the average citizen.
Rachel León When you were talking about how you were originally thinking it was going to be Nora's story, it made me think about how the two timelines are so seamlessly woven. Did you come up with one before the other, or did you conceive them together?
Rebecca Makkai

Originally it was going to be letters about the 20s or Yale was just going to be hearing about it from Nora. As that became less and less of the book, it really was just about the 80s with just a little sprinkling of the art world in there. And I'd written about 150 pages of Yale's story. But it felt a bit claustrophobic in terms of the narrative. And also I had my eye on the issue of appropriation and the question of whether this was an appropriate story for me to be telling. When it was just Yale's story, it felt a little too much like ventriloquism, like I was coming in and trying to tell this story about this population that I did not belong to. I had a major crisis-a very helpful crisis-over this when I was staying at Yaddo. I was snowed in and just kind of panicking about it in this tiny little room. I sat there for two days freaking out, and ultimately realized that maybe just broadening the novel would help with that issue. If I wasn't just trying to give Yale's voice, but was writing a more polyphonic novel, it would be helpful.

So Fiona was already a character in there, who just like Julian had presented herself in scene. And I figured out that she could really carry the other half of the story in the present day. I went back and wrote her sections for the first half of the book, wove them in and rewrote Yale's sections so they would fit. I have a writing group here in Chicago and I showed them the first six chapters without telling them Fiona had been a later addition, and just presented it-Yale, Fiona, Yale, Fiona-and I was afraid they were going to say it felt stuck on, but that didn't come up at all. They thought the point of the whole novel was the passage of time, and that was a great sign to me that it was working. I went on from there writing them back and forth, but that weaving is hard because if you change something in one area, you have to change it in the other. Just making sure the chapters came up even was terrifying.
Rachel León You started to talk about the line between ally-ship and appropriation, which I saw you mention in your acknowledgements. You have gay-or assumed gay-characters in your other novels, but were you even more conscious of those concerns this time around?
Rebecca Makkai

I think this time it was much more of a concern for me. It was a combination of the subject matter-which is very sensitive-and the fact that I was writing from Yale's point of view, and on top of it, the fact that I was writing about a real place. I'm writing about Chicago in a specific year, a specific area, a specific group of people, and specific events, I'm telling stories that actually belong in many ways to the people who were there-so that definitely gave me pause in some healthy ways and ultimately it came down to two questions. First of all, could I do this well? That's not for me to decide, but my answer to myself was I think I can do it well with the right amount of research. And the second question was will my publishing this book amplify or mute more direct accounts of this era and this epidemic. And ultimately, I'm satisfied that this will amplify those voices. It's not a zero sum game where I'm taking all the book space out there. If I tour and if I do interviews, I'm in a position to talk about that era, but I'm also able to direct people to first-hand accounts and to art, fiction, movies, plays produced by people who have a direct experience to the AIDS crisis. And I made sure in my acknowledgments to recommend a whole lot of other things I think people should turn to next after my book.
Rachel León: I hate the assumption that a writer finishes one novel and immediately starts the next one, but alas, what's next for you?
Rebecca Makkai

I'm writing the next novel in my head only at this point. There's so much going on with the publication of this book and all the teaching that I do that I haven't had time to sit down and write more than like 2,000 words of the next project, but I think I know what it is. I've been living in this world in my head as I drive, as I shower, as I brush my teeth-which is always a really good sign for me. If you take on a novel, it needs to be a country you're willing to move to for a few years. I think it's also really healthy for me as an artist to be able to move on from the world of The Great Believers, which I was living in very intensely for a long time, so to have some distance there before the book comes out in the world, and faces reviews, is really good.

Rebecca Makkai is the author of The Hundred Year-House, The Borrower, and Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best American Fantasy, Harper's, Tin House, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review and New England Review, among others. She lives outside Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

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How Rebecca Makkai Wrote 'The Great Believers'

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I was in seventh grade when the entire class pushed their desks to the other side of the room, screaming they needed to get away from me before I gave everyone AIDS. I tried to explain to my peers how AIDS was contracted, but they didn't care: because my neighbor was diagnosed, they were convinced I harbored the disease.

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U.S. sales of alcoholic beverages rose 55% in the week ending March 21, according to market research firm Nielsen.

Spirits like tequila, gin and pre-mixed cocktails led the way, with sales jumping 75% compared to the same period last year. Wine sales were up 66% while beer sales rose 42%. And online sales far outpaced in-store sales.
See also: Dating during a pandemic: This couple got coronavirus on a first date - and they've been quarantining (together) ever since
Nielsen said online alcohol sales were up 243%. Danelle Kosmal, a Nielsen vice president, suspects growth rates peaked that week as people loaded up their pantries before state stay-at-home orders went into effect.

Kosmal said data for the week ending March 28 will be a better indicator of ongoing demand.

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U.S. online alcohol sales jump 243% during coronavirus pandemic

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U.S. sales of alcoholic beverages rose 55% in the week ending March 21, according to market research firm Nielsen. Spirits like tequila, gin and pre-mixed cocktails led the way, with sales jumping 75% compared to the same period last year. Wine sales were up 66% while beer sales rose 42%.

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This is a data base that talks about how much this virus has spread and what the rates are daily. On the chart, it shows how many cases are found per day and per week. The most interesting part about this website is the United States colors showing where it's popular the most and where it is not. I will be using this page for facts to show how the coronavirus has spread and to display the an example of now and in the late 1900's.

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We can’t seem to find the page you were looking for. Please try our search or A-Z index.

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Coronavirus Anxiety: Coping with Stress, Fear, and Worry

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Coronavirus Anxiety: Coping with Stress, Fear, and Worry

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Coronavirus Anxiety: Coping with Stress, Fear, and Worry - HelpGuide.org

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Anxious about coronavirus? Here's how to cope with the fear and uncertainty and protect your mental health.

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This article is about how Rebecca talks about the virus and how she writes about how gay men pick up this virus. I thought this was an interesting article because the author talks about why she wrote this book and how she was feeling about it. I will be using this website for facts I can use for my essay. It will help me know how fear was in the 1980's-1990's.

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The connection between all of these articles is they include Aids, fear, and very helpful facts. These articles will help me with my paper. The ideas of all these Journals and articles is that they go from 1980's to Now. Which will help give a lot of detail to my essay.

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The great believer will be an n another source of Information to help summarize fear among the gay community and even the main characters of the story. The book is very much like what it was like in 1980's - 2000's. I will use this book for facts and evidence about the fear the main characters had.

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The fear and Anxiety with aids is exactly website that will be seen on my essay and perfect for my topic. After all, it talks about how Americans were looking at the gay community and what they thought about the virus. I will be using this article for a few evidence details for my essay. I will use this article for facts and analyze why they thought a certain way. The Latest update was last year in 2019 for the article. I will use this as a secondary source.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In June 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an article about a mysterious infection that had overcome five young, previously healthy gay men -- all of whom would be dead soon after publication. Since this first report, more than 700,000 Americans with the disease have died; it would come to be identified as acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

Information about the disease was scarce in the earliest days of the soon-to-be national health crisis, and so too was a concerted response from the government to combat its outbreak. In 1982, a journalist asked then-President Ronald Reagan's press secretary if the president was tracking the spread of the disease, which by that point numbered 600 reported cases. The press secretary responded to the reporter, "I don't have it, do you?" The press pool laughed as the secretary admitted, "I don't know anything about it."

But Americans themselves were learning about the virus, as details of the disease began to make it to the front page of national newspapers. By 1983, as reports of AIDS cases climbed to 1,450, more than three in four Americans had heard of or read about AIDS, according to Gallup's first question on the topic. Of those who were familiar with the disease, 43% believed it would reach epidemic proportions, and they were more pessimistic (45%) than optimistic (33%) about whether a cure would soon be found.

Americans' Attitudes on People With AIDS

AIDS predominantly affected men who had sex with men and, as a result, severely hindered the U.S. gay rights movement, which was still in its infancy. Among Americans who reported knowing a gay person, more than one in five (21%) said they had become less comfortable around that person since learning about AIDS.

In 1985, the vast majority of Americans (80%) said it was "probably true" that most people with AIDS were homosexual men. More than a quarter of Americans (28%) reported that they or someone they knew had avoided places where homosexuals might be present as a precaution to avoid contracting AIDS -- and this number grew to 44% by 1986.

As the spread of AIDS continued, Gallup found some Americans expressing judgmental views about those who had contracted the disease. In two separate polls in 1987, roughly half of Americans agreed that it was people's own fault if they got AIDS (51%) and that most people with AIDS had only themselves to blame (46%). Between 43% and 44% of Americans in 1987 and 1988 believed that AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior.

Still, a solid majority (78%) agreed that people with AIDS should be treated with compassion. But most Americans (60%) also agreed that people with AIDS should be made to carry a card noting they had the virus, and one in three (33%) agreed that employers should be allowed to fire employees who had AIDS. Twenty-one percent of Americans said people with AIDS should be isolated from the rest of society.

Perceptions of AIDS as the Most Urgent U.S. Health Problem

In 1987, Gallup asked an open-ended question about what Americans saw as the most urgent health problem facing the U.S. More than two-thirds of Americans said AIDS, and mentions of the disease topped that list until 2000.

Diagnoses of AIDS and AIDS-related deaths peaked in the early 1990s as scientific understanding of the disease advanced, including the advent of new medications that allowed people who had contracted HIV to live normal lives. In the decades since, Americans' mentions of AIDS as the top U.S. health problem have subsided, and since 2009, no more than 1% of Americans have mentioned AIDS in any of Gallup's polls that have asked the question.

AIDS and HIV are still problems in the U.S., though not to the degree they were during their peak in the 1980s and '90s. The diminished percentages of Americans naming AIDS as the country's greatest health problem reflect the advancements of treatments, which mean that infection with HIV is no longer a death sentence for people.
Read more from the Gallup Vault.

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Gallup Vault: Fear and Anxiety During the 1980s AIDS Crisis

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As AIDS spread in the 1980s, Gallup found some Americans expressing judgmental views about those who had contracted the disease.

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The History of Aids website is about what Aids is, what it came from and even what treatments they did. This will help my essay to tell me what happened your the 1900's during this crisis. This will also give me facts and give me a more understanding of this crisis. The Interesting part about this article is how the basic idea is presented on this article and the numbers they have that will be very helpful.

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What is HIV?

The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, is a virus that attacks the immune system, specifically CD4 cells (or T cells).

The virus is transmitted through bodily fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal fluids, anal fluids, and breast milk. Historically, HIV has most often been spread through unprotected sex, the sharing of needles for drug use, and through birth.

Over time, HIV can destroy so many CD4 cells that the body can't fight infections and diseases, eventually leading to the most severe form of an HIV infection: acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS. A person with AIDS is very vulnerable to cancer and to life-threatening infections, such as pneumonia.

Though there is no cure for HIV or AIDS, a person with HIV who receives treatment early can live nearly as long as someone without the virus. And a study in 2019 in the medical journal, Lancet, showed that an anti-viral treatment effectively halted the spread of HIV.

Where Did AIDS Come From?

Scientists have traced the origin of HIV back to chimpanzees and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), an HIV-like virus that attacks the immune system of monkeys and apes.

In 1999, researchers identified a strain of chimpanzee SIV called SIVcpz, which was nearly identical to HIV. Chimps, the scientist later discovered, hunt and eat two smaller species of monkeys-red-capped mangabeys and greater spot-nosed monkeys-that carry and infect the chimps with two strains of SIV. These two strains likely combined to form SIVcpz, which can spread between chimpanzees and humans.

SIVcpz likely jumped to humans when hunters in Africa ate infected chimps, or the chimps' infected blood got into the cuts or wounds of hunters. Researchers believe the first transmission of SIV to HIV in humans that then led to the global pandemic occurred in 1920 in Kinshasa, the capital and largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The virus spread may have spread from Kinshasa along infrastructure routes (roads, railways, and rivers) via migrants and the sex trade.

In the 1960s, HIV spread from Africa to Haiti and the Caribbean when Haitian professionals in the colonial Democratic Republic of Congo returned home. The virus then moved from the Caribbean to New York City around 1970 and then to San Francisco later in the decade.

International travel from the United States helped the virus spread across the rest of the globe.
READ MORE: Pandemics That Changed History: A Timeline
The AIDS Epidemic Arises

Though HIV arrived in the United States around 1970, it didn't come to the public's attention until the early 1980s.

In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report about five previously healthy homosexual men becoming infected with Pneumocystis pneumonia, which is caused by the normally harmless fungus Pneumocystis jirovecii. This type of pneumonia, the CDC noted, almost never affects people with uncompromised immune systems.

The following year, The New York Times published an alarming article about the new immune system disorder, which, by that time, had affected 335 people, killing 136 of them. Because the disease appeared to affect mostly homosexual men, officials initially called it gay-related immune deficiency, or GRID.

Though the CDC discovered all major routes of the disease's transmission-as well as that female partners of AIDS-positive men could be infected-in 1983, the public considered AIDS a gay disease. It was even called the "gay plague" for many years after.

In September of 1982, the CDC used the term AIDS to describe the disease for the first time. By the end of the year, AIDS cases were also reported in a number of European countries.
READ MORE: Pandemics that Changed History
The HIV Test Arrives

In 1984, researchers finally identified the cause of AIDS-the HIV virus-and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed the first commercial blood test for HIV in 1985.

Today, numerous tests can detect HIV, most of which work by detecting HIV antibodies. The tests can be done on blood, saliva, or urine, though the blood tests detect HIV sooner after exposure due to higher levels of antibodies.

In 1985, actor Rock Hudson became the first high-profile fatality from AIDS. In fear of HIV making it into blood banks, the FDA also enacted regulations that ban gay men from donating blood. The FDA would revise its rules in 2015 to allow gay men to give blood if they've been celibate for a year, though blood banks routinely test blood for HIV.

By the end of 1985, there were more than 20,000 reported cases of AIDS, with at least one case in every region of the world.

AZT is Developed

In 1987, the first antiretroviral medication for HIV, azidothymidine (AZT), became available.

Numerous other medications for HIV are now available, and are typically used together in what's known as antiretroviral therapy (ART) or highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART).

The regimes work by preventing the virus from multiplying, giving the immune system a chance to recover and fight off infections and HIV-related cancers. The therapy also helps reduce the risk of HIV transmission, including between an infected mother and her unborn child.

The World Health Organization (WHO), in 1988, declared December 1st to be World AIDS Day. By the end of the decade, there were at least 100,000 reported cases of AIDS in the United States and WHO estimated 400,000 AIDS cases worldwide.

HIV/AIDS in the 1990s and 2000s

In 1991, the red ribbon became an international symbol of AIDS awareness.

In that year, basketball player Magic Johnson announced he had HIV, helping to further bring awareness to the issue and dispel the stereotype of it being a gay disease. Soon after, Freddie Mercury -lead singer of the band Queen-announced he had AIDS and died a day later.

In 1994, the FDA approved the first oral (and non-blood) HIV test. Two years later, it approved the first home testing kit and the first urine test.

AIDS-related deaths and hospitalizations in developed countries began to decline sharply in 1995 thanks to new medications and the introduction of HAART. Still, by 1999, AIDS was the fourth biggest cause of death in the world and the leading cause of death in Africa.

HIV Treatment Progresses
WATCH: 30 Years of AIDs Research
In 2001, generic drug manufacturers began selling discounted copies of patented HIV drugs to developing countries, leading to several major pharmaceutical manufacturers slashing prices on their HIV drugs. The following year, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) reported that AIDS was by far the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2009, President Barack Obama lifted a 1987 U.S. ban that prevented HIV-positive people from entering the country.

The FDA approved pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, for HIV-negative people in 2012. When taken daily, PrEP can reduce the risk of HIV from sex by more than 90 percent and from intravenous drug use by 70 percent, according to the CDC. A major study completed in 2019 showed that over 750 gay men on an anti-viral treatment did not transmit the virus to their partners. "Our findings provide conclusive evidence that the risk of HIV transmission through anal sex when HIV viral load is suppressed is effectively zero," the paper, published in Lancet, stated.

At the end of 2019, some 38 million people were living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, and 940,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses that year, according to WHO. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most severely affected region, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the world's current HIV cases.

Sources:

Origin of HIV and AIDS: AVERT.
HIV Originated With Monkeys, Not Chimps, Study Finds: National Geographic.
HIV pandemic originated in Kinshasa in the 1920s, say scientists: The Guardian.
America's HIV outbreak started in this city, 10 years before anyone noticed: PBS.
HIV Testing: CDC.
About HIV/AIDS: CDC.
How HIV spread across the West: CNN.
Obama Lifts a Ban on Entry Into U.S. by H.I.V.-Positive People: The New York Times.
Global Health Observatory (GHO) data: World Health Organization.

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History of AIDS - Epidemic, Timeline & HIV | HISTORY

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HIV and AIDS began spreading among humans in the 1920s and became a public health crisis by the 1980s, before the first effective treatments emerged.

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Reagan, Regulation, Food, Drug, 1980 - 1990

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Reagan, Regulation, Food, Drug, 1980 - 1990

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Reagan, Regulation, food, and drugs in the 1980-1990 is about how the FDA, Ronald Reagan, food, including medicine drugs were trying to help the people who need all materials to help survive. There may be some good facts in there I will be using for my Essay. The FDA was a big help in medicine including how they were finding ways to help the ones with Aids. I will be using this article for facts and how the FDA/Government helped with the community.

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This academic Journal is about how Aids and poverty were a problem back in the 1900's. This journal talks about how wealth is one way on how the HIV/Aids is created or spread. Some people do not have the money to get the right treatment for the virus. Including in how poverty and Aids were one of the reasons why HIV/Aids was dangerous. I will use this article for money spent research on the disease. This article will be great on fear because someone might need a little more help in recovering.