Recent comments in /f/askscience

Cats_and-Crochet t1_jd1o28q wrote

Reply to comment by iayork in Has the HIV virus become less deadly? by shaun3000

And just to be clear, these viruses that became deadlier—they were racking up black death / smallpox-tours-the-americas fatality rates when first encountered, or were they only occasionally lethal to begin with? That'd be good to know when calculating trade-offs, and also whether the precise mutations that make the viruses deadlier were favored or disfavored depending on the mode of that virus' transmission...I'm thinking Ebola causing hemorrhaging which releases infected blood, for example. I could maybe see it being a benefit to a bug like HIV to cause a slightly more toned down version of fhis--something an otherwise healthy host can live with for years, concealing it from the people in his life

2

HankScorpio-vs-World t1_jd1lcd8 wrote

Reply to Has the HIV virus become less deadly? by shaun3000

The “Hype” over HIV and its prevalence in the news of the 80’s was simply that it was newly detected, spreading expediently, had no treatment and nobody knew the scale of how big the “underlying threat” was already hidden in society.

So governments especially in the UK embarked on unprecedented awareness campaigns to slow the advance of the disease through education. Part of that education campaign was to get across the deadliness of the disease before it became a “pandemic”. The problem was nobody knew how long people had been infected before they became sick, and died. With awareness of the disease and more importantly a test for its presence, therapies could be developed, like most illnesses if detected early prognosis is normally better. It’s worth remembering it was the immunodeficiency that enabled other diseases to kill those with HIV.

These education campaigns have been effective at slowing the growth of the disease in the UK population and there have been treatments developed that prolong the lives of many sufferers. So public education and press interest in the disease has waned as it has become part of everyday medicine. Estimates are 0.2% of the population in the uk are affected but that’s still a a massive 100,000 people estimated but is one of the lowest rates in the world and outside the top 100. But it’s worth remembering in the early days of the illness it was only when people got really sick were they even aware that they may have it which is one of the reasons why it was so deadly, by the time they were diagnosed it was often too late to do anything.

What was of concern is how many “well” people had HIV undetected in the population and where that number was able to grow in places like Africa it went out of control. Some places in Africa run at excess of 20% of the population being affected and bigger countries like South Africa have a lower % infected about 12% but that’s still more than 70,000 people dying each year. The deadliness of this disease should not be underestimated even today. It’s just in many countries the rate of infection has been well contained and is less in the news.

14

mfb- t1_jd1k8zg wrote

Reply to comment by viscence in Do we know where is the center of big bang located presently in reference to earth? by MagnetCarter

> If you have two objects that are too far apart to affect each other, but that randomly happen to be stationary with respect to each other today, then tomorrow they will be further apart.

This statement is correct today, but only because of dark energy. You could have an expanding universe where it would be wrong (and for several billion years it was wrong in our universe), so it's not a direct consequence of expansion.

5

CrazyisNSFW t1_jd1c6gj wrote

Reply to Has the HIV virus become less deadly? by shaun3000

The treatment regimen has improved, so the patients have almost normal life today compared to 30 years ago. The risk of mother-to-children is also lower today, thanks to advancement in medicine.

But WHO is concerned on HIV resistance to some antiretroviral drugs

Further, we have PrEP so the spread is much reduced.

So, less transmission risk in combination with improved antiretroviral therapies gives us MUCH fewer people die from AIDS, making HIV to appear less deadly than what probably is.

20