A question regarding AIDS in different communities

[NHBL]

Is there any reason that AIDS couldn't start off as a problem among a different community than gays? Perhaps swingers, or prostitutes and their clients, or even just teenagers, who can, in some cases, be quite promiscuous?
How likely is that sort of scenario? And might the virus spread more rapidly?
My current timeline is so butterfly-rich by now that a chance in who gets AIDS to start with is VERY subject to chance, and I have never seen a timeline where the first set of victims is different.
I would imagine that the priority for research would be MUCH higher if it was being caught by "respectable" men who had had NO sexual contact with anyone but their wives--"No--of course I never saw a prostitute--I'm a good respectable god-fearing businessman...swear to it!"
I'm envisioning it first starting (or rather, being detected) among prostitutes and their johns of New York, and perhaps another city or two--possibly migrating to swinger communities before it's seen for what it is.
(The timeline istself is in ASB https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/masquerade-how-hard-would-this-be.433844/ but the question seems to be non-asb, so I put it here in hopes of getting some thoughts.

How much worse, in terms of death rates and infection rates, is it likely to be if it gets loose in the ranks of prostitutes and their johns. (Both cheap ones and "high class" ones frequente4d by the wealthy, even if they often aren't called prostitutes by their johns.

 

[overoceans]

Whatever the men were telling their wives, I think people would eventually figure out that prostitution was the conduit.

First off, not all men would lie, and even among those who do, some of them would have wives who already know about their history of philandering, so wouldn't buy the protestations of innocence.

Which in and of itself might not be enough to let the cat out of the bag(so to speak), but you're eventually gonna have epidemiologists and journalists poking around, and once they establish a pattern of transmission via prostitutes, the game's basically up.

What effect that has on the political response, research funding etc, I don't know. Among the Moral Majority-types, prostitution(at least of the hetero sort) tends to get grandfathered in as no big deal(I don't think I ever heard them denounce Nevada the way they denounced San Francisco). OTOH, the 80s was also the time when those guys were on the warpath against pornography, so if it becomes absolutely certain that prostitution(substantially the same thing as pornography) is the main culprit behind AIDS, they might not be able to keep quiet about that, without looking indefensibly hypocritical.

 

[Ijon Tichy]

The variant of HIV that produced the AIDS epidemic in the west was always more likely to be spread by anal intercourse, given that the walls of the anus etc are thinner than vaginal walls.

 

[GeographyDude]

. . . given that the walls of the anus etc are thinner than vaginal walls.

and a separate path of risk is if there’s another STD present concurrently (the body’s immune cells are present in greater numbers and thus more likely to be infected)

* HIV specifically infects CD4 (T helper) cells

 

[NHBL]

Thanks for all the excellent responses. It sounds like, once AIDS hits the gay community, it will spread VERY fast, but it could easily get established elsewhere first, depending on where it comes in from.

 

[Asp]

Is there any reason that AIDS couldn't start off as a problem among a different community than gays? Perhaps swingers, or prostitutes and their clients, or even just teenagers, who can, in some cases, be quite promiscuous?
How likely is that sort of scenario? And might the virus spread more rapidly?
My current timeline is so butterfly-rich by now that a chance in who gets AIDS to start with is VERY subject to chance, and I have never seen a timeline where the first set of victims is different.
I would imagine that the priority for research would be MUCH higher if it was being caught by "respectable" men who had had NO sexual contact with anyone but their wives--"No--of course I never saw a prostitute--I'm a good respectable god-fearing businessman...swear to it!"
I'm envisioning it first starting (or rather, being detected) among prostitutes and their johns of New York, and perhaps another city or two--possibly migrating to swinger communities before it's seen for what it is.
(The timeline istself is in ASB https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/masquerade-how-hard-would-this-be.433844/ but the question seems to be non-asb, so I put it here in hopes of getting some thoughts.

How much worse, in terms of death rates and infection rates, is it likely to be if it gets loose in the ranks of prostitutes and their johns. (Both cheap ones and "high class" ones frequente4d by the wealthy, even if they often aren't called prostitutes by their johns.

One potential way is if a bunch of African laborers and soldiers from areas where it’s common end up in Europe during WWII and their blood transfusions get distributed. The Belgian Congolese Force Publique fought in Burma and Italian East Africa IOTL, and it was rampant in Kinshasa and other parts from the 1920s onward, so that would do it. I guess you would have to butterfly the racial separation of blood, but considering that it was organizationally difficult and made zero sense at any level, that isn’t implausible.

If WWII vets from a couple of theaters where Congolese troops were, their wives, and their kids start dying of it first, it would be primarily associated with them, although of course it would spread to other populations. That would prevent it from being seen as a “gay disease.”

 

[NHBL]

One potential way is if a bunch of African laborers and soldiers from areas where it’s common end up in Europe during WWII and their blood transfusions get distributed. The Belgian Congolese Force Publique fought in Burma and Italian East Africa IOTL, and it was rampant in Kinshasa and other parts from the 1920s onward, so that would do it. I guess you would have to butterfly the racial separation of blood, but considering that it was organizationally difficult and made zero sense at any level, that isn’t implausible.

If WWII vets from a couple of theaters where Congolese troops were, their wives, and their kids start dying of it first, it would be primarily associated with them, although of course it would spread to other populations. That would prevent it from being seen as a “gay disease.”

Thanks. My timeline is set in 1981 currently, and AIDS will crop up more or less on schedule.

 

[Asp]

Thanks. My timeline is set in 1981 currently, and AIDS will crop up more or less on schedule.

If it’s on schedule, having the first widely publicized group of cases with it be kids with hemophilia would butterfly a lot of the LGBT association. If that plasma center in Haiti expanded and became a major supplier of the blood needed to make their medicine, that’d do it.