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I honestly genuinely just assumed this was never going to happen. I mean, I figured I wouldn't see it being fully managed in my lifetime (clearly we passed that), but I heard that a cure was just 'never going to be possible'. This is pretty..nice.

sex ed in middle school in the early 00s they were still scaring us with it. And now, 25 years later, it's a pretty manageable chronic health condition.

He saved my life, and if I have anything to say about it that'll cost him his

For it to go from "don't have sex bc you will literally die" to "take this pill and live an otherwise normal life," well within a lifetime, is just *bonkers*.

I’m of the micro generation that got the full AIDS experience - I remember seeing it in the headlines as a child, came of age at the peak of safe sex messaging, lost people I loved dearly. It was like a curse upon the best & most vibrant among us. My kids will never know this world & I’m so glad.

And made a pretty good dent on viruses generally in the process.

hiv is taking so many Ls lately

TERRIFYING

There were people who thought it was going to be the next Great Plague, and some of them were not unhinged either.

I feel like every year in school there was at least one class that spent time doing AIDS debunking like “you can’t get AIDS from riding in an elevator with the infected”, just borderline zombie movie shit

Next epidemic will be the apocalypse In Brin's novel The Postman, the end of civilization comes after a Nazi demagogue takes control of the US government and then a viral pandemic hits. I think about that sometimes for no particular reason.

I'm old enough that I remember when Magic Johnson told us he was HIV+ and we all figured he'd be dead in a couple years. 30+ years ago, HIV+ really was essentially a death sentence. The whole "safe sex" movement existed 99% due to HIV+.

Looking back at my own high school and college experience, both in formal sex-ed and conversations about sex, it feels like a totally different world. We went from "death sentence" to "treatable w/ a lifetime of very unpleasant drugs" to "treatable w/ okay drugs" to "effectively cured" in ~25 years.

I think we are around the same age and I realize that I’m still in disbelief and lowkey afraid to celebrate. But it’s a HUGE deal

I met someone recently who is HIV Positive, and was shocked by own ignorance when they explained that with access to the right care it is now an entirely manageable condition.

I remember the early days and how the old guard medical people were “eh, this’ll be easy, it’s just another virus” and woosh was that wrong.

YES like I remember when this was a horrifying death sentence with barely even proper palliative care. It's already amazing to me that it's now more or less a chronic, manageable condition, if a person has access to the right therapies. A cure? Absolutely mind-bending.

my uncle lost his two long term partners to AIDS so we saw it first hand in our family. thankfully, and somewhat magically, he never got it.

Yep