More Than Miles: An Analysis of the Different Bicoastal Responses to the Early AIDS Epidemic

Abstract

This paper examines the different bicoastal responses to the early AIDS epidemic that occurred in the early 1980s. Specifically, research is conducted on newspaper articles from The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle during this time to study the dissimilar responses in the two major cities on each coast that had large communities with the disease, New York City and San Francisco. The research conducted illustrates that in San Francisco, AIDS was largely a disease affecting MSM (homosexual males) living in a city where they were better tolerated and more vocal as a community than elsewhere in the nation, and physicians, used to taking care of these men, became alarmed by their rates of infection. Consequently, during the first two and a half years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, San Francisco's political, medical and social responses to the crisis were predominantly more proactive than concurrent reactions in New York City, and this disparity was reflected in the dissimilar content and tone of newspaper articles published in The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times between July 3^rd, 1981 and December 31^st, 1983.