Last night I rewatched the movie "And the Band Played On" and my thoughts on Ebola.

[LynneSin]

Last edited Sun Oct 19, 2014, 03:54 PM - Edit history (1)

It's the movie about the history of AIDs/HIV in the United States - how it first spread, how it was first detected and how it was basically ignored by the Republican Administration.

It was based on the best selling book of the same name by Randy Shilts.

They new about this disease from the get go, back when it was affecting a handful of men who just happened to be gay. But the government did nothing because hell, who cares about a disease who kills off gay men when Ronald Reagan, who was just elected president of the US, wanted to bring the 'Moral Majority' back to the country. Reagan not only refused to say anything about this illness for almost 5 years of his administration but refused to allocate any government money towards its research.

Thirty some years later and some 39 million people dead global(from amfAR) I'm wondering how that policy for the Reagan Administration worked out for them.

So someone tell me, just how Barack Obama is failing this country in regards to the Ebola outbreak so far. I mean it didn't take him long to mention the word nor did it take him long to want to send money towards research and to West Africa to help the outbreak over there, which is really only about 3 months old. (BTW much of that funding being obstructed by the party of Reagan, the Republicans). Lacking a Surgeon General (thanks Rand Paul, yet another Republicans) Obama appointed a Czar to head up all things Ebola here in the States. And this is all based on ONE DEATH here in the United States.

Really, I'm getting damn sick and tired of Republicans being critical of Obama when they have the deaths of 39 million people globally on their hands because Ronald Reagan thought a disease killing gay men was probably something 'they deserved'. I hope Reagan is rotting in hell!

[shenmue]

1. Same here

I remember how bad it was back then. Such a nightmare. I grew up in a place where we lost a ton of people.

Wonder how much different life would have been if we could have saved more.

[RiffRandell]

2. That's a great, great movie.

Have you seen Dallas Buyers Club yet?

Another great one...big pharma was pushing drugs back then that only they wanted on the market instead of what was best for people infected.

[LynneSin]

3. Saw that one in the theater

Great movie.

I made the mistake of watching "Dallas Buyers Club" and "12 Years a Slave" back to back on HBO. I was bawling like a baby for over an hour after that was all done.

[RiffRandell]

4. I saw And the Band Played On when it came on HBO.

Great cast. I was so happy MM and Jared Leto won the Oscar. Have 12 Years a Slave recorded but haven't watched it yet.

[LynneSin]

7. You need to watch '12 Years' when you are in a good place

First it is an amazing film. But there is some serious harsh reality to that movie which is really hard to watch. I saw it in the movie theaters and it was packed and you could hear the nervous flinching we the audience were watching certain parts of the movie.

I remember the same feeling when watching 'Schlinder's List' but this time it wasn't and audience watching the horrors of another country's history but the audience watching the horrors from our own country's history.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. I read the book. Couldn't see the movie when I heard it was watered down.

Randy Shilts was an amazing journalist. Those kind of non-fiction documentaries are the kind of read that I can't put down. Broke my heart at the end when I read that Shilts had died from AIDs. He didn't even know he had it when it was compiling the data to write the book.

[RiffRandell]

8. I read it too and loved the movie. nt

[LynneSin]

9. To be fair I've read the book and that's a long long book

No way they could have done that entire book unless they did it in a 10-12 part mini-series, which I guess they could have done.

However, it's on HBO Demand right now. Watch it, but watch it in the eyes of what is going on today. I read these headlines from the GOP putting all this blame on Obama with his handling of Ebola and I think 'Really?' The GOP have no room to talk with the number of dead on their hands with the handling of their virus HIV.

[Baitball Blogger]

10. Absolutely we're dealing with the same obstacles that we faced back then.

Forty years we had to put some money into research to find a cure before it reached our shores, but that just was never going to happen as long as Ebola was only killing black people in Africa.

Obama can shut up his critics decisively if he can impose a process that can keep this thing contained. In the end, it will be the mortality stats from Ebola in the U.S., compared to the morality states from AIDs that will provide the convincing proof as to what party is better at responding to a public health issue.

[catbyte]

16. It was interesting that they mentioned an early Ebola outbreak in the movie too.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Now watch the HBO film of Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart' from this year....

Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts, whole cast amazing. 'The Normal Heart' was a play from the early days of the AIDS crisis, about the very earliest days. Every DUer should have already seen it because it is a story about activism in face of horror. The author later founded ACT UP.
See it. First time I saw it I passed out in the lobby. It was more intense than I can describe. It was the news.

[GGJohn]

12. Philadelphia was another great activist movie,

Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Jason Robards were all great.

[GGJohn]

11. Love that movie.

Matthew Modine was outstanding.

[RiffRandell]

15. He was. nt

[Hoppy]

13. So does Obama pick a physician or person with knowledge in infectious desease for Ebola Czar?

Or did he pick a political hack banker?

[AwakeAtLast]

14. I heartily agree with you

The differences in the response are striking, yet our government (thanks again, Repukes) continues to cut funding where it is needed most.

I heard on Meet the Press today, "Republicans are a one trick pony - it's Obama's fault." I thought Chucky Toad was going to vomit on the desk right there.

Great post, K&R!

[Gore1FL]

17. The main thing that fails us in this type of a situation

Is the dependence on the free market for medical research. Some things shouldn't be profit driven.

[freshwest]

22. Yes, the free market that appreciated slavery as the ultimate profit machine.

'Freedom' for some, chains and death for the rest. The 'invisible hand' isn't hard for some of us to see. No thanks!

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. There is a lot of info in the book that was left out of the movie

Esp. about the infighting and power plays at CDC and how Fauci used the outbreak to further his career.
Recommend the read.
The author, Randy Shilts, died shortly after finishing the book, from AIDS.

[tblue37]

19. Your hyperactive auto correct changed your "obstructed" to "instructed." nt

[LynneSin]

25. oooo thanks for the point out

I went over grammar with a fine tooth comb and still missed that one.

And I knew I had spelled the word wrong. Most of my misspells are because I type way too fast.

[SheilaT]

20. Please read the two Laurie Garrett books

The Coming Plague and Breach of Faith. The cover things like Ebola and the defunding and scaling back of public health systems pretty much everywhere, which is vastly more pertinent to the current Ebola outbreak.

When you are done with those two, read Spillover by David Quammen, a more recent book than the Garrett ones, which is specifically and only about animal diseases that jump to humans.

[freshwest]

21. K&R. And yes, rot in hell, Ronnie!

[Tikki]

23. I, also, hope he is rotting in Hell and I hope the day will come when children are taught the truth

about what a horrid human he was.

I do remember those who did step up and try to help and make aware....they should be taught as the heroes.

Tikki

[Hissyspit]

24. The movie begins with the scene of the first Ebola outbreak.

"In a prologue set in 1976, American epidemiologist Don Francis arrives in a village on the banks of the Ebola River in Zaire and discovers many of the residents and the doctor working with them have died from a mysterious illness later identified as Ebola hemorrhagic fever. It is his first exposure to such an epidemic, and the images of the dead he helps cremate will haunt him when he later becomes involved with HIV and AIDS research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

[CountAllVotes]

26. Many aspects of that film are not accurate

I was living in S.F. when the AIDS epidemic appeared and I was working in the medical profession at the time. Everyone was very scared ... scared to death as they did not know what AIDS was or what caused it.

There is a mention of a particular man said to have spread the disease all over the place being he traveled a lot.

However, I felt that this was an attempt to place blame on one individual.

I lived in S.F. for a number of years after the virus first appeared (which was in about 1979 best I can remember as people were dying of what was called a "gay cancer".

They failed to show how the streets of S.F. were filled with dying men with AIDS, primarily in the Castro District but ... there were men stashed all over town in places you'd never think would be places for sick people to live (like an alcohol rehab. center!). It was an incredibly sad time in my life as I saw many people die, including a man I worked with that had several children all who were hemophiliacs.

I learned a lot about epidemics and AIDS was one I had hoped to never see again while I was busy preparing grants to find a cure and/or viable treatment for this problem.

Today, we hear no beepers going off to tell someone when to take the next pill, etc. but IMO, AIDS cannot be ignored and there is no cure for it.

As for Ronald Reagan, he did little to help until his buddy Rock Hudson died of AIDS. Finally, he recognized this to be the real problem that it is.

Too many sad memories and too many friends lost in S.F. during this time.

The book was much better than the film as is the norm it seems to me and yes, it is worth reading.

[LynneSin]

27. I agree the book is better

I've read some history about the person that some doctors have called 'Patient Zero' and I do think the one thing they put into the movie was when the so-called 'Patient Zero' made a comment that 'if he also had the disease it meant someone else gave it to him'. There has been criticism made that it was unfair to have called this person 'Patient Zero' (which out of respect I am not typing his name). I think that's one of the reasons they had the actor in the movie who played the part add that line in about the fact he did indeed have to have gotten this from someone else. I know many people have said it is unfair that this person has been referred to as that name.

As I mentioned to another poster, you can't take a book that is as huge as what Shilts wrote and make it into a 2 hour movie. And for the people who witnessed firsthand what happened during that epidemic they look at the movie and think 'Really? This is the best you can fricking do???!!!' I can't blame you or for that matter many many people to think that. But this movie was not made for people like you. It was made for the rest of us.

The movie did do something for the rest of the country who didn't experience it first hand. While you were there seeing it happen live, I was tucked away at my surburbia high school in middle class america and I didn't have a fucking clue what was happening. Although everyone around me was loving Reagan, I was already starting to be disillusioned by him by some of this cuts back in 1982 that had serious impacts on my family. I didn't know what was happening and as far as we knew, no one in our community was gay because people like that didn't live in Rural America (yeah I know we were dumbasses). I really didn't know a single thing about what was happening until I got to college which wasn't until the mid-late 80s; I didn't think AIDs actually existed until then because Reagan never mentioned it and for many of us we really didn't know or perhaps we didn't care because we thought we were straight so it would never affect us.

That movie, even if it was a Reader's Digest Condensed version of the book (which I did read AFTER watching the movie and you are right, the book is way better) really did open my eyes to just how fricking bad it was. I didn't like Reagan up until that movie but after that movie he is probably the only person I can think of that I truly hope is rotting in hell.

So I understand your dismissal of the movie but it wasn't meant for folks like you. It was meant for folks like me - to really open our eyes and give us a fucking clue of what Reagan hid from us for years. It served a purpose.

[Hissyspit]

29. From Wikipedia, things people forget or didn't know:

"PZ was not the initial carrier of the infection to North America."

"**was the first documented victim of HIV/AIDS in North America, and died at age sixteen in May 1969. He reported having experienced symptoms since 1966."

[mulsh]

28. I was in the East Bay working at a clinical and forensic lab at the time. It is hard for

most people to understand just how frightening the HIV/AIDS outbreak was. Those of us in the health care field got a ring side and some times participatory seat. At least five of my co-workers died from AIDS they got from work. All of us were considered high risk for quite some time. And for some time people doubted the virulence of the virus.

Following a few years of Hep-C attacking mostly gay males and the local political attitudes, Dan White being an exception, it's easy to see why there was so much suspicion. The resistance of the local gay community to closing bath houses and using condoms was understandable but counter productive. Fortunately that evaporated fairly quickly. Unfortunately it too thousands of young men dying way too soon.

Reagan and his people did nothing to help. Those of us who survived his two terms as governor were less surprised than others at this.

Randy Shilts was an excellent chronicler of the times and the epidemic.

I can't watch movies like this because I keep thinking of the actual people invovled and the way too many people I know who died.
On a happy note four years ago was the first year since this started that I didn't know a single person who died from AIDS. I haven't even been told by any friends that they've tested positive in a couple of years. And my few friends still around with AIDS are living longer and happier.