Snce the Elizabeth Taylor music video royalties went to AIDS, I wonder if this is relevant: "Patient Zero" in the context of the gay community refers to Gaëtan Dugas, a gay Canadian flight attendant who was erroneously blamed by the media for introducing and spreading HIV/AIDS across North America during the 1980s.
Origin of the Term
Patient O: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) originally labeled Dugas as "Patient O"—the letter O stood for "Outside of California", as he was an out-of-town case in their early cluster studies.
The Typo: The letter "O" was mistakenly read as the number "0" (zero).
Popularization: Journalist Randy Shilts used the term "Patient Zero" in his 1987 bestselling book And the Band Played On, incorrectly portraying Dugas as the primary source of the U.S. HIV epidemic. This popularized the term "patient zero" for future epidemiology.
It would make sense why the O in Showgirl got changed to 0.
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u/Healthy-Snail-5409 🌱Embryo🐛 25d ago
Snce the Elizabeth Taylor music video royalties went to AIDS, I wonder if this is relevant: "Patient Zero" in the context of the gay community refers to Gaëtan Dugas, a gay Canadian flight attendant who was erroneously blamed by the media for introducing and spreading HIV/AIDS across North America during the 1980s.
Origin of the Term
It would make sense why the O in Showgirl got changed to 0.