‘Tinderbox’: How The West Fueled The AIDS Epidemic

HIV is a slow-moving time bomb.

Unlike Ebola, which infects and kills people quickly — and then disappears just as quickly — the HIV epidemic has become so good at killing people in part because it moves so very slowly, says journalist Craig Timberg.

“In vaginal sex, you can have sex with hundreds of people and not transmit [HIV], it turns out,” he says. “And that’s part of the reason it’s still with us today. It has spread very slowly. It makes people ill very slowly. … And that’s one of the reasons why it’s been so difficult for the world to understand it. … It’s been hard to make sense of this epidemic because of the way it moves. It’s not obvious.”