It is easy to lie about this. Easy to boast that one has never experienced any trace of the irrational fear of being infected, despite the fact that common sense tells you that you have not been exposed to any risks. That is how it has always been. People ten or so years older than I am have stories to tell about a similarly needless fear of having been stricken with syphilis. They will tell you about the Wasserman test they had to take before being accepted as a blood donor, and that it was a good way of establishing that one did not in fact have a syphilis bomb ticking away in one's body. I remember as a teenager being scared stiff by stories about gonorrhoea. I don't think I've spoken to a single person in connection with venereal disease who hasn't felt a cold shiver down the spine at least once in their lives.

But the fear of HIV and Aids? I recall it very clearly. There was a period in the 1980s when the fear was especially widespread. All kinds of horror stories were circulating in the mass media. There was an account of how a passenger suffering from Aids was not allowed to board an American flight from China. The captain refused to allow him on board. There were those who argued that people infected should be branded, or tattooed in the groin. Or why not herd them together and maroon them on remote islands, there to await their deaths?