Flu is pretty hard to avoid when an epidemic is under way. Get on an elevator with someone who has it (and who may not even know it at the time), be near someone who sneezes, touch a door knob shortly after someone with incipient flu has, or shake hands with them, and bingo! You've got it!

Flu gets easily passed from one person to another, often just by being in the same room at the same time as an infected person—or even shortly thereafter. Someone sneezes and you happen to walk through the aerosol cloud they left behind and there you are.

But even so. It can often be avoided by taking a few sensible precautions (avoid crowds if possible, wash your hands often). Several decades worth of flu epidemics have gone by and I haven't had the flu in all that time (knock on wood).

HIV/AIDs is a whole different matter. It is not anywhere near that easily transmitted. It requires the transfer of bodily fluids through such things as sex—either homosexual or heterosexual sex—or, say, a blood transfusion. Or, for that matter, druggies sharing needles. It is an "equal opportunity" infection. And it's easily avoided by taking a few intelligent precautions.

Also, if you check the figures, I think you'll find that flu affects a vastly larger number of people than does HIV/AIDs.

Apples and oranges.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, AIDs is not always fatal. It can be handled by drugs, and there are many people (homo and hetero) who are surviving despite being infected.

One really needs to get one's ducks in a row.

P. P. S. Also by the way:   Flu can be passed between heterosexual couples. This is hardly a reason to ban heterosexual marriage. . . .