April 24, San Francisco resident Ken Horne, the first AIDS

1980

• April 24, San Francisco resident Ken Horne, the first AIDS case in the United States to be recognized at the time, is reported to Center for Disease Control with Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). He was also suffering from Cryptococcus at the time.^[10]
• On October 31, French-Canadian flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas pays his first known visit to New York City bathhouses. He would later be deemed "Patient Zero" for his apparent connection to many early cases of AIDS in the United States.^[11]
• Rick Wellikoff, a Brooklyn schoolteacher, dies of AIDS in New York City on December 23. He is the 4th American to have died from the new disease.

1981

Kaposi's sarcoma on the skin of an AIDS patient.

• January 15, Nick Rock becomes the first known AIDS death in New York City.^[11]
• May 18, Dr. Lawrence Mass becomes the first journalist in the world to write about the epidemic, in the "New York Native," a gay newspaper. A gay tipster overheard his physician mention that some gay men were being treated in intensive-care units in New York City for a strange pneumonia. "Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded" was the headline on Mass's article. Mass repeated a New York City public-health official's claims that there was no wave of disease sweeping through the gay community. At this point, however, the CDC had been gathering information for about a month on the outbreak that Mass's source was dismissing.
• June 5, The CDC reports a cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia in five gay men in Los Angeles.^[12]
• July 4, CDC reports clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocystis pneumonia among gay men in California and New York City.^[13]
• By the end of the year, 121 people are known to have died from the disease.^[1]
• First known case in the United Kingdom.^[14]

1982

• June 18, CDC MMWR 1982 31(23);305-7

"Exposure to some substance (rather than an infectious agent) may eventually lead to immunodeficiency among a subset of the homosexual male population that shares a particular style of life."^[15] For example, Marmor et al. recently reported that exposure to amyl nitrite was associated with an increased risk of KS in New York City.^[16] Exposure to inhalant sexual stimulants, central-nervous-system stimulants, and a variety of other "street" drugs was common among males belonging to the cluster of cases of KS and PCP in Los Angeles and Orange counties."^[15]

• July 9, CDC reports a cluster of opportunistic infections (OOI) and Kaposi's sarcoma among Haitians recently entering the United States. ^[1]
• July 27, The term AIDS (for acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is proposed at a meeting in Washington of gay-community leaders, federal bureaucrats and the CDC.^[17]
• Summer, First known case in Italy ^[18]
• September 24, Current Trends Update on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) - United States^[19]

CDC defines a case of AIDS as a disease, at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease. Such diseases include KS, PCP, and serious OOI. [...] Diagnoses are considered to fit the case definition only if based on sufficiently reliable methods (generally histology or culture). Some patients who are considered AIDS cases on the basis of diseases only moderately predictive of cellular immunodeficiency may not actually be immunodeficient and may not be part of the current epidemic.

• December 10, a baby in California becomes ill in the first known case of AIDS from a blood transfusion.^[11]
• First known case in Brazil.^[20]
• First known case in Canada.^[21]

1983

• In January, Dr. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, isolates a retrovirus that kills T-cells from the lymph system of a gay AIDS patient. In the following months, she would find it in additional gay and hemophiliac sufferers. This retrovirus would be called by several names, including LAV and HTLV-III before being named HIV in 1986.^[22]
• CDC National AIDS Hotline established.
• March, United States Public Heath Service (PHS) or (USPHS) issues donor screening guidelines. AIDS high-risk groups should not donate blood/plasma products.
• Australia has first death from AIDS in Melbourne, the Hawke Labor government invests in a significant campaign that ultimately gives Australia one of the lowest infection rates in the world.
• AIDS is diagnosed in Mexico for the first time. HIV can be traced in the country back to 1981.^[23]
• Within a few days of each other, cult musicians Jobriath and Klaus Nomi are the first internationally-known recording artists known to have died from AIDS-related illness.

1984

• April 23, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announces at a press conference that an American scientist, Dr. Robert Gallo, has discovered the probable cause of AIDS: the retrovirus subsequently named human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in 1986. She also declares that a vaccine will be available within two years.
• September 6, first performance at Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco of The AIDS Show which runs for two years and is the subject of a 1986 documentary film of the same name.
• December 17, Ryan White was diagnosed with AIDS by a doctor performing a partial lung removal. White became infected with HIV from a blood product, known as Factor VIII, as part of his treatment for hemophilia which was given to him on a regular basis. When the public school that he attended, Western Middle School in Russiaville, Indiana, learned of his disease in 1985 there was enormous pressure from parents and faculty to bar him from school premises. Due to the widespread fear of AIDS and lack of medical knowledge, principal Ron Colby and the schoolboard assented. His family filed a lawsuit, seeking to overturn the ban.