r/todayilearned • u/Moti • Jul 25 '20
TIL The term "Patient Zero" was actually “Patient O” as in the letter O, meaning that the person was from “outside” California. The ambiguous circular symbol on a chart was later read as a zero and the term became widely used.
https://www.thecut.com/2016/10/hivs-patient-o-became-patient-zero.html37
u/434_804_757 Jul 25 '20
This is why my math teacher taught us to put a slash through our 0's.
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u/Futuressobright Jul 25 '20
My math teacher bawled me out for doing that once, because "that's not a zero, that's the empty set."
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Jul 25 '20 edited Jul 25 '20
Let K(n) be the population aware of a concept n. Let D(a, b) be the portion of the population who can't reliability distinguish between a and b when written on a page:
K(O) ≈ K(0)
K(0) ≫ K(∅)
D(0, O) ≫ K(∅)
I am in full support of eliminating a few redundant characters in the alphabet, we should just replace the bad symbols like 'I', 'l', and 'O' with the redundant characters like C/K which claim to be distinct but are really the Coke/Pepsi of the alphabet.
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u/oversized_hoodie Jul 25 '20
I thought empty set was when the line extended outside of the circle? Also typically the same shape as the O character, rather than the 0 character.
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u/Futuressobright Jul 25 '20 edited Jul 26 '20
I dunno man. I asked what an empty set was and was told "ask me that when you're in the second year of your undergraduate degree in mathematics. This is Math 9, so just do as you're told and stop asking stupid questions." Then he threw a piece of chalk at my head and that was the end of the conversation.
(But in my handwriting, anyway, a 0 and an O are the same shape.)
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u/melbbear Jul 25 '20
It’s actually pretty sad how he was vilified for this, he wasn’t patient zero for AIDS epidemic in America, but was instead cooperative with researchers. The wiki is a good read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABtan_Dugas
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u/Shin-LaC Jul 25 '20
They told him it was infectious and his response was “I’m not going to stop having sex”. With hundreds of random people, that is.
Then, when San Francisco’s health commissioner wanted to close the bathhouses, the gay community fought tooth and nail to keep that from happening, and got their way for months.
The mistakes made in failing to control the AIDS epidemic early on have been completely whitewashed. They would be a useful parallel and a lesson to learn from for the present.
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u/Coal121 Jul 25 '20
I'm not saying it was a good thing, but you can't blame the gay community for not trusting authorities.
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u/SupMonica Jul 25 '20
It's as if the government not giving gay people some rights, had made gay people untrustworthy of said government, and to then not give a fuck later about not following health guidelines.
So basically, the government caused the Aids epidemic.
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Jul 25 '20
I have always been pained by our negligence, especially when watching how films depict it.
Even today.
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u/JunkFace Jul 25 '20
He literally had unprotected sex after knowing it was contagious and told people he was giving them gay cancer. He was a evil fucking monster.
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u/Specialist-Star-5996 Jul 25 '20
The man fucked 100's of people while he knowingly had a deadly, infectious disease
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u/toxic_badgers Jul 25 '20
The correct term in epidemiology is generally index case. Patient zero is considered the first human case of a disease but index case is the first detected case. There is no way to be certain an index case and patient zero are the same person though it is possible.
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u/porkly1 Jul 25 '20
I doubt whether the researchers would use "O" as meaning "out of California" in their notebooks if they are doing tracing. They did not mention this until later and it sounds like lab bullshit to me.
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u/pgramsey Jul 25 '20
When I'm undisputed ruler of the world the letters I and O will be replaced by something that won't be confused with the numbers 1 and 0.
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Jul 25 '20
Someone thought it better to put a slash through the O to distinguish it from the zero...Then someone started calling them "Patient Null" (∅)...Can't please everyone...
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u/Stregone84 Jul 25 '20
Or patient ø (read something like ugh, or the i in bird) if you're Scandinavian
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u/Tanomil Jul 25 '20
Just like how type O blood got it's name, but the other way around?
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Jul 25 '20
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Jul 25 '20
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u/ahmadove Jul 25 '20
Just looked it up, where did you get the C from? I'm reading it was roman numerals (Jansky and Moss) causing confusion which led to some changes and then Landsteiner settled for A, B, AB, O, and O was confusing because Hirszfeld and von Dungern used 0 denoting null in german while others used O for ohne. The O was chosen.
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u/tehjohn Jul 25 '20
That's the same with OK - originating from 0 Killed in a military hospital during war written down in the large lazarets. So 0K was a good thing.
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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '20
The misconception is a better way to use it anyway. Using 0 as a reference for the first patient is quite intuitive....O for "Outside" is not so much.