Anthony Fauci was there back then, just as now, spreading a similar kind of fear, which resulted in White being banned from school and parents marching in the streets to keep him away from their kids due to a fear of spread.
That fear would later be proven to be unreasonable, and White's family spent the majority of his life until his death of AIDS trying to educate people around the virus so that we could make informed decisions rather than resorting to fear.