What Dianna did was deliberate. Many people at the time were treating HIV infected people like lepers, by her action she showed that in normal day-to-day life the virus was not transmissible and you were completely safe. Only the swapping of bodily fluids was a danger. She demonstrated this clearly and helped to change attitudes.
Says it all In a Guardian article in February 2017, Abbott wrote about receiving racist and sexist abuse online every day, such as threats of rape.[114] A few days later, in an interview with Sophy Ridge on Sky News, Abbott proposed a parliamentary inquiry into the sexist and racist abuse of MPs in social media and the way Twitter and Facebook investigate cases which arise.[115] An Amnesty International report found that Abbott was the subject of almost half of all abusive tweets about female MPs on Twitter during the 2017 election campaign, receiving ten times more abuse than any other MP.[116]
Edwina Currie was at the forefront of the campaign to equalise the age of consent to 16 for gay and bisexual men - this was finally achieved in 2000. According to the Terence Higgins Trust there are at the present time over 100,000 people living with HIV in the UK. - to reinforce Jay's comment - of the 4000 diagnosed with HIV in 2019 - less than half are gay or bisexual men.
You didn’t walk in on her and John Major did you? That scene would have been enough to traumatise even the hardest Olive Grower.