>"And yes we've discovered SIV later because AIDS happened then we found that it's a virus and not because they are gay, so people started looking at it's source and discovered SIV, FIV, EIAV and others."
This doesn't really fit with the narrative in the paper I linked. They give this reason: "It was the impression of workers at the New England Regional Primate Research Center that there had been an increase in the number of deaths in its macaque colony."
The paper you linked is from 1983 before any genetic and even epidemiological studies were conducted, AIDS was clinically observed in the US in 1980 or 1981, it wasn't even called AIDS until 1982, and HIV was only identified in 1983.
So what's exactly the surprise in the fact that an article from 35 years ago that was written at the dawn of HIV and AIDS research doesn't exactly fit with our modern understandings of the disease?
Given that the research animals are much more heavily monitored it is surprising that the simian analogue only showed up in that environment after the human version became a big deal.
As quoted earlier, they say the study was initiated because they noticed the animals dying more often than usual. You don't need genetic/epidemiological data to notice something like that. I do not understand what relevance that should have.
In 1983 AIDS wasn't still a big deal, no all primates have SIV strains, some primates never develop AIDS, we know some species for primates can effectively suppress SIV permanently, while some do develop immunodeficiency syndromes, heck it's even possible that the species or sub group of primates in the research was introduce to SIV from another species because of humans (mostly because the research does states that they have had 14 different species locked in their research center), it is however not possible for HIV to be the origin of the virus since we now have genetic models of the disease.
When that research was conducted we didn't even knew what was causing AIDS as neither SIV nor HIV have been identified yet.
Also research animals die all the time in great numbers, if it's a research laboratory then they'll probably die or be put to death way before they'll develop AIDS, if it's a conservation then they die to natural causes all the time, it's more likely that no one bothered to think why primates die to various infectious diseases more frequently than they should beforehand and then when AIDS research began to be published some one made a connection and looked into it.
It's not like in 1983 or prior to that we commonly had 100's of primates locked in for a multi decade research in a state of the art habitat which was constantly monitored, they were either lab rats that lived a very short life or at best simply tracked for conservation purposes on a reservation.
In fact after reading the research fully, it looks to me like they've unintentionally introduced SIV to Asian Macaca Cyclopis from an African species M. Mulatta (commonly known as a rhesus monkey) since SIV is not commonly present in Asia it's no real wonder why an Asian primate species would be considerably more affected as African species would be more or completely immune to AIDS while being SIV carriers.
If anything this paper proves that African primates coexisted with SIV for a long enough time to develop an immunity or high tolerance to the virus while species from other regions that did not have SIV strains did not.
And you can chuck this again to the fact that in 1983 no one knew that AIDS was caused by HIV, SIV, FIV and other similar viruses.
>"Also research animals die all the time in great numbers, if it's a research laboratory then they'll probably die or be put to death way before they'll develop AIDS"
Yes, yet (relatively) soon after human AIDs is discovered people start noticing an increase in macaque deaths in their labs. This was later attributed to a similar cause. I think that is an important aspect of the timeline to keep in mind, that is all on that point. The rest hinges on other evidence which we are discussing in parallel here.
In a species that was never exposed to SIV before, what is actually surprising here?
I really don't understand why you are even attempting to quite wrongly interpret the results of a study before HIV or SIV were even discovered that actually disproves your assertion.
This doesn't really fit with the narrative in the paper I linked. They give this reason: "It was the impression of workers at the New England Regional Primate Research Center that there had been an increase in the number of deaths in its macaque colony."