In Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic, Richard A. McKay takes up the story of Gaetan Dugas—a French Canadian flight attendant widely but falsely believed to have started North America’s AIDS epidemic. By investigating journalist Randy Shilts’s depiction of Dugas as “Patient Zero” in Shilts’s book And the Band Played On (1987), McKay is able to discuss how the “Patient Zero” narrative emerged, how it misrepresented Dugas and other gay men’s early response to the epidemic, and how it continues to damage our response to epidemics.Historically, blame for epidemics falls on religious, cultural, racial, or sexual minorities. Their vulnerable status makes such blame possible, but the germ theory gave it a scientific veneer while conflating individual actions with group (ir)responsibility. In And the Band Played On, Shilts tried to reverse this blame culture, holding homophobia and the Reagan administration responsible for the epidemic’s spread. Shilts also criticized some gay individuals’ and groups’ responses to the epidemic, however, and the “Patient Zero” narrative was among these. However, McKay argues, Shilts’s non-nuanced characterization of Dugas aligned with historical victim-blaming approaches, reinforcing views of gay “deviance” and malicious intent. This provided an incautious media with an oversimplified narrative, further stoking AIDS fears and inciting discrimination.