THE SEARCH FOR THE VIRUS : The Scientific Discovery of AIDS and the Quest for a Cure <i> by Steve Connor and Sharon Kingman (Penguin: $8.95, illustrated) </i> : SOMEONE WAS HERE Profiles in the AIDS Epidemic <i> by George Whitmore (Plume: $8.95) </i>

Two reports on the pandemic, one scientific and angry, the other personal and elegiac.

Connor and Kingman, writers for the British journal, New Scientist, summarize current knowledge about HIV. Their concise explanations reveal how its long incubation period and frequent mutations increase the difficulty of finding a cure. The writers argue that massive public education programs constitute the only effective means of combatting the disease at this time.

Their impersonal tone gives way to anger as they describe how the disease was allowed to spread while the U.S. government “prevaricated and procrastinated.” Citing estimates that more than 365,000 cases of AIDS will have been diagnosed in America by 1992, with 263,000 deaths, Connor and Kingman conclude that “the Reagan Administration, which sat through seven years of the American epidemic, must share much of the responsibility for delaying the prevention of this human disaster.” (In fact, the number could reach 480,000 by the end of 1991, according to a study released last week by the U.S. General Accounting Office.)

In contrast, novelist George Whitmore focuses on the human stories behind these grim statistics. He profiles not only the men, women and children who have been stricken with AIDS, but their families, doctors, lovers and care-givers.

His stories cover a wide spectrum of responses to the crisis: The anger of a Latino mother at an indifferent welfare worker who denies her critically ill son benefits; the lonely sorrow of a man who visits an abandoned, AIDS-stricken infant; the patience of a volunteer crisis worker teaching a devastated workaholic to acknowledge his condition; the quiet courage of a nurse who brings her patients the human warmth they need more desperately than medication.

Connor and Kingman decry the often willful ignorance that led to the deaths of so many people; Whitmore lights a candle to mark their passing.