New AIDS Awareness Sparked by Johnson : Health: One specialist on the disease says ex-Laker’s announcement ‘probably saved thousands of lives.’

Magic Johnson’s infection with the AIDS virus continued to dominate casual chatter and policy-makers’ pronouncements around the nation Friday, creating the kind of widespread public acknowledgement of the disease that health experts have struggled--without success--to kindle.

Centers for AIDS testing and information reported they were flooded with calls after Johnson’s astonishing but frank announcement on Thursday. In Portland, Ore., Fred Allemann, an HIV outreach specialist with the Cascade AIDS Project, said Johnson “probably saved thousands of lives just in that one act.”

In Rome, President Bush called Johnson a “hero” who “has handled his problem in a wonderful way.”

At Los Angeles City Hall, the steps where Johnson celebrated so many NBA titles at spirited rallies were renamed in his honor. Newspapers from Madrid to Tokyo hailed Johnson for revealing his infection. “His words have made tears fall around the world,” Portuguese television said. “He is a genuine idol,” said the German news agency SID.

Child psychiatrists warned that Johnson’s millions of young fans, lacking the adult capacity to distance themselves, should be given a wide berth to grieve. “Parents shouldn’t . . . say, ‘Don’t be upset, you don’t really know him,’ ” said Dr. Anthony Rostain, a psychiatrist at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center.

What was being felt, Texas newspaper columnist Jim Reeves wrote Friday, were the walls of AIDS closing in around society.

“AIDS came home to our neighborhood,” he wrote. “Mine and yours. It pulled up a chair, sat down in our midst and began shaking hands, as if it belonged there, as if it wasn’t wearing the dark hood and death mask of the grim reaper. As if--and this is the scary part--it was an old friend, come to pay its respects.”

A day after Johnson’s announcement Thursday at the Forum in Inglewood, where he played 12 seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers, the question of how Johnson became infected seemed to be high in the public’s mind.

The Lakers’ team physician, Dr. Michael Mellman, said in a statement Friday that he believes Johnson “contracted the HIV virus from heterosexual contact. . . . Since he is neither homosexual nor an (intravenous) drug user and has not received a (blood) transfusion in the past, there is no data to suggest any other avenue of attaining the virus.”

The health status of Johnson’s wife, Cookie, seven weeks’ pregnant, was uncertain Friday. Laker spokesmen said Johnson’s wife had tested negative for the virus. But AIDS specialists noted Friday that the virus can elude notice by AIDS testing for up to six months after infection.

“She’s not out of the woods,” said Dr. Mark Smith, a longstanding AIDS clinician. “Most people will say if she’s negative at six months, the chances are extremely slim that she’ll ever be positive. But certainly seven weeks is not long enough to be at all certain.”

About one-third of all babies born to infected mothers end up infected themselves.

Longtime AIDS specialists, and veterans of the political wars over AIDS policy, were invigorated by the public response to Johnson’s announcement--though somewhat dismayed that many of the questions pouring in to hot lines seemed remarkably unsophisticated.

“We had thought that we had been giving out this information for years,” said Dr. Reed Tuckson, a former health commissioner for the District of Columbia who is now president of Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.

The challenge now facing advocacy and support groups, Tuckson said, is to capitalize on the emotion and energy unleashed--”to nurture it and sustain it and direct it for the long haul” into legislative action, increased funding and a coordinated volunteer effort.

Dr. Mervyn Silverman, president of American Foundation for AIDS Research, said he hoped the public interest “would somehow jump-start” the Bush Administration, particularly in the areas of AIDS education and prevention.

“But the greatest impact is going to be the impact on the young, to re-evaluate their sense of invincibility,” he said. “The youth of America is the most vulnerable, and they’re the hardest to reach. This courageous move by Magic may very well have the effect of doing what we couldn’t do in any other way.”

Gov. Pete Wilson made the same point in a speech to a manufacturers association in Los Angeles, urging broadcast stations to offer Johnson public-service time.

“I think frankly that a few words from him would mean more than an educational campaign from a number of other people,” Wilson said. “A lot of kids . . . seem to think that they and Magic are . . . somehow beyond the reach of this virus.”

Tuckson said the apparent candor and unflappable grace of Johnson’s disclosure may go a long way to dispel the shame, stigma and discrimination long associated with AIDS, and may also serve to make the nation less sanguine about the virus believed to infect more than 1 million Americans.

“There’s no question that for a brief period there will be a more heightened concern by individuals about their own status,” said Dr. Mark Smith, an AIDS clinician. “How much we can effect behavior change over the long run remains to be seen.”

Smith, a vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, suggested Johnson was the first black public figure to stake an affirmative claim to the AIDS issue, in the way that many within the gay community have long defined the cause as theirs.

“My sense is that the black community really has yet to do that in the same way,” said Smith, who is black. “There are individuals who have come forward. But I am not sure that black people have ‘owned’ this epidemic in the way that may now be possible.”

Smith said the impact of Johnson’s announcement will be far greater than the news of Rock Hudson’s diagnosis. Many young Americans “don’t know from Rock Hudson,” Smith said, and the country is likely to eventually witness the slow deterioration of Johnson’s health.

“People didn’t have a chance to grieve with Rock Hudson and understand the process of his getting sick,” Smith said. “People are going to see Magic Johnson as he struggles with his illness. Odds are . . . that will be, in some ways, a much more painful process for people.”

In San Francisco on Friday, Gerald Lenoir, executive director of the San Francisco Black Coalition on AIDS, said his education and referral organization had already begun getting more calls from people wanting information on testing and treatment.

“Magic has saved thousands of lives and maybe even millions of lives,” he said.

Drew University’s Tuckson said he hopes for a “transference of the love and concern and compassion (for Johnson) to the thousands of faceless others who are struggling each day to live with this disease and who are, this day, dying . . . who don’t have the support systems to turn their bedsheets for them, to give them a sip of ginger ale at three in the morning.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs, who made the proposal naming the area surrounding the 1st Street steps of City Hall the “Magic Johnson Plaza of Champions,” said Johnson’s honesty and his courage are going to be the shot heard around the world in the battle against AIDS.

“He has made it abundantly clear that AIDS affects all of us in every walk of life--nobody is immune, nobody is to blame, it’s everybody’s problem,” Wachs said.

Vice President Dan Quayle, speaking to reporters in Los Angeles on Friday, repeated his theme of sexual abstinence as vital in fighting sexually transmitted diseases.

“If there is something that I can personally do to encourage young people, I would say not ‘safe sex,’ I would talk about abstinence. That’s a sure cure and we ought to be talking about that.”

Times staff writers Louis Sahagun, Cathleen Decker and Bill Stall contributed to this story.