From literature and films, what did you expect and what did you not expect about a pandemic?

[KindergartenKop]

I'm quite a fan of apocalyptic books. There are a few things about the current pandemic which appear as tropes in this genre. For example, there are still buses with posters on advertising films released in March!

On the other hand, the books and films never warned me about the government floundering though this situation. In the books it all happens much more quickly and the government are usually all gone by week 3 (I get that in reality that would be a very bad thing though!)

What did you expect?

Was expecting it to all be a bit more dramatic. More hazmat-suited soldiers in the streets, less day 214 of sitting at home staring at work emails.

Was not expecting so many people to be quite so weirdly gleeful about the doom-mongering. Maybe they too are disappointed by how mundane it is and want to jazz it up a bit?

Was also not expecting the mad slide into conspiracy theories but maybe should have seen that one coming.

After a traumatising experience reading Z for Zachariah in GCSE English I steer clear of post-apocalyptic fiction. But I prepared for lockdown by acquiring large amounts of coffee (Gone With the Wind), garlic (In Pursuit of Love - sadly unlikely to have access to a Spanish lover with a slingshot and a way with European cuisine) and tomato soup (Little House series, specifically the book when they all get typhoid and Mary goes blind. I back myself to heat up a tin of soup under the most trying of circumstances.) All turned out to be good decisions.

I imagined more siphoning of fuel and maybe the opportunity to drive on the wrong side of a motorway. A little more starvation too if I am honest. Instead the car insurance is offering us refunds and the weight has piled on due to less incidental movement and more netflix.

My post should have said that Contagion is like how this pandemic got started. What I actually typed made no sense.

There should be a desperate hunt on to find the original bat, as that's the only way to cure everyone.

I think someone should have done this anyway, just to fill in the time.

Who should have been sent to find the bat? I vote for Penelope Cruz and Jason Statham seeing as Spain and the UK were badly affected.

I didn’t expect the pandemic to blow conspiracy theories out of the water as completely as it did. Governments in many countries, but particularly the U.K and U.S were exposed as hopelessly dysfunctional, incompetent and out of their depth, not as sinister, all-powerful forces controling events, the media and the population.

Who should have been sent to find the bat?

Ozzy Osbourne

We were already on household self-isolation when the March lockdown started. The first time DS and I went out, he said he had been expecting more abandoned cars.

I was expecting more looting of shops, and maybe some of those FEMA-style markings painted on doors (the red X with codes written in the four quadrants).

[quote KindergartenKop]@frumpety I actually lolled. Yes. I'd prefer a pus filled pandemic. Read 'Domesday Book' by Connie somebody. It's about a girl who time travels back to the Black Death (accidentally) and there's a great buboe squeezing scene.[/quote]
Connie Willis.

I didn’t think that lots of people would be asymptomatic and most would have mild symptoms. I didn’t think that hand gel would have such a prominent role.

@DirtyBlonde that genuinely made me lol.

I didn’t expect so much cake 😳

Still waiting for ramraiding of supermarkets.

Definitely would have expected more deaths - a mortality rate of over 50%, rather than the somewhat puny 0.5% (or whatever the current best estimate is). More rioting and panic.

Fewer jigsaw puzzles and bike rides.

Pustules. I expected more pustules. I had the Germolene all ready

Less campaigns and legal action against the government. They should have fallen by now!

Agree with PPs about the unexpected boredom.
Turns out that living in Interesting Times... not so interesting.
Can still see why it's a curse though.

I'm not a great disaster movies watcher so got most of my survival tips from "Forever Amber" when Amber and Bruce survived the plague during Charles II's reign.

So I'm not going to hire any dodgy plague nurses and if DH starts sporting buboes I'll apply hot poultices until they burst. Which will obviously mean he's cured.
Then he'll do the same for me.

I just need to work out how to stop him then buggering off with some delicate flower (who's not been around the block several times like I have, but would also have not known which end of a poultice to stick in her ear), and then we'll be fine and dandy.

You know we are still in the first quarter of the film - now that is a properly scary thought!

Definitely thought there'd be more army involvement, and more barricades. Riding in the back of an army truck with a ragtag bunch of survivors, including one cute child and one obviously dodgy bloke who will eventually get his comeuppance. Some kind of epic journey across the country to reach the only remaining safe haven up a mountain/on an island/in a secret government bunker.

I did have one moment early on when I'd been to the supermarket in the evening, and walking home it felt a bit like the beginning of 28 Days Later. Not another soul or moving car on the streets, silent. Like everyone else had just vanished while I was in Sainsbury's. Really horrible/fascinating. Luckily no rage zombies waiting for me at home, though.

Well having watched contagion before it started, I expected people trying to steal my brexit stockpile! Definitely more riots.

My friend commented to me 'Who knew the apocolypse would take so long '

that about sums it up.

I’m disappointed with the actual virus.
A cough that you might not even get symptoms with. People who sadly die do so in hospitals.

I was expecting more dropping down dead in the supermarket bleeding through your eyes or something.

Did expect: people separated from loved ones, curfews, masks & PPE everywhere.

Did not expect: people scrapping it out Hunger Games style over the last toilet roll....

[quote KindergartenKop]@frumpety I actually lolled. Yes. I'd prefer a pus filled pandemic. Read 'Domesday Book' by Connie somebody. It's about a girl who time travels back to the Black Death (accidentally) and there's a great buboe squeezing scene.[/quote]
I swear I had never thought of The Domesday Book as being for sporners. My eyes are opened.

I read Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven a while ago and didn’t think much of it, but my local airport having essentially shut down, with thirty planes parked on the tarmac, has made me recall that chilling mini-chapter listing all the ‘last times’ — the last time someone loaded an Internet site, the last time someone took a scheduled flight, the last news broadcast, the last time someone flicked a switch and the lights came on etc.

DH has to fly regularly for work under a government exemption, and he and his colleagues are flying charter in Ryanair planes no longer used for scheduled flights, into and out of regional airports that often only have a flight or two each day. He says it’s quite eerie.

Love this thread.
Even when we had food shortages I was disappointed (but in reality relieved) at how mundane they were. No fresh chicken but plenty of frozen chicken (but you had to go in again, in disguise, to get enough to feed the family).
Having lived through Food Shortage: Pandemic, in looking forward to the sequel, Food Shortage: No Deal Brexit in January.