If Covid had hit in the 1980s

[wheretoyougonow]

I was a child/teenager in the 1980's an was thinking what challenges I would have faced as opposed to my children. So far I've come up with:

• Huge queues at the phone box to call your mates/boyfriend/girlfriend
• My dad reminding me how much it costs to make a call EVERY TIME I used the house phone
• No supermarket deliveries. I would have been dragged round the supermarket every week.
• No decent kids tv at the weekend bar Saturday morning.
• Waiting 6 million years (only slight exaggeration) for one computer game to load.
• No Amazon 😂😭😭😭😭

What have I missed?

I would still have made to eat eat Tesco’s own brand margerine.,. God it stank .massive tub about 20p.,,

Of course we would have had the hysteria do you not remember the hysteria around AIDS (fewer deaths)

And the NHS would not have coped so of course we would have had restrictions

Would have been a lot harder

I think MT wouldn’t have dithered about making decisions not sure they would have been in the best interest for the general public

@Ritasueandbobtoo9

I dunno but I bet the pop man would have been classed as an essential worker.

So true.... 😂

@OhWhyNot I am a bit too young to remember the ‘hysteria’ about AIDS but surely it shocked people because it was not understood, and because the victims were young and previously fit. Not in their eighties like most people dying with Covid.

Nothing ...you'd never have known about it..a few extra flu cases , tragic in the few younger ( under fifties ) victims and a lot of elderly in hospital and care homes but mostly put down to the "The Old Persons Friend" ( pneumonia), which was seen as a blessing . No lockdown , just perhaps an awareness of this was a bad year.

Seriously? With no lockdowns there would be far more people dying all around the world - and you think we wouldn't know about it?? 1980 wasn't the dark ages.

We didn’t have wall to wall news, or lots of channels vying for the best scary headline.

There was a flu pandemic in 1968 that directly killed 30,000 people in the UK. 15000 of them were under 65 (and lots of children died as well) - unlike Covid where the average age is over 80.

Without social media, especially Twitter, we would have just got on with it as we did back then and just thought we had a bad flu year.

Most people back then read one newspaper and watched one news programme per day.

Although many on MN know lots of people who have been very ill or died, there are still plenty of people around who know no one who has.

Although the death toll would quite probably be higher, last year would have been a 'bad flu' year and this one would be another 'bad flu' year.

And we have a full understanding of covid

We understand why there are young healthy people ending up in ICU with a virus many people are not even aware they have

We understand why we are seeing people with long term symptoms even though they were not particularly ill

We understand why so many are asymptomatic

We can predict how the new variants will impact us

There would have been some amazing ad campaigns to terrify the bejesus out of us (None of this namby pamby 'Hands Face Space' Bollocks)

Having fuck all else to do I might finally have completed a Rubiks Cube

As a family we would have eaten even more Vesta Curries (and we ate a LOT of Vesta Curries)

@IfTheSockFits

China was still pretty much a closed country at the beginning of the 80's and was only just starting to open up. We would probably have never even heard of Covid, let alone have it spread round the world at high speed.

Exactly. Probably would have spread from Hubei to surrounding provinces and not much further.

Everybody smoked so -all had wrecked lungs anyway ie no chance

[quote Flyonawalk]@OhWhyNot I am a bit too young to remember the ‘hysteria’ about AIDS but surely it shocked people because it was not understood, and because the victims were young and previously fit. Not in their eighties like most people dying with Covid.[/quote]
That not it at all. It was very strongly viewed as something only "the gays" got and it had been delibrately engineered in some way to kill only them, even with adverts advising otherwise (in fact it was why the adverts came into being). I knew someone in the early 90s who lost his boyfriend to AIDS; the treatment they went through was horrific - loss of housing and jobs. He was a teacher when I met him (private and in school) and he lost his school jobs because he was seen as too high risk. I was paying for private tuition and didn't have a problem with it, had my parents found out I'd have been forced to stop my lesson - a friend died (not from AIDS) suddenly and he was really supportive and overshared about his boyfriend - I'll be honest I hated the bloke personally but he was a damn good teacher, but he was utterly distraught after telling me. I think he thought I was going to tell everyone, I didn't. He died in 2000 due to complications from AIDS.

Certain tv programmes at the time made slight mention of it and not in a good way. It was really really horrible thing to see.

Attitudes only really began to change around the early 90s, perhaps a bit earlier, driven by the Eastenders storyline, Freddie mercury dying and film Philidelphia.

80s was pre disability discrimination laws so there would have been no sheilding for the vulnerable then, no putting the homeless in hotels.

Some pretty scary government information films - probably icebergs if it pre-dated AIDS. Or a resurrection of the “Charlie says...” cartoons.

Schools TV at that time ran overnight on BBC 2 (and Channel 4 when it started), with the expectation of videoing programmes to watch later. This would have been the basis of home learning and Woolworths would have sold out of blank tapes.

Blue Peter would show children how to make hand gel, face masks for every adult relation and board games to entertain younger siblings.

Oh God, I've thought about this. My family were really dysfunctional and I'd have found it a living hell cooped up with my mum in the 80s. It was bad enough without lockdown!

Ha ha yes the terrifying public information films!

My parents might have moved with the times and bought a VCR - instead of waiting till the 90s

Can you imagine an 80s pandemic mix tape? What would be on it?

@VienneseWhirligig only ones I can think of are don’t stand so close to mine and the wall

Sry me not mine

I preferred the 80s!

It wouldn’t have spread as much because we weren’t all jetting about in planes all the time!

2 parents 4 teenagers 11-17 living in a 3-bed semi, 1 bathroom. Open plan downstairs so no escape from anyone. It would have been hell. It was bad enough living there when we could go out!

I doubt it would have spread so much as people didn't travel so widely back then.

Football cancelled, cinemas, theatres, clubs shut, coal shortages due to mines closing, probably emergency powers legislation to enforce mask wearing. The vaccine would have taken longer but there would be no antivaxxers.

Margaret Thatcher would be delivering the press conferences.

Would ‘19’ be in the pandemic mixtape 😬 was it a future subliminal reference

Charles and Camilla snapped breaking lockdown to be together.
Diana hugging covid patients because they just need love .

No online delivery but where my Nan lived there was the Roots van that came round. It was a large van converted to a shop on wheels. You’d go in and it had tin on the shelves inside as well as fresh veg and, more importantly to us kids, sweets and chocolate. Probably more expensive than supermarkets but as kids we thought it was magical!

There was also a fishmonger that did rounds too.