Have we ever had a lockdown before covid?

[Owlyhedgehog]

Just that really....
Im 41 and have never heard of it before, just wondering if there ever was once before covid?

@EmilyBrontesGhost

No, I haven't caught it

How do you know with such certainty? Have you had blood tests?

My husband and children don't appear to have had it. Our take on it is that either they have had it asymptomatic or have not and have been lucky.

Estimates on how many cases are asymptomatic vary between 5% and 80% depending on the strain of covid.

Most recent estimates are that 15% people living in the UK have not had covid.

So you could fall into either category.

Ebola comparisons are tedious:

-Ebola is not airborne. It is spread by bodily fluids. It's only spreadable when symptoms are in evidence (and once you get sick you are very very sick so not going anywhere). It's actually pretty hard to catch unless you are physically caring for a person who has it
-It has a 50% case fatality rate on average, and up to 90% in some outbreaks. This is, obviously, very different to covid
-'African countries' (sigh) response is informed by WHO protocols and a WHO team are usually on the ground working on infection control, safe burial, etc. No one just goes freestyle in response. They also do a lot of work on readiness. There are now vaccinations for some variants. 'Ring vaccinations' are one strategy used where you vaccinate all contacts, rather than a physical quarantine (or as well as).

All these factors make it a hugely different disease from covid and you can't draw parallels between appropriate responses to the two.

@LlynTegid actaully it was a great source of resentment that in the Great Plague of 115 the king's court and many MPs and aristocrats left London for Oxford and carried on partying.

Again, I'm talking about the lockdowns we had in 2020-1.

It's my view that the term lockdown in that context inherently relates to the multi continental nature of that response and the global impact it has, neither of which are applicable to policy responses to ebola. African countries, like all other countries actually, were dealing with the impact of the response in other countries across the world as well as their own.

You are of course free to disagree with the way in which I use the term, but my view is consistent with my definition.

Also, if you or anyone else want to claim that other policy responses in other times are akin to the 2020-1 covid lockdowns, you should really be telling us which countries (not merely regions) and give details of how they shut down sectors of the economy and the duration. This information is necessary if you want to establish parallels.

In days gone by it would have been far harder to impose a general lockdown. How would you have done it? Send a town crier from town to town to announce it? See any issues there?

Travel is also far different to what it used to be. We can leap on a train/a plane and be anywhere in the world in hours now, meaning it can travel far further much quicker.

So I don't think you could say it hasn't happened in the past, there is no reason to do it. You have to respond to emergencies according to current situations not just how people did it in the past. That would be like insisting you exit during a fire alarm down the fire escape despite seeing flames at the bottom because that's how you got out last time.

But it has happened. Maybe not in the whole world style way it did with Covid, but, as I said, that's because travel is far different now.

Spanish flu had restrictions: Coronavirus: How they tried to curb Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 - BBC News
You also have to play into the Spanish Flu that it was at the end of a long and tiring war, so things were quite different in many ways.
There's an interesting article in the National geographic, unfortunately behind a paywall now showing the effects that timing of lockdowns had on different states in America.

And for the Black Death, did you ever read "Parcel of Patterns" about the village Eyam in Derbyshire who self imposed a lockdown on themselves, initially to try and keep the infection out, but then when they had it (brought in on the parcel of patterns), to stop it spreading. It's based on a true story. I'd be very surprised if they were the only ones.

And in this country, children who were ill with certain diseases (like measles) were quarantined-they were often taken away from their parents to be nursed in a special hospital, ordered, not their choice, and anyone who had been in contact with them had to quarantine too. Read "The Family from One End Street", the story where the little sister has the measles.
Even in the 80s I remember a local boarding school quarantining, and one local family whose child was taken seriously ill (and I have no idea what it was) having to quarantine in their own house (so they couldn't visit their child) with tape across the garden gate and a warning. Everything the child had touched had to be taken away to be burnt. I must ask dm if she knew what it was that the child was ill with (they did recover) because it had quite an impact on me at the time. This was in the 80s.

@PinkCherryBlossoms

The thread title is “have we ever had a lockdown before Covid” so of course it’s going to refer and relate to other lockdowns!

And to state that a global lockdown should only ever been considered in terms of the Covid 19 lockdown means that no one would learn anything for future pandemic planning. Our next pandemic could be anything!

The title indicates that there'll be discussion about whether responses to other diseases constituted lockdowns. That doesn't tell us anything about whether any individual poster has said anything about a particular disease or response.

I remember my mother talking about the swimming pools being closed one summer because of a polio outbreak.

I wouldn't have known I had covid the second time if work hadn't insisted we test before going into the office. I tested positive for 11 or 12 days in the end. So I don't think anyone can say they have never had covid, because they may have had it asymptomatically. I have never knowingly had flu, but you can get that asymptomatically, too, so I may well have had it without noticing, or thinking it was just a cold. I think I have a fairly good immune system - I had glandular fever pretty mildly compared with friends who had it at the same time as I did.

OP, until the MMR, quarantine was totally normal if there was a chance you'd come into contact for someone with measles, mumps or rubella. This usually lasted 2 weeks.

This is such nonsense.

When I was a child we had measles parties LOL (and chicken pox parties) to catch it and "get it over and done with".

AND learn the difference between quarantine and locking down the WHOLE of society.

Fascinating. I had no idea.

It's a great article. Poor Janet Parker, such a sad story. And it's possible she only came into contact with the virus because she was doing a kind favour for some friends.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/good-turn-medical-colleagues-cost-14511601

It is a normal and effective way of dealing with an epidemic or pandemic, and has happened multiple times in our past - flu, plague, polio, sweating sickness, etc. The last major pandemic that affected UK was 100 years before covid, the flu pandemic.

They had "lockdowns" quarantine in the previous pandemic after the First World War https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9393329/Spanish-flu-lockdown-1918-Schools-closed-buses-trains-cancelled-PM-struck-down.html. sorry the national geographical is behind a pay wall so resorted to this rag

Lockdowns and quarantines are not the same thing.

My parents spoke about lockdowns they experienced in the 70s in London U.K. they seemed to think something like this happened every 20 years or so and it didn’t happen in the 90s, which is why the government were so unprepared for covid: it just wasn’t seen as something that happened anymore.

I’ve experience lockdown not in a medical sense. The farm by me had foot and mouth disease (like to say about 20 years ago) we weren’t allowed out of a perimeter for about 4 weeks! , the army had massive sanitising trucks to wash us down, they had to bring us food etc my school thought I was lying at the time until it was on the local news.

That's true - I was terrified in the 1981 f&m that we'd get it and i wouldn't ever be allowed to see my friends again or go to school. I didn't mind having to dip my shoes in fisinfdctznt every time we went in or out, though.

In the 2001 outbreak, we were arranging my Dad's funeral, and some people wouldn't come because if coming from one dairy farm to another, and we were hearing how close it was to the sheep farm in a hill area he'd grown up in.

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/blogs/2020/with-covid-19--we-must-learn-from-the-fight-against-ebola

In Eyam, Derbyshire during the plague. Self imposed and very effective

We didn't have lockdowns in the 70s in London or anywhere else. We had power cuts and the power going off during the miners strikes, is that what they mean?

There were isolations and school closures for polio in NZ back in the 20s, and DM remembers quarantines from the 50's
Interesting resource here in a thesis detailing responses and attitudes.

core.ac.uk/download/pdf/35467802.pdf