To ask why The Asian Flu pandemic in 1968/69 didn't cause the world to shut down?

[Whatsthis1515]

I have been reading about the Asian Flu pandemic in 1968-69, which was also a novel virus, and was surprised to see that there wasn't a lock down etc. Over a million people died of it globally.

I can't help but wonder if the reason the world is in lockdown with covid 19 is because of the media/social media and the internet. It causes mass panic.

I am wondering what everyone else's thoughts are?

I am not a conspiracy theorist btw, but I am wondering why it's so different this time. Being a human being is risky, and I struggle to understand why we have reacted so differently this time and am genuinely interested in if it because of how freely we can access media to panic us and the governments world wide have had to react to that?

I think there was also a strain of flu in 2004 where 17,000 in the UK died. I wasn't even aware of it at the time, yet that's a huge number of people.

The longer our average life span the more risk averse we become.
Dying is a politicised act these days, governments arent going to get re- elected unless they are seen to be trying to prevent it happening.

It’s not the media scaring countries into locking down, it’s the WHO advising countries to do whatever they can to control the spread. As for the past, in response to death, people used to have an awful lot more children and there used to be a much higher proportion of orphans, including in the 1960s, so no point obsessively comparing a past we don’t want to go back to, to the present. And as for all the comparisons with other countries - there are far too many variables for those arguments to be anything other than cheap point scoring attempts. In all honesty, I doubt Sweden had nearly as many foreign travellers in and out of all parts of it as the UK did over the time infections were being spread around the world, it has a different demographic, no doubt different commuting patterns and lifestyles, etc,etc. It also has a much higher death rate than the rest of Scandinavia, with which it is probably more comparable.

People didn't accept death because they "didn't care" - they accepted it because they realised it was a part of life as it was then.

That wasn't the case 50 years ago at all. It wasn't the dark ages.

My mother remembers a time when they isolated from the family on the next farm because the family was infected with diphtheria. All seven children died, and then everyone got on with it. Not because they were heartless, but because death was accepted, and life was expected to be short.

Rubbish. Losing seven children in one go was never "accepted" as a normal part of life 50 or even 100 years ago. One of my grandparents lost 3 siblings in one battle in the first world war and it is still talked about in the family. It was a huge deal. Your mother wasn't a member of the family that lost seven children so can't possibly know that they just accepted it and got on with it. People didn't talk about things as much but that doesn't mean it didn't effect them as much.

The posters who remind us that science has moved on have a good point.

Fewer people are dying of Covid because they are being ventilated, receiving one to one IC 24 hours a day.

This would just not have been a reality during previous pandemics. A serious novel respiratory virus like C19 would have killed countless thousands in this country in the fifties and sixties, undoubtedly. Especially given the air quality and higher smoking rates back then.

100% because of social media. It's spreads fear. If we hadn't of been told about covid at all, or it was just a few newspaper articles, most people would be unaware and carrying on as normal. Even now, a lot of people don't know anyone who has had or has the virus.

My mum said it did cause school closures

100% because of social media. It's spreads fear. If we hadn't of been told about covid at all, or it was just a few newspaper articles, most people would be unaware and carrying on as normal. Even now, a lot of people don't know anyone who has had or has the virus.

In the days before "social media" we had things called newspapers you know. Anyway, people wouldn't be carrying on as normal because we would still have had a lockdown. If we didn't have a lockdown then you would know plenty of people who had had the virus and probably many who had died. Either way, you would know.

Is COVID not more infectious? Is that not basically the reason we have all this, because it spreads exponentially and flu doesn’t?

If this was a flu type virus with the spread of normal flu the government wouldn’t give a shit, the current response is purely based on numbers.

people used to have an awful lot more children and there used to be a much higher proportion of orphans, including in the 1960s

Why do people come out with this kind of bollocks? The average family size in the UK hovered at around 1.9 children throughout the 60s. The way some of you are going on anyone would think Victoria was still on the throne 50 years ago.

*People didn't accept death because they "didn't care" - they accepted it because they realised it was a part of life as it was then.

That wasn't the case 50 years ago at all. It wasn't the dark ages.*

Exactly this. Jesus!

We were actually around 50 years ago? People were just as upset as they are now the young person died. It wasn't "accepted" at all.

Exactly this. To be honest I don't remember heaps of young people dying when I was a child in the 60s anyway, I can only think of one (cancer) and yes, we were just as upset as someone would be now, and it wasn't "accepted".

@Alsohuman and @SudokuBook - well said. Honestly, some people on this thread are bonkers. People had no more children in the 60s than they do now, and I didn't know any orphans - some of us were actually there, it's not ancient history!

It had a much lower infection and death rate so less of a problem

I think that some people need to accept the fact that the difference between the 1968 flu and COVID-19 is that the latter is more infectious and more deadly. The other difference is that due to much more travel it has spread around the world much more quickly. It has nothing to do with the fact that people have become wimps about dying or about their loved ones dying.

Some people seem to be confusing 1968 with 1868.

We are still learning about this virus, recently I have read/heard a number of articles detailing blood clotting related problems. These have been seen in a number of countries. It has been suggested that these are contributing to post 'recovery' problems.

It isnt just another flu.

People didn't talk about things as much but that doesn't mean it didn't effect them as much.

THAT is what we are saying!

People cared - of course they cared - but there wasn't the expectation that nothing would ever happen.

Some people seem to be confusing 1968 with 1868.

This as well!

With technology and the Internet substantial numbers of people can work from home, that also wasn't possible 50 years ago.

I think that technological advances in medicine have created the impression that life should be preserved at all costs. We frequently have patients in their late 70s and 80s in ICU who would not have been there 30-40 years ago. Because we have the ability to provide more sophisticated invasive treatment on a large scale, medics feel morally obliged to offer it. Also families are relatively more clued up about treatments due to the pervasive influence of mass media so have unrealistic expectations about what can be done.
There was a thread a while ago about what age people considered to be old. Some felt that it wasn’t until you were in your 80s which says something about peoples expectations.

What you consider old depends on your extended family, I think. It’s entirely normal in my mum’s family to live to be over 90. Her grandfather was 95, so was her mother and five out of seven of her generation lived to their late 90s. My dad was 99. So, for me, old age definitely doesn’t arrive until late 80s.

My husband’s family are the other end of the spectrum his parents died at 69 and 72. If he lives to be as old as his grandfather at 84, he thinks he’ll have done really well.

I think that technological advances in medicine have created the impression that life should be preserved at all costs.

Rubbish. The cost of any medical treatment is carefully considered before deciding whether it should be used nowadays. In the past, this was much less the case. If there was a treatment they generally used it regardless of cost.

For those arguing that the UK was hardly any different in 1968 to now, I have the following statistics:
Average life expectancy in 1968 was 71.7 and in 2018 it was 81

Child mortality in 1968 in children aged 0-5 was 21.8 per thousand and in 2018 it was 4.26 per thousand

The average number of babies born per woman in 1968 was 2.54 and in 2018 was 1.87

That seems like quite a different world to me.

Another parallel is the Smog of 1952-3 which killed 12,000 in London and thousands more in industrial cities. Govt. did little except shrug its shoulders and public opinion seemed to accept there was nothing you could do except die.