To wonder what lockdown would have looked like 15 years ago?

[hopsalong]

Just that really. I find myself wondering more and more what would have happened if Covid had hit when I was in my early 20s. How would we have responded? Without fast internet and webcams, how long would lockdown have been able to carry on?

I'm assuming a world technologically sophisticated enough to identify Covid-19 and test for it, a world with internet and laptops, but one where very few people had webcams or home connections were slow. Could you have WFH?

In my little world, I can't work out what would have happened. My Oxbridge college has already lost about £2m from the crisis. If the students were successful in claiming back their tuition fees for this year we'd be in a very precarious position indeed and liquidating the endowment. I assume in general that the government would have had to bail out the HE sector. But what about schools? What if children (at least most) couldn't reasonably be expected to stay in touch with the school without being there? What if internet shopping was much less sophisticated?

I wasn't yet in the workplace 15 years ago so curious to hear from people who were...

I think I did online shopping 15 years ago but there were probably not so many slots. We had WIFI but as far as I can remember, had a laptop and desktop to share between all of us. I didnt have internet on my phone until around 2012. I'm guessing there would have been a lot more texting between friends and family

I did work from home regularly 15 or more years ago. I had a work laptop and mobile.

During Swine Flu we got on with it. So probably that.

I wouldn’t have been able to work from home, it was definitely office based. We still sent faxes more than email. All letters etc were typed from written notes. Orders made from physical catalogues and mostly over the phone rather than online. No webcams in the office let alone at home. Our office was only just starting to use a scanner, everything was physical copies no documents accessible online as even the scanned in stuff was stored on a hardrive not online. We still used landlines more than mobiles due to cost.

We had 2 PCs for work, webcams, printers etc. I don't remember broadband or Internet being particularly slow. Webcams were probably quite rubbish and a bit hit and miss. I remember streaming footage of dc1 after they were born, that was 15yrs ago. Fairly sure we were doing quite a bit of Internet shopping too. 15 yrs ago probably would have just about manageable for a lot of medium income people to work from home, although nothing like today. We have always been pretty tech though. Trying to remember if DH's work was set up for him to do that. I think it was, although not encouraged. Mine wasn't and I wouldn't have been able to anyway.

@PicsInRed

During Swine Flu we got on with it. So probably that.

I'm no conspiracist but am inclined to think so too. There would be no alternative. But presumably a bigger death toll.

I think we did online shopping around then as well as toddler dc slammed the door on me and locked me out of the house, looking wide eyed in horror at the delivery man.

If this had been 15yeara ago I probably would never have met my husband. We met in a nightclub in late2005.

I was a university student then. Facebook was in its infancy. Not sure there was SKype (I've been using Skype since 2010 i think?) I needed access to the university Supercomputer for my coursework.

I think about this every time I see mawkish posts on Facebook about longing for the days before iPhones when people used to actually talk to each other instead of staring at a screen. Let’s leave aside that a) these people use a phone to make these posts and b) it’s all a complete lie - no one spent days enthralled in conversation 20 years ago either. Where the hell would we be now without this kind of technology?

I worked from home quite a bit in my first job, over 15 years back. It was certainly doable, if not common. However, I didn’t have broadband and was only really using Word and Excel. If I’d had to use programmes that needed a continuous, stable connection it would probably have been very different - and if I hadn’t lived alone, two of us working from home would have required two phone lines.

Obviously I’d rather there had never been a pandemic, but if it had to happen, I’m bloody glad it happened in 2020 and not 2005 (and certainly not 1990!)

It's a scary thought. I imagine the death toll would just be massively higher, more people dying at home and never even getting the chance to go to hospital.

Oh god I was still living with my Dad and his partner 15 years ago, I'd DEFINITELY have offered to go into the office every day to cover for the parents, old and vulnerable.

I assume Dad would have been working back then as he and his partner worked for a delivery company and parcels still need shifting but they worked nights so my Dad's would have been technically home alone but where I had to be quiet. My sis was with her ex so we couldn't have even bubbled.

I had a basic phone and we had standard internet and one computer between us, not really set up for 8 hours of home working.

If I could pick a year, I'd pick 2011 or 2012

I wasn’t quite in the workforce 15yrs ago, I was in my postgrad year at uni. I don’t think we could have managed from home. Student house, dial up internet on a basic plan... and I don’t believe online shopping had really began then (in NZ, I’m willing to be corrected on that - I was a student so had no money to spend anyway ).
When I started work I couldn’t have easily wfh for similar reasons. Dial up internet, the organization I worked for wasn’t set up for us to access files etc remotely (wfh just wasn’t done) and as I was at that time a town planner it would’ve been very difficult for site visits, planning committees, hearings etc as the technology just wasn’t there or if it was there it wasn’t widely available. I didn’t have a webcam.. and only the “rich” kids at uni did, it was very unusual in my circle. I’m not sure what would’ve happened as planning and building consents would still have been needed to be assessed, issued and all the associated checks and enforcements. Perhaps we’d have been working in the office in shifts, one day pwk in office, taking files home with us.. and calling the colleague who was on site to email us the info we needed when we were wfh...

One things for sure I would have gone mad, my living situation wasn’t ideal at that time. And I was just sad about my life (which is awful as I was 22/23 and should’ve been living it up!)

I also think it would have been a case with getting on with it. It was around 2008-2012 when the teens in the area I lived in, in Liverpool started to get PCs and Laptops. We had BBM on blackberry's, but a lot of people still had Nokias.

There was no contactless payments and people would have resisted change a lot more. Children still played out in the streets and that wouldn't have been easily stopped. I think Liverpool certainly would have seen riots as opposed to protests. We've become slightly more civilised.

Home schooling would probably have been workbooks. Maybe even more reliance on the BBC for 'lessons'.

Also I've relied on Iceland deliveries. You had to go into the shop and then request home delivery at the till. Many people only had post office basic accounts which you couldn't pay online with.

@PicsInRed

During Swine Flu we got on with it. So probably that.

It was hardly the same thing though, was it.

I was an A-level Media Studies teacher. I had a well-developed VLE and blog with lots of resources on it. Each of my students had a printed workbook to accompany each module. Key texts that we had to study were readily available (DVDs of films such as Die Another Day or Phone Booth). Other topics were news, soap operas and advertising.

I wouldn't have been able to deliver synchronous lessons, but I could have uploaded videos to YouTube and the workbooks made requirements quite clear.

The job I started in 2009 was as a learning technologist at a uni. I worked from home one day a week in that role.

I don't think it would be much different 15 years ago. Everyone in my work place had laptops and shopped online. Video mobile phones came out in 2003.

I had a laptop and a high speed internet connection, um, 20+ years ago and lots of people could work at home but with most people didn't yet in the UK. I think the news and social media has changed things a lot. We did have social media 15 years ago but information wasn't available in every phone and news was less manipulative I think. I don't think we would nessecarily know as much or worry as much about it. It's much harder for the government to keep secrets now.

I worked from home on a VPN in 2005 because I was doing some contracting on a finance/IT project while on maternity leave. All paperwork came in in hard copy but was then scanned and stored. WFH was achievable, but the broadband infrastructure wouldn’t have allowed everyone to do it.

Thank god for technology now.

If this had happened before the 90's we'd be relying on letters/newspapers and phone calls.
Imagine if we had no TV to occupy us too. I couldn't cope with that!

We are so lucky that we do have communication in many more forms now.

Internet grocery shopping definitely existed 15 years ago in the UK. I had a newborn and was relying on Sainsbury's and Tesco to deliver big shops. I also remember testing Citrix at work years before that, so with a good enough internet connection remote working would have been doable, with Skype for conference calls. I lived and worked in London though, I suspect things were different elsewhere.

I had my first online shop delivered with Sainsburys in around 2003/4 and we used to do it weekly then. It was so much more difficult than now, lots of items didn’t have a picture from what I remember so we often got a super sized or super small version of what we wanted! Slots would have been much more scarce.
We used online banking by then so that would have been ok. We had broadband in our flat and I had a laptop for work around the same time. By 2006 I had a work blackberry so I suppose I could have done some work but not for very long. My job then was IT Support which would have been mostly impossible remotely. We still had to get the Tube to our other locations armed with driver discs for installing printers and other hardware!
Home schooling would have definitely been work books.
Netflix would have been a lot more hassle, they still posted DVDs out then

Interesting replies, thank you! Surprised that anyone thinks they had a good internet connection 15 years ago, though! I suppose it might have seemed quick at the time, but no way mine could have handled multiple people in the same house looking things up or any real quality of video call (I did use Skype but it was very rudimentary). The average speed of hone internet in the UK increased about 10x over the period.

For those saying we have just got in with it, what do you think would actually have happened? Massive first wave, NHS overwhelmed, huge no of deaths including for other reasons, and then over last summer?? I suppose people would have shielded (where they could) and the distinction might have been more between retired and working age. I don't think HE would have been possible then during any kind of extended lockdown. It feels like a con now taking the student fee while offering almost nothing of the normal university experience, but without video calls, Google Books, ability to make video lectures easily etc, it couldn't have worked.

I'm no conspiracist but am inclined to think so too. There would be no alternative. But presumably a bigger death toll.

Definitely a much larger upfront death toll. Arguably, and of course we can't know this yet, less deaths and overall morbidity (including permanent mental health damage) in the long run.