Greatest threat in a generation

[MilkTrayLimeBarrel]

What was the last one then? Must have been in the 80s/early 90s but what was it?

HIV

Was there not a big flu pandemic in the 50's?

Spanish flu

Swine Flu 10/12 years ago killed 500,000, don’t think there was this level of hysteria.

There definitely wasn't this level of hysteria over Swine flu. And it really seemed to attack the young rather than the usual older people.
There was a theory that older people had an immunity from a previous flu.

Google swine flu on MN for the year 2009. Plenty of worried talk, its own topic etc.

But the press didn't cover swine flu to this extent nor did they close schools etc

Life went on as normal.

They didn’t close schools because the peak was at the start of the summer holidays and they didn’t need to. There was talk of it though. Of course as it was in the summer, there weren’t the concerns about the NHS already being massively overloaded with flu cases. The ‘delay’ phase is all about trying to push coronavirus to where swine flu happened naturally.

It hit pregnant women very hard, and as I was pregnant at the time I was very worried. I started maternity leave early because of it.

There was massive panic in the 1980’s about HIV.

Remember it well.

HIV was a major global concern ofc and still is a major concern in large parts of the world although not in the global north any more. It has absolutely decimated several African countries.

Prior to hiv the big threat was nuclear armageddon. That one lasted a long time, through my parents' lives and everything.

There was panic about swine flu, I remember it well. But it arrived in early summer and as said above the school hols helped. And the warm weather. I caught it in the second spike in autumn and had to self isolate and take tamiflu. The quick availability of tamiflu eased the panic too. There’s no cure or treatment for this Coronavirus

I was in Egypt in 2009 when swine flu hit. My school closed.

Nukes AKA Mutually assured nuclear destruction was the threat I grew up with. Cheery stuff.

I read post-apocalyptic fiction as a pre-teen like Children of the Dust (Ruth Lawrence IIIRC?)

If you're talking illnesses then Mad Cow Disease was a bit of a worry too.

The Tories got it wrong with their initial reaction to Mad Cow Disease too. Their first instinct was to tell us all not to worry.

Do you remember John Gummer using his young daughter for a OR shot - posing together eating beef burgers to try to reassure us all that the beef was safe. Turns out, it wasn't.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/dec/30/john-gummer-to-stand-down

A PR shot, I mean!

SARS 2002/3?