How we will be judged by future generations

[Pixxie7]

History is full of how people coped in a crisis. With the current climate of panic buying etc. How will we be judged?

I think people will look back on the UK’s reaction to this will utter disbelief.

“A virus which has a two week incubation period, and yet people were advised to stay indoors for one week after they start to present symptoms! Most of them had of course already spread the virus around in the two weeks before their symptoms appeared.”

“Only testing the worst cases! So people went out thinking that they were fine when they were actually still contagious!”

“Can you believe that the official advice was that if you don’t show symptoms then you can carry on as normal? The odd thing is, everyone knew at the time that the virus is different for different people - some people will have mild symptoms and just think it’s a cold, some lucky few will have no symptoms at all! So of course this was crazy advice and worsened the problem.”

“Just weeks before, China had showed the world exactly how to get rid of the virus altogether by asking everyone to self-isolate for 3/4 weeks, except shop staff and delivery men and healthcare professionals. But the U.K. government decided to ignore this and tell people to go on as usual!”

“Their brilliant plan was to make everyone get it so that people would become immune! But obviously viruses can mutate so what they didn’t realize was that by essentially ignoring the virus instead of helping get rid of it altogether, it managed to mutate and so turns out people could get it again!”

“Despite the fact that practically nobody intended to fully self isolate, people started panic buying to deal with the virus! So then, not only was there a virus going around, but massive shortages as well!”

“At the beginning of the virus outbreak in the U.K., citizens were busy discussing whether or not they should cancel their holidays in summer. Little did they know that the rest of the world would close their borders to UK citizens due to the poor way the virus was being handled in the country and the escalating problem.”

“The WHO advice was that the UK precautions were nowhere near sufficient! But they ignored this advice.”

I could go on. But I won’t. It’s depressing to talk about this.

As a bunch of hysterical, batshit drama queens.

It’ll be viewed as lunacy in the same way we now see all those Victorian’s as being proper idiots that none of them realised faster that cholera cake from the murky brown water they were drinking out of rivers.

"trong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."

We are absolutely in a time where weak men are creating hard times. People will look back on this time (not just corona, but everything) and think we were all self indulgent twats.

I think the anti-vaccine phenomenon (I’ve noticed they’ve gone strangely quiet on Facebook) will be studied in history. How insane, anti science ideas can gain such traction will be met with the horror it deserves.

If generations keep evolving from the way we act today, they won't think much as they'll be even more self indulgent than we are today.
I let an elderly women skip me on Monday she had a basket, I called her up the queue from behind packed trolleys, it was a brave move. I had to keep my harsh face on to self protect.

Emerald, I don't think that generally happens though. I think it goes in cycles. eg the 1st world war had a generation of generally self sacrificing people (the lower classes at least) and then led to the 20s which was more self indulgent, then the depression where people were necessarily less self indulgent and so on.

Agree with EmeraldShamrock majority are blindsighted by their own fear and behaving very selfishly. While it is true that we find our strength through adversity, certain groups will use that strength only for themselves and their own, and are not community minded. We need more like Emerald who, despite their own fears or concerns about the current pandemic, remain strong in standing up for the most vulnerable.

What does it matter what future generation think of us? We won't be there to find out. Besides which, I don't think badly of any past generation, do you? People just react to the circumstances they find themselves in at the time.

True but I do admire the way some previous generations coped and got through things not least the Jews during ww2.

I think we will be judged very harshly. I also think our stance on brexit and the coronavirus will be studied anthropologically in relation to colonialism and being a former world power. We will now go down in the history books as derided and delusional rather like Germany from 1930’s and the uprising of Hitler. Boris Johnson may go down as having created mass genocide for his vanity project.

i believe that future generations will have more to worry about than the drama and twattery over panic buying loo rolls that we have now.what with climate change and everything else going on in the world it seems that the human race is heading for natures destruct button like so many other species, we are after all another species of animal on the planet and we aren't immune and have nodevine right to be here even if we think we do,

Going by the way millennials go on, they’ll be a nightmare.

How do they go on @Alwaysreadyforbed ?

We don’t want a ww2 spirit. We don’t want w keep calm and carry on attitude
This is what we will be known for and it’ll be the death of us

@leasedaudi ten to one that the reply about millenials will include the word "snowflakes"...

As a bunch of hysterical, batshit drama queens.

@KittyJune
Just weeks before, China had showed the world exactly how to get rid of the virus altogether by asking everyone to self-isolate for 3/4 weeks

I think that this is wrong. The virus will remain "got rid off" so long as everyone remains isolated. At some point they will have to come out of hiding and they will be back to square 1 until an effective vaccine emerges. The only advantage of this approach is it's curve-flattening. But the ruinous economic effects may counter balance the benefits. We're about to find out.

And those using wartime analogies - a closer one would be that those generations kept calm and carried on, and were not obsessed with their own self preservation but the national interest. If we hand our successors an economy razed to the ground, but say "hey, at least we're still here, and by the way, we need looking after now. (Oh, and we've dismantled trading and cooperation mechanisms with our neighbours)" they may not regard us as selfless heroes.

Future generations will view this period as a time of great division, the opening up of all sorts of rifts between people/regions/countries, and that these divisions served to massively highlight the haves from the have-nots.

The things I think we will be judged for when this period is viewed as a whole 50+ years from now will be our attitude towards disadvantaged people and the way the poor, the disabled, and the vulnerable are punished simply for being poor, disabled, and/or vulnerable. It'll be unbelievable that we used so much plastic, recycled so little, binned so much, and travelled so far and so often. They will be mildly horrified that we drove ourselves around along with the resulting accidents as driver-less vehicles will be the norm. If working from home becomes more widespread due to CV-19 fears and containment, I can see if becoming more of a norm in a lot of office based industries as employers will realise they have no need to pay rates and utilities on a large office building when it's cheaper to let everyone work from home and just hire facilities on an as and when basis if any face to face meetings are required. I

It won't be the people judged harshly.
It will be the government who wilfully lied and decided to use the people as a scientific experiment to prove their theories were right.
Which they may well be. But at what cost?
And you don't tend to get democratically elected governments in the civilised (sic) west using the population as lab rats.

Does anyone really even remember how things were with the avian flu, swine flu, small pox? Doubt it. Same no doubt will be for this unless it leads to significant changes worldwide.

I actually think it will be remembered as the beginning of an age in which we became very happy to dispose of our elderly.

Seeing attitudes towards the ill and the elderly emerge over the last two weeks makes me think that values around valuing the elders in society have almost completely broken down, and I think that some way down the track - maybe not in our lifetimes, but relatively soon - we'll see disposal of the elderly as a norm.

I remember with swine flu the press were reporting that schools would have to close, mass gatherings would be cancelled, quarantine would be enforced, there would be so many dead that there wouldn't be time to bury them all one by one and so mass graves would be needed. DH caught it, confirmed, and was told to isolate himself for a week. I managed not to catch it despite being in close quarters with him, I was given Tamiflu which probably helped. All together over 700,000 people caught it - Sky News had a rolling counter of cases as part of their 24/7 "we're all doomed" coverage - then we had a vaccine and nowadays barely anyone gives it a second thought even though it still exists and can still be caught.

I remember all of them including the mini smallpox outbreak in the late 70s.