How did we used to deal with Pandemics?

[jasjas1973]

As well as the the one in 1918 that killed 50m to 100m people worldwide, we also had one in 1957 that killed 3m, 10,000 in the UK, 110k in the USA, another one in 1968 that killed 1m and again about 10k in UK.
We used to have around 65k extra deaths in the UK each and every winter, last year it was 23k additional deaths.

What did we do? i certainly don't remember any sort of lockdown at all in the late 60s and my mum, a nurse, never mentioned anything, just always warned me to stay in when i was ill and wash my hands!!!

Was the large scales deaths of the elderly/vulnerable just accepted?

I remember the 1968 pandemic, Aldo remember the entire family being very sick, but if I’m honest, I can’t remember a lot of fear or panic around it. I was 10 at the time, and my dad was front line staff, so I think I would have had some sense of it. Not saying that was right, or better than now, but I’m sure it was different.

By dying?

You didn't have social media spreading panic & fear.

I think people also used to just accept things.

we died

We didnt travel and mix in the way we do now.
People and families (ok, not mine, my grandparents were several 100 miles away) were much more local. People didnt travel the distances to visit friends family, work, shopping they do now.
So sort of lock down happened anyway - purely because we didnt go as far from home as we do now.

People had shorter life expectancies - we weren’t so worried about taking care of our older relatives because there weren’t so many older people about!

People fled, spread it, built walls, died.

I was a Student Nurse in 1968,no memory of it whatsoever!

Neighbour died in the 1968
There is an interesting documentary on recently about the 1918 pandemic. There were people in the UK who tried to restrict gatherings ie stopping church meeting and schools but many people were resistant

Less older generation around and a if I get it and die so be it approach...

We died🤷🏻‍♀️

People fled, spread it, built walls, died

FFS i said 1968 not 1348 !!!

We have mass flu vaccinations now that’s a big reason there are less excess winter deaths.

In the latter part of my mums career, she was a sister in a nursing home, she used to tell me that older people, suffering from dementia and stroke would get a chest infection, rushed to Derriford, put on IV antibiotics, sent back to live another few weeks before it would happen again, she didn't agree with it, they suffered far more than if they'd been given palliative care instead.

We cling to life far more perhaps?

jasjas
Winter flu often kills 20,000 a year in the UK
the 2003 heat wave killed 50,000 in Paris

Social media makes every local story global

cheap air travel and global supply chains make every local disease global

500,000 people die in the UK every year
many of those who will die in the UK of COVID would have died due to their underlying illnesses anyway
the number of extra deaths is small

The panic in the UK is because austerity has crippled both the NHS and social care
Germany and Scandinavia have higher taxes and better resources so are coping better than the UK will

The 1968 pandemic virus is that which gives us the influenza A disease to this day. Which is why they are being so aggressive in their response to this and predict a long game where we have tighter and looser controls to limit infection with subsequent (hopefully smaller) peaks each time restrictions are lifted. The Spanish flu came in several waves, not just one in one season.

They still died, modern medicine in its infancy. Epidemiology was mumbo jumbo. Childhood illnesses such as measles diphtheria etc were still causing high mortality in children. Slums gradually being cleared. Large families in crowded housing. Only 20 yrs since end of WW2 so death not seen in quite the same way it is today.
Modern medicine and population expectation have contributed to the current pandemic. Life expectancy was less than 70 in the late sixties so the problem we are facing wouldn’t exist.

If you read Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, about the Great Plague of London in 1664, the measures were remarkably similar to now. Restricted movement, people locked into their homes, things disinfected (in vinegar).

I got the Hong Kong flu in 1968 when I was a teenager, as did my whole family. We just sweated and coughed at home in bed until we got better.
There weren’t any intensive care units as such, just isolation units for more serious infectious diseases, such as smallpox, which still had rare outbreaks.( I had to get vaccinated against that when I was 5.)

Thousands of old people used to die of flu every winter- we lost 3500 to flu in the UK in 1968. There was no flu vaccine.
But back then, many men died of heart attacks in their 40’s and 50’s, many women of cancer in their 50’s and 60’s, and untreated high blood pressure and strokes were common.
We therefore didn’t have huge numbers of frail, vulnerable 80 and 90 year olds, and people were more philosophical- they didn’t expect to live beyond 70, the biblical “ three score years and ten”.
The problem now is we have built up a large cohort of the extremely old and vulnerable- and we are facing a horrible choice of either protecting them by wrecking our economy, and the future prospects of our young people, or letting up to a quarter of a million old folk die. And its just not politically acceptable to say these would be overdue deaths from the past two decades!
Even though in some cases we might just be saving them from Covid 19 so they can die of dementia a year later.
As a pensioner myself, I completely understand that I should be at the back of the queue for a ventilator, if they're needed for younger patients.

I do wonder how on earth they coped with the Spanish flu pandemic, especially coming on top of a long war.

Also clean air act didn’t come in until mid seventies so a large percentage of the population including children had chronic bronchitis through the winter months. Smog was a killer all by itself. Everyone smoked. It was very different times so not comparable with COVID-19.
This virus really is something different.

Yes LQ this is what the Imperial paper said CV would cause 20,000 deaths but not necessarily 20k extra deaths.

Life expectancy was nearer 75 for women in 1968, its now 82 for women and 78 for men.
Also, doesn't explain the panic around CV in countries with lower numbers.......

That's a great insightful post @Babdoc

A lot of people died. These days, most people think that is a Bad Thing.

HTH.

I think it's more due to the world is now essentially a lot smaller as a result of the Internet/shared information/resources. In my grandparents generation TB was still rife and one spent 10mths in a sanatorium, its pretty much an non threat now. In the days when leprosy was a threat people were shipped off to isolation then too. Now we can at least try to shut down a pandemic before it really takes hold. Which is what countries are attempting to do. Why wait for the death toll vs trying to stamp it out when it begins?