Why does no one talk about the 1989-90 epidemic?

[LinemanForTheCounty]

Found out about this recently - 29000 dead. Looking at the dates I had it and after effects including pleurisy (I was 20, no reason for me to have pleurisy other than this). It affected people under 25 worst.

I dunno. I'm trying to figure this all out but that's a lot of people dead, mostly young people. Did we get it wrong then or have we got it wrong now? Our response, I mean.

I remember this, because my exhusband's grandmother died of it (she was in a care home), however it wasn't really talked about as an epidemic.

The main difference is this isnt a flu it's a cold so there may be no lasting immunity.
29k would maybe have been much worse if it came round again 6m later and affected the same people

I wonder if it's worse in uk when more snow.
Better conditions to spread and less sunshine to start making vit d. Or it could follow really wet/snowy years.

@BackforGood maybe, or maybe it did and you didn't realise it. I mean, I've only just realised now that I was hit by it 30 years ago and my mother and father also had no clue that I was.

@MagentaRocks

It was over 30 years ago. Things are very different now. More travel now, more access to news and information.

Yes this true! 30 years ago we had to hail a hansom cab and rely on pigeon post.

Yes. I often berate myself for saying I sent my first email in 1991. How could I have, senile old bastard that I am? I certainly never went abroad really cheaply several times a year prior to 2000, because abroad didn't exist back then.

or maybe it did and you didn't realise it

but I do remember when the school was closed when dysentery affected us, and I do remember (around 2007ish? not sure of exact year) when approx 1/2 the school were off ill one Winter / Spring, and many other schools closed altogether.

I'd have thought for something to be of 'epidemic' proportions, it would have to at least be noticeable at the time.

Well someone noticed 29000 people dying, maybe take it up with them?

It was over 30 years ago. Things are very different now. More travel now, more access to news and information

This.
Travel was a thing back in 89, maybe not on as grand a scale as now but people still went abroad.
The rolling 24 hour news though, social media? Non existent.
As much as I love social media it does have its bad side in it creates hysteria and panic.
Sometimes I think the simpler times were the best.

Me & ds had flu in the 2010 epidemic, we had just moved in to our first house together after my marriage ended, we were snowed in & had struggled to the shops, what was normally a 5 minute walk took us an hour return trip & we both felt cold & achy, thought it was from wading through thigh high snow & within 48 hours had full blown flu, we spent every day on the sofa under a duvet for nearly 2 weeks, my parents couldn't get to us, we were snowed in. We lived on cereal, toast & tins of soup, were in bed by 6.00pm, I have never been so frightened or ill in my life.

What are they yearly flu death numbers, OP? Around 85-95?

Cos it was 28000 in the 2017/18 winter season

@Nat6999 I had something very bad that year. Lost 7kg in one week.

One reason flus are very different is that flus are always around. The older you are, the more of them you've likely been exposed to. So the elderly are much more protected than they are for a novel virus like this one. Past flus have mainly been much less severe, too. So those together meant that schools and work stayed open, yes it was a terrible flu and an epidemic, but it was not comparable this virus in strength or scale (of effect on the population). Similarly H1N1 (2009) was a worrying new flu, it went everywhere, but thankfully was not virulent enough to cause this level of impact.

I do remember this, because I was a young child at boarding school, and everyone who could be was sent home early that year. They broke up for Christmas a couple of weeks early, from memory - or maybe it was for half term? At all events, we were sent home because of the epidemic.

I'm afraid that when you're that age, and school ends early, you're not aware of people dying. Just a longer holiday.

I would have been 23 at that time and have no memory of such an epidemic.

That doesn't mean that it didn't happen, just probably that rolling 24 hour news was not yet a thing, and it was still in the pre internet days - no home computers, and any mobile phones that were around were the old brick sized ones that you virtually needed to carry an external power pack for.

Unless you just happened to read certain articles in certain newspapers then the information really wasn't readily available as it is today.

I got that flu. I can pinpoint the year because I was pregnant with my 4th child so had three others to look after whilst being desperately ill.

I called the doctor to the house as I thought I was dying. Obviously wasn’t!
Didn’t know it was a pandemic or that so many people died, how awful.

I think pandemic and epidemics are managed differently.
We've had swine and bird flu sweep the nation before and they were managed differently too.
Ebola and SARs were managed completely differently too.
I guess it also depends on how the illness could affect the population.

Interestingly the only time I have ever had flu (touch wood) was in 1990. I was 8. Never heard of that epidemic though.

They burned the animals in what was known as a pyre didn't they? From my not massively reliable memory

It was an epidemic. The last one we had ie the last outbreak that was classed as such, as far as I can make out. But nobody even remembers it.

No it wasn't, it wasn't even the last flu epidemic.

Surely you have heard about swine flu and bird flu? SARS?

1989-1990 there were approximately double the number of cases of flu than the usual flu season in the UK.

Epidemics happen all the time, unless you are affected or in the same geographical area you probably won'e remember it.

Off hand can you remember the dates of 3 Ebola outbreaks? You have probably heard of it, you probably know it is a serious illness and you probably know it usually occurs in Africa but I doubt many people in the UK remember the dates unless they were working in the outbreak or one of the hospitals that treated the 'western' patients.

OP

Chris Whitty has done a few lectures on flu and pandemics that are on YouTube, they are really interesting on their own,but comparing the lecture from 2 years ago with the covid pandemic is even more interesting.

Oh and if you are interested in epidemics / viruses / public health have a look at the outbreaks of small pox in the 1960s in Yorkshire and Wales.

It wasn't a pandemic, it was an epidemic of very bad 'flu but a lot of people were unaffected. I had the 'flu and it was dreadful but I recovered; nobody really thought that much about it and life went on as normal. Later we heard that many more had died than usual but the scale was nothing compared to the Covid-19 pandemic which has affected the entire world. I'm 70 and lived through a few public health scares but never known anything like this.

I would have been a teenager and I don’t remember this.

I get the social media thing but watching the news on the telly or getting a newspaper everyday was much more common.
So actually more people were interested in the news but more or less the same version. The fake news and the hysteria of social media weren’t a thing.

I didn't know about this either but was talking to my dad the other day and asked how he thought our current situation would have been handled 39 years ago (back when I was born).

The ability to work from home would have been very limited back then. Pretty much impossible. There really wouldn't have been much people could have done about it compared to now.

Maybe it wasn't really talked about because nobody thought there was anything they could have done to prevent it.

My mum had something in about 78, she was very poorly and her chest was never right after that.

If you look at the data on the ONS website, the figures for seasonal flu are staggering.