If this had happened 40-50 years ago...

[Swissrollypoly]

Do you think things would be different? Do you think we’d just have to get on with things as we wouldn’t have the means to work from home or communicate via Zoom or Microsoft teams etc.
Social media didn’t exist, so there wouldn’t be as much panic and scaremongering.
I just wonder how different it would all be, had it happened in another time period.

It did it was called the Asian flu

We would probably just get on with things. What other choice would we have. The idiots who peddle their scaremongering and conspiracy theories wouldn't have the platform that they do and I reckon folk would just get on with it. I actually reckon people would be adhering to the rules a lot better than they are now.

We’d have cracked on and got on with it

I was about to say even in the 80s it would have gone down as a bad flu / then I realised it was 40 years ago

I’m 44

Social and 24 hour media has a lot to answer for

Yes some young people have died but I general it kills people with an average (mean, median and mode) over 80 - three score years and ten used to be human life expectancy - we’ve pushed the boundaries so I can’t cry over 80 year olds dying

We seem to have a generation of people who think living to 90 and people not dying is a given right - it’s not.I would have hoped this would’ve a reality check but all we’ve done is fuck every one else’s lives

There is an interesting article about the Asian flu in the 60s here.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(2031201-0/fulltext

People traveled much less 40-50 years ago. We wouldn’t be dealing with the same kind of spread. The consequences of closing the boarders to personal travel would have been much lower. Freight travel was still prevalent, but it was slower and more flexible to border quarantine.

We also lived in a world where women were just barely entering the workforce. That could have been stopped very easily if schools needed to close.

So no, I don’t think we would have just got on with it. I think the borders would have closed and if it got in, the men would have kept working and the women and children would have been forced to stay home. It would be just as much of a nightmare as now, but would impact society differently.

the 1968 flu pandemic is estimated to have caused around an extra 80,000 deaths in the UK

life carried on pretty much as normal

It seems that we didn't really have intensive care beds at the time so no one worried about them running out.

And the government and media were focused on getting people NOT to panic about it.

That said it doesn't sound to me quite as dangerous as covid.

There was a typhoid outbreak in my hometown when my mum was in her early twenties. It was locked down. There are still habits and sayings in my family from that time, to help remember safety measures etc.

@PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit

It seems that we didn't really have intensive care beds at the time so no one worried about them running out.

And the government and media were focused on getting people NOT to panic about it.

That said it doesn't sound to me quite as dangerous as covid.

I think children died of it in an sure my dad said he lost 3 classmates

Sorry that was the 1958 one

Don’t even need to go back that far. I think had this happened 15 years ago it would have just been chalked up as a ‘bad flu year’.

@Spiratedaway yes you are right. I think it was more dangerous to children. So perhaps if you looked at years of life lost it would be similar to covid.

Anyway in the UK at any rate it seems people carried on much as usual.

@Spiratedaway

Sorry that was the 1958 one

Both epidemics are covered in that Lancet article, which is quite interesting.

@AlecTrevelyan006

the 1968 flu pandemic is estimated to have caused around an extra 80,000 deaths in the UK

life carried on pretty much as normal

to add - in 1968 the average life expectancy in the UK was just 71 compared to 82 now and the population was 55 million compared to 67 million now

Might have been easier to control; less population, less international travel. Less shopping (stores closed on Sundays etc). The basics of hand washing social distancing and masks not alien as that was present for the Spanish Flu.
Less obese, less chronic illness (as the wouldn’t have survived as long).
Staffing in hospitals was much higher and less casual workers employed at multiple sites so less facility spread.
Less women in the workforce so closing down the schools less of an issue.
I agree the media has been harmful than helpful.

We are heading towards that total of deaths WITH lockdown and modern treatments
Yes people stayed local and didn't travel so much but men (mostly) would have needed to go out to work
Agree that more women would have been home for school closures. Oil crisis shutting schools for example.
And hospitals were very different in staffing and expectations.
Ambulance staff were transport rather than medics.

I was 12 years old in 1968 so old enough to be aware of what was going on and I remember almost nothing about the flu pandemic, the occasional mention maybe but there definitely wasn't anything like the blanket coverage and general hysteria we're seeing now. I know we have social media, 24 hour news etc now but even so.

It wouldn't have spread anywhere near as quickly, as there were far fewer people travelling internationally, and hardly anyone went on foreign holidays. I also think that the government would have found the decision to potentially close our borders much easier in those days.

FFS if any of you had set foot in a hospital in the last few weeks you'd see it was nothing like a "bad flu year." Whole ICUs FULL of ventilated patients with a single condition? And not over 80s, young patients who were otherwise well? Wards reconfigured to become respiratory HDUs to reduce strain on ICU and all still rapidly filling up with patients with a single condition? Having to cancel ALL elective surgery because there is no post-op space to put patients?

No. This is not just a bad flu year.

50 years ago things would have been different, but a)not all in a good way and b)that doesn't mean that people are just flapping about things now.

@GlowingOrb

People traveled much less 40-50 years ago. We wouldn’t be dealing with the same kind of spread. The consequences of closing the boarders to personal travel would have been much lower. Freight travel was still prevalent, but it was slower and more flexible to border quarantine.

We also lived in a world where women were just barely entering the workforce. That could have been stopped very easily if schools needed to close.

So no, I don’t think we would have just got on with it. I think the borders would have closed and if it got in, the men would have kept working and the women and children would have been forced to stay home. It would be just as much of a nightmare as now, but would impact society differently.

As someone else pointed out 40 years ago was the 80’s. Gap years and cheap travel packages abroad were very much a thing actually. I went on my first “friends” holiday to a cheesy Thompson holiday in Italy in 86 at 16. They weren’t expensive or unusual.

Actually even in the 70’s driving around the U.K. or popping the car over to France was fairly normal.

My father remembers a quarantine back in the 50’s/60’s sometime. School was half days.

I Nursed all through the 1960’s Pandemic.Life carried on as normal.Few people knew there was a Pandemic,it got little coverage in the media.

Governments then had sense to know that you cannot control,eradicate or suppress a virus.

Yes people did go on Foreign Holidays and do Business abroad,it wasn’t Prehistoric Times!

The media have ramped this up to ridiculous levels.

The damage being done by these lockdowns is far greater than the damage being done by Covid.

No social media so no scaremongering and constant reporting of every single case. We would have been better off.

Well, I do think there is a greater focus on ensuring appropriate health care than 40-50 years ago. I do think things would have gone on as usual simply because there was more manual work and a greater focus on surviving/feeding the family. I also think that people would have been left at home to die if hospitals were full. Obviously we don't want to go there today.

We also lived in a world where women were just barely entering the workforce.

That might have been true for some classes but working class women worked (Family Allowance or whatever it was then wasn't particularly generous) and a fair number of middle class women had a career even if they did give it up around the time of their first child.

Thank god there's some people on here with some perspective - interesting that they seem to be people of experience.