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.

Spanish Flu 1918/19 was horrific.

228,000 in UK alone.

Over 55,000,000 Worldwide.

Covid is a mere blip compared to this...Yet the economy is f&ckd.

@ivykaty44

40-50 years ago there weren't so many vulnerable elderly people. They died in their 70s and weren't kept alive into their 80s and 90s by progressive medicines.

1971average age of male at death 69
1971 average age of female at death 75.3

1981 average age at death, male 71
1981 average age at death female 77

2018 average age at death for male 79.2
2018 average age at death for female 82.9

This is average as in mean age though, isn't it, not mode

Those dying in the the 70s in were of a population that was still dying of childhood infectious diseases in large numbers. That depresses the 'average' considerably. It does not mean that people tended to die aged roughly 70 then. Lots of people would have needed to live to 80 or beyond to drag the mean age up to 70+

@Labobo

40-50 years ago there weren't so many vulnerable elderly people. They died in their 70s and weren't kept alive into their 80s and 90s by progressive medicines.

The people alive now who wouldn't have been 50 years ago aren't just elderly. Off the top of my head, healthcare for all of the following has improved and means people of all ages are alive now who would have died in previous times.

• asthma
• severe allergies
• high blood pressure
• heart disease
• kidney disease
• cancer of many types
• multiple sclerosis
• infectious diseases
• premature babies

Some people treated for a life-threatening condition make a full recovery and are as healthy as anyone else. Many, however, are left with long-term issues that make them particularly vulnerable to infection.Their numbers are not always obvious because many are able to live a full life, thanks to modern healthcare - but not in a pandemic.

I don't think people were more resillient, I remember my Mum and her friends having endless conversations about their 'nerves'. The GP would prescribe tranquilisers but my mum and her mates were suspicious of them, preferring chain smoking to keep them calm.

Yeah, my mother liked both plus her drink and week. "Mother's Little Helpers" and other things to cope were openly discussed among adults (a lil prayer and vodka to get me through...). I remember there being debate as to whether my grandmother quitting cigarettes would really improve her health...

I also remember there was a while when the junior high and high school were on a 3 rotation system, to reduce number of students to a third in the schools to stop the spread of something. I can't remember well and it wasn't still in place by the time I got there, but the stories of what teenagers got up to (because plenty of mothers were in the workforce and even those who were at home weren't always at home) lasted a while afterwards, certain areas got reputations of disease and teenage wildness on it.

I do think things were discussed less directly with children though - so while discussed openly, it was discussed among adults so it didn't really make as much sense at the time that turned out to be far bigger than I knew then. There have been some stories on here of really upset young children who seem to know a lot about it and I've been thinking there has to be a middle path between being left in the dark with odd fragments and being included in the 24 hour news cycle.

I have posted about this before, I heartily wish we were living 40 years ago, so we could just get on with it. Social media has much to answer for (including MN) for whipping people up into a state of hysteria about a virus that is going to be harmless for the huge majority of people who contract it.

One fact i tead tecently is there were msny more hospital beds and smaller hospital in 1986. Apparently we have almost halved the number of beds in that time.

@EdithWeston

In the 1960s there was still rationing.

In the 1970s there was the 3 day week and considerable other shortages/disruption in the run up to the UK needing an international financial bail out (I remember doing homework by oil lamp), so people were used to coping when a particular sector wasn't working.

I think there was considerably more stoicism.

There was no rationing in the 1960s. It had ended in the early 50s. DM used to say was that the Atlee Labour government got kicked out in 1951 because it hadn't ended rationing.

The three day week lasted for about 10 weeks and was essentially a political decision.

But there were a lot of strikes and people coped. There was a postal strike in 1971 which went on for about three months. This was when everything went by post.

Thank you @FlouncingBabooshka for interjecting some facts into this thread. The world hasn’t shut down borders & crippled economies because of social media hysteria FFS. This is not a bad flu year.

We know much more about viruses, their transmission and how to treat those with symptoms now. Look at the speed with which a number of different vaccines have been developed this year. In 1918 the authorities let the public down with a lack of coordinated response. The dept of health was founded as a direct result of the 1918-19 pandemic.

So where did the 80,000 deaths figure come from? Has anyone got an article as to why they thought that?

My guess from reading about it is that covid is somewhere between the flu epidemics of the mid 20th century and the 1918 flu in terms of severity.

I think it would be good (though maybe too hard given that life expectancy keeps changing and is affected by the disease itself) to look at number of years of life lost rather than total number of deaths when studying the impact of a disease.

I will be desperately upset when my elderly relatives die and miss them. But once someone reaches their 90s then the number of good years they have left can't really be that great. Death is sadly inevitable.

A younger person who dies will miss out on living their life. A younger elderly person will miss out on a retirement they might have enjoyed and looked forward to, grandchildren etc.

I doubt we would have had mass testing or a full lockdown 50 years ago. I don't know what the difference in mortality would have been. I am sceptical that the lockdowns in European countries have really helped to reduce mortality when you compare with countries that didn't. I think the age profile of the country is making more difference. Only successful suppression like NZ seems to have worked.

I think less very elderly people would have died fifty years ago as there were fewer around. But perhaps more of the middle aged would have died due to less medical treatment. Maybe lower levels of obesity would have helped a bit there.

@wowfudge

Some people on this thread need to educate themselves about the past. Working class women have worked for hundreds of years. My mother and her friends all worked when they finished school/college/university in the 60s. Package holidays in the 1970s were as cheap as holidaying in the UK for many and factory workers had been holidaying at the British seaside for decades before then.

There's a docudrama on BBC iPlayer called "The Flu that Killed 50 Million" about the 1918 pandemic. It was made in 2018 and is remarkably prescient. Well worth watching.

Will give that a watch.

Reading about Spanish Flu a few years ago was grim. {WW1 Nurse's diaries} ..It killed the young mercilessly. The elderly appeared to be somewhat immune.

My lovely FIL died as 'Collateral Damage' due to Covid.

He didn't have Covid, but essential treatment was delayed.

He had to die alone in Hospital.

But.... How many others will die because of not being seen because of bloody Covid?

@TalbotAMan

Here is a C&P of my post at 08:52

Nanny0gg

I have already posted again acknowledging error, and expanding on what I was thinking of

I apologise again, and will continue to do so - to you, to anyone else who still thinks I don't accept the point, and I shall make oblations to the gods of thread-reading in general

I'm sorry but personally I don't agree with the statement that 'preservation of life has become out of hand'. Its very easy to think 'well who wants to live forever?'. Especially easy when you're not in the 'cut off catchment age'. I used to think 40 was 'ancient'... But as I'm now older, not so much 😂. Yes, dementia is a terrible ravaging disease but there's frankly quite a lot of people who make it to longevity pretty fit and well. The Queen is 94 and still rocked up to do her Christmas message. Should we be saying 'No, no she's too old off with her head!'. It's not fucking Logan's Run.

Someone posted this elsewhere... it shows the approach that was taken to the spanish flu. I was surprised and re-assured by how similar it was. Got me thinking that it's only our arrogance that says we couldn't deal with these things in earlier times. Even in biblical times we knew to close the doors and stay indoors when the plague was passing.

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/

This is hilarious. What age are the people thinking 40 years ago was the Victorian times?

I don't know as a historian whether this thread makes me want to laugh or cry. I do really, really love the idea that the 80s was a time where all were stoic with stiff upper lips and where everyone was community minded and selfless, though.

I do think it's fascinating the way that culturally everyone seems convinced that WW2 was about forty years ago - you also see it on threads where people talk about people in their 70s 'having sacrificed for us all in the war'. I don't know whether people got 'stuck' like this on previous periods, acting as if they were more recent than they were - did people in 1910 assume if they didn't do the maths that it had been about 40 years since Victoria came to the throne?

I used to see a very old lady who told me about her first husband and the so-called Spanish flu, way back.
He felt slightly unwell in the morning, went to work anyway - dead that same night.

We had the punk movement 40 years ago. We weren't all obedient to the Government!

I don't know as a historian whether this thread makes me want to laugh or cry

I find it weird, that people don't remember what was happening 40 years ago or if they are to young don't investigate with ease o the internet

We had the Cold War, the fear or Nuclear power, green ham common protests, the winter of discontent and the press had a field day with that....

@hardbackwriter Is it because of the new millennium? It really throws my children who are young but old enough to work out dates and maths. They both feel like any date that looks like 19 is centuries ago. My youngest never believes me when I tell him I was born in a 19 date!

I think it's made a few people confused when they think quickly about a date or era.

The Spanish flu actually started in the US and was a bird flu that moved to humans from ducks. It affected young people particularly badly and then it mutated as all good viruses do.

@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.

I think this is it.

Plus no one would have been anywhere near so concerned about the social impacts on poverty, education, health in general, domestic violence - every focus would have been on keeping the economy going.

I think we absolutely need to focus on keeping the economy going, but I am glad we are concerned about the wider impacts on the bottom on society.

I am horrified by the scaremongering right now, but we shouldn’t glamorise the past.

Does anyone else hear ‘40 years ago’ and automatically think 1960? Then realise it’s actually 1980?

I am 66 and some of these posts are unintentionally hilarious! the ideas some have about how we used to live are mind boggling

To the few posters who are determined to believe that the only reason we have lockdowns is to prevent deaths in the over 80s, last week we got a taster of how other countries would have treated us if we had let the virus rampage through the UK. Multiple mutant strains spreading unchecked. They closed their borders to us. Do you want to be ostracized from the world community totally for years?