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.

This thread is hilarious!!!
I am stunned at the sheer ignorance about what life was like for many in the (very recent) past.

Just shows that we live in a world with vastly more information available, but far less knowledge.

[quote namesnamesnamesnames]@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.[/quote]
I think maybe it is the millennium but it seems to work the other way round for most people, they seem to have stopped counting at 2000! So they hear '50 years ago' and think '1950'. I do think the huge, huge cultural presence of WWII (which for a lot of people seems to be literally their only historical reference point) distorts it too, especially with the widespread insistence that anyone over about 60 was 'in the war'.

I agree that time has gone haywire!

I always think “idiot” when I see a post about current pensioners “having fought in the war”. Yep. Perhaps we all suddenly want to sing “We’ll meet again” when we hit 80. I hope I’m going to be singing “Livin’ on a Prayer” when my dcs throw me in a home....

2 out of 3 people (70 out 100) are either obese or overweight, 50 yrs go this figure was more like 1-3 out of every 100.
That stat is not even funny.
A pandemic exacerbated by a societal epidemic, especially in the UK..

@partyatthepalace you clearly haven't read the rest of the thread where this post you have highlighted and agreed with, has been pulled apart and facts thrown in to dispel the myths within the thread

When my dcs were doing History I was most surprised to learn that in the 80s everyone was either a Yuppie or in the Miners’ Strike . I’m sure that if you resurrected someone from 1500 and read them an account of their times they’d be snorting with derision.

Rationing officially ended in 1954 but of course it wasn't overnight.
Like was simpler, many of the old ways from WW2 persisted;turning off lights, no waste, making do, clothes for best, regimented and plain meals. The Church was also a strong force. People traveled less, were less mobile. Expectations were fewer.

I'm 72 years old and don't remember anything at all about bad flu years. Having a partner who suffers from Long Covid after becoming ill in March I do think Covid is very different from flu which I had badly in 1999/2000.

@hardbackwriter Yes I agree for adults that's what's happened. For children it's the reverse. Strange and interesting.

The Spanish flu actually started in the US

did it actually, I know they were unsure for many years where it actually started, wasn't aware they had now pinned it down to a place

It's not so much whether women were in the workplace, as whether mothers of junior school age children were working full time, and I would say that in the 70s they mostly weren't, whatever class they were. Offices were full of secretaries and clerks who were young women, older childless women, and middleaged women working part time.

The 80's was when there was a huge shift with women moving into better paid, career-type jobs, and working when their children were young.

It wouldn't have spread as fast- probably wouldn't have left China for a while. The conspiracy theorists wouldn't have had as much as a platform.

To be honest my mind is totally boggled by the 'near the war ye olden times of 40yrs ago' 😂. I'm 42, we went abroad every year on holiday when I was a child (sometimes twice). We didn't ever had to row our own way there in a boat, nor walk as far as I can recall. Fuck me we even had SKY, and the electric bulb.

The 1968 flue outbreak killed around 30,000 people in the UK so was much less fatal than Covid . Spanish Flue killed an estimated 250,000 in the UK and 100m worldwide so was probably more comparable and probably shows the difference modern medicine and suppression measures have made.

Like was simpler, many of the old ways from WW2 persisted;turning off lights, no waste, making do, clothes for best, regimented and plain meals. The Church was also a strong force. People traveled less, were less mobile. Expectations were fewer.

Is this really how you think the 1970s/1980s were...?

I can't see if anyone's mentioned that for a large part of the population, they had lived through World War 2, coped with rationing and austerity into the 50s and many had done National Service. So there was much more tolerance of being told what to do and coping with hardship. I don't think people had such a sense of individual rights and self-expression.

There was also much less awareness of mental health, so probably the mental health crisis wouldn't have been seen as such. There was a lot of shame attached to MH and insensitivity in attitudes, so I think there would have been many people suffering silently with depression, anxiety, etc.

I think when I left school (1984) there were only around 15% going to university, so there would have been less panic about students travelling home/returning to uni and spreading Covid. But obviously no facilities at all for online study (but uni was free, so nobody demanding refunds either).

I can't imagine schools closing would have been such a big deal then either. There was no National Curriculum or Ofsted, so no measuring every aspect of education in the way that happens now. There were more mums at home though not as many as people imagine, but kids were just left alone or with older siblings, neighbours, etc much more than now. I can remember being home while my mum was at work when I was 7 or 8, and I think that was pretty common. Also, of course, much less awareness then about domestic violence, abuse, neglect, etc.

Thatcher would have certainly handled it in a more decisive way than Boris Johnson. But who knows whether she'd have made the right decisions.

I don't think people had such a sense of individual rights and self-expression.

In the 1970s and 80s?!

@ivykate, well yes actually. At least in the one horse town where I grew up.

I'm just loving the rose tinted spectacles about 40/50 years ago. But regardless, this is a different time. We have a longer life expectancy and medical care has advanced. So people do (reasonably) expect to live longer and my 70 year old dad would be pretty pissed off if ICU said he couldn't have a ventilator because he's too old and he should lower his expectations. Similarly, I'm not about to tell my friends in their 30s with chronic health issues that they might "not have made it" 40 years ago, so they should be grateful for getting to 35 before dying of covid because there are no ventilators.

This thread is hilarious 🤣🤣

Like was simpler, many of the old ways from WW2 persisted;turning off lights, no waste, making do, clothes for best, regimented and plain meals. The Church was also a strong force. People traveled less, were less mobile. Expectations were fewer

Well, I must have imagined all the meals out, cookery stuff on TV, foreign holidays, fashion, Interailing, music, punk and generally giving two fingers to society. My (Welsh Comp) school's expectations of us were VERY high.

And I never set foot in a church!

@ivykaty44

Like was simpler, many of the old ways from WW2 persisted;turning off lights, no waste, making do, clothes for best, regimented and plain meals. The Church was also a strong force. People traveled less, were less mobile. Expectations were fewer.

Is this really how you think the 1970s/1980s were...?

Apparently many do!

I travelled Europe in the 1970s, some of my friends did the hippy trail through Asia.

@randomer

Rationing officially ended in 1954 but of course it wasn't overnight. Like was simpler, many of the old ways from WW2 persisted;turning off lights, no waste, making do, clothes for best, regimented and plain meals. The Church was also a strong force. People traveled less, were less mobile. Expectations were fewer.

We even still have some traces of these strange, primitive and yet noble times (the 1980s); in many households to this day people observe a nightly ritual of 'turning off their bedroom light to go to sleep' in solemn remembrance of the many hardships that their ancestors had to endure, such as 'turning off lights' and 'eating plain meals'.

Like was simpler, many of the old ways from WW2 persisted;turning off lights, no waste, making do, clothes for best, regimented and plain meals. The Church was also a strong force. People traveled less, were less mobile. Expectations were fewer

Oh my good god

“Regimented and plain meals” 🤣🤣🤣

40 years ago l was 17.

Schools would have shut.Mine was shut for ages in 79/80 due to snow, strikes, broken heating. Missed nearly a whole term.

Schools would have shut but everything else would have stayed open. People weren’t so bothered then. Women were still at home a lot, and 10 years earlier ( 50 years ago) hardly any women worked.

I think social distancing would have been in place. And maybe masks? Shops would have had to stay open as there would have been no online ordering.