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.

[quote ivykaty44]@Belladonna12 sorry but this was discussed further back, you've not read the chart correctly - its not terribly clear & you're not the only one to do this, the chart splits the full time and part time - you've just read the full time figures - its over 40% for the section not 18%[/quote]
I haven't misread it. I was looking at Figure 2 which shows that in 1973 about 18% of women with children aged 5 to 9 worked full time. I know I only mentioned full time but as I said you can't tell much from the part time as it could have just been doing a couple of hours in the evening. There was very little if any formal childcare.

@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

Yes, people just got on with things then

Possibly go check out the death stats for Spanish flu, the plague etc etc and then be sure to add in how easy we made global travel so a virus like this can spread faster - and I think you’ll find your talking utter drivel. We would have carried on and died in even larger droves than is happening now

If this had happened in the 1970s the economy would not have been shut down nor schools closed and the old and vulnerable would have been told to shield until herd immunity I think. Also, there was hardly any obese people in the 1970s and less elderly or extremely old people then. You are right about the media scare mongering now...they are culpable for the over reaction to this virus that's caused ruination to thousands of businesses and millions of jobs. We would not be wearing face masks either!

It would have been better in the sense of no bloody social media scare mongering people. Somebody takes a photo of a tiny section in a supermarket which is out of stock and it's front page news, shops are running on empty up and down the country we're told. Absolute BS and scares ppl like my mother

🙊🙉🙈 🤬

The other way families managed if both parents were at work at the same time was giving the child(ren) a latchkey.

Most childcare was informal. Families lived closer together and neighbours were recruited on a tit for tat basis.

I was a "latchkey" child from the age of 13 when my mother got a part time job in the afternoons and finished at 5 pm. My younger sister finished school at 3.30 and went to an aunt until I came home at 4.30. I was expected to wash the breakfast dishes, set the table, etc From age 14 I was expected to light the gas cooker and start the vegetables for the evening meal.

There were no after school clubs or other indulgences. No school runs either. We kids walked home in groups or (only in very bad weather) got the bus.I f your mother worked you were expected to take responsibility for younger siblings and do your share of the housework. Children were not mollycoddled and wrapped in cotton wool as they are now.

Kate,

They wore masks in the Spanish flu. In the 70s people knew about viruses and how they spread. Given few could have worked from home, I expect mask wearing would have been rigidly enforced and there would have been far less talk of MH, if any.

We would have got through it, but we might have lost 1-2 million. And we would have had a horrific recession with no furlough scheme.

As many others have commented, no social media, very little travel, commuting etc, so people just carried on as normal and prayed they didn't get it.

My mum said that many elderly got it and predictably died from it, but many didn't live long lives then anyway. Many people at that time didn't live much beyond 70 even with good health.

So that makes me wonder whether what we are seeing now is some kind of 'correction' with population? Like many other people, I do wonder about the origins of this virus and whether it's been seeded to reduce the population, or whether it's occurred naturally to reduce the global population? We may never find out.

Indeed they did - there are photos of people wearing masks in workplaces, on football terraces and in the street. What there wasn't then was a coordinated public health response or the understanding of viruses we have today. The 1970s were not the dark ages in comparison to today and in 1918-20 they weren't so far behind.

@Kate139

If this had happened in the 1970s the economy would not have been shut down nor schools closed and the old and vulnerable would have been told to shield until herd immunity I think. Also, there was hardly any obese people in the 1970s and less elderly or extremely old people then. You are right about the media scare mongering now...they are culpable for the over reaction to this virus that's caused ruination to thousands of businesses and millions of jobs. We would not be wearing face masks either!

Why wouldn't people be wearing masks?

www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-campaigns

I think people would definitely be wearing masks. They wore them during Spanish Flu.

There were anti mask demos then🙄

And l was at school in the 70’s and 89’s. They closed all the time at the drop of a hat. It’s the one thing on absolutely certain of, that schools would have closed. No one cared about what grades you got then.

Apparently the 'Hong Kong flu' is still in circulation today, what stopped that pandemic?

I remember teaching as normal during the 1968 flu pandemic; there was absolutely no change to normal life. I still used the tube and buses as normal, went to concerts, pubs and restaurants, and there was very little about it in the press or media. I even moved to Singapore at the height of it to continue my teaching career there. I think all we were told was that there was a nasty strain of flu about and to be careful. Definitely no mask wearing, shielding, staying at home.

After watching The Crown, I looked up the Great Smog of 1952 and discovered that people wore masks both inside and outside during it so I don't see why masks wouldn't have been worn in the 70s/80s had a pandemic occured then.

Even 10-15 years ago there was not the technical capability for people to work at home as they have now. The wholescale closing of offices and allowing people to WFH that has occurred since March would not have been possible.

If you go back a few years more, no shopping deliveries, no late night or indeed Sunday opening of supermarkets. The possibility of isolating at home for weeks or months simply wouldn't have existed.

In a sense, this has happened now because it CAN happen now. A decade or more ago, different measures would have to have been put in place because lockdown as it now exists simply wouldn't have been workable.

You're quite right @Grenlei.

Smogs were terrible in the 50s.
My dad had to commute to work and was held up for hours on the trains.
My poor mum thought he'd had an accident he was so long getting back from work one night. She used to tell me the stories of how bad they were in London.
Literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face, I was told.

People still don’t seem to realise that this is so much worse than flu, with the possible exception of Spanish flu. The latest IFR is estimated by Imperial to be 1.25% in Western countries and about 0.35% in the third world (due to demographics).

And the above is with a functioning NHS. I know very fit people in their 50s (and some even in their 40s) who have required oxygen, even if briefly. Were that not available, we might be looking at a higher mortality rate with more deaths among the young.

This would have been an absolute disaster in the 70s or 80s, both medically and economically.

@TheReluctantPhoenix

People still don’t seem to realise that this is so much worse than flu, with the possible exception of Spanish flu. The latest IFR is estimated by Imperial to be 1.25% in Western countries and about 0.35% in the third world (due to demographics).

And the above is with a functioning NHS. I know very fit people in their 50s (and some even in their 40s) who have required oxygen, even if briefly. Were that not available, we might be looking at a higher mortality rate with more deaths among the young.

This would have been an absolute disaster in the 70s or 80s, both medically and economically.

How is it worse than flu? Was reading about the flu pandemic of 1968-1970 and apparently it killed around 4 million worldwide, including many children. Also caused respiratory issues. So, please tell me how it's worse than flu? The only reason seasonal flu isn't AS deadly as it was is because there are vaccines, right?

@Grenlei

Even 10-15 years ago there was not the technical capability for people to work at home as they have now. The wholescale closing of offices and allowing people to WFH that has occurred since March would not have been possible.

If you go back a few years more, no shopping deliveries, no late night or indeed Sunday opening of supermarkets. The possibility of isolating at home for weeks or months simply wouldn't have existed.

In a sense, this has happened now because it CAN happen now. A decade or more ago, different measures would have to have been put in place because lockdown as it now exists simply wouldn't have been workable.

I'm nitpicking but if this had happened 10-15 years ago I could have done my job from home in much the same way I've been doing over the last 10 months. I didn't have a smartphone then but I did have a landline and a decent broadband connection and my workplace has been set up to do everything online for well over 15 years. I was having my groceries delivered by Tesco about 18 years ago (moved to Ocado in 2004, IIRC). 20 years ago would have been a different matter, though.

My dh worked from home in a computer based job in 1998. He logged onto the work system every morning .

Probably not the band width though

No idea when Zoom, Skype and Microsoft Teams were introduced. Conference calls were a thing 10 years ago, weren't they?