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.

Yeah yeah everyone was more resilient back then blah blah not scared of dying blah like the ancient two spirit tribes we can learn so much from blah blah a bit more boring crap about the fucking blitz even though it's completely irrelevant blah blah Vera Lynn walking round a garden for the NHS heroes blah blah they get pizzas you know blah back in my day it was buboes and the schools were open perpetually blah resilience again

There were entire hospitals devoted to tuberculosis. Of course fewer would survive.

And not only were gap years and package holidays a thing but we also all had exchange students visit. Anyone doing O level French or German had a student stay or you’d go over there.

In medieval times life expectancy was 35, so you know...

When were the coal strikes and the three day working week? Everything was probably already shut down anyway in the 1970s because of various strikes.

The definition of fit and healthy has changed alot in 50yrs.
We're killing ourselves with stats, information overload.
Public panic would've been suppressed, stuff upper lip and carry on.
They also used to have huge snow falls back then too, these days a couple of hrs worth of sleet would send people to the drs for suspected depression.

It's sad how we now have no resilience, courage, positivity.

I doubt they’d read out the case numbers and death toll at the end of every news bulletin, like a grim version of the football results.

@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

During the Asian flu pandemic they were no measures taken to mitigate the spread of the virus so in that respect surely it's not comparable to the current pandemic? 80000 is a lot😳 but how many covid deaths world we have here....had we take no measures at all🤔

[quote PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit]There is an interesting article about the Asian flu in the 60s here.

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

So it killed 30,000 over 3 years if I'm reading correctly?

Quite different to 71,000 in 10 months with lockdowns (so likely many more without).

People travelled less 40 to 50 years ago so if covid and 2020 happened back then, I don't think spread would have been as widespread.

Also when my parents were younger and also my grandparents, they had simpler lifes. Eating out was rare and mainly on occasions once or twice a year. Now eating out is done more regularly and that would have contributed to the spread with indoor dining and drinking.

40 years ago was 1980.

@DeftandGlory

And not only were gap years and package holidays a thing but we also all had exchange students visit. Anyone doing O level French or German had a student stay or you’d go over there.

In the 70s? You must have been crazy posh, that was definitely not happening in Doncaster.

@fallfallfall

There were entire hospitals devoted to tuberculosis. Of course fewer would survive.

In the 1970s? Don't be daft. Pre-antibiotics yes, infection wards were the biggest partsof hospitals.

We've had a worldwide lockdown and yet Covid-19 has still killed more people than any other infectious disease this year. We didn't make this much fuss about swine flu (the last flu pandemic 10 years ago) despite having social media because it wasn't as bad.

People didn’t travel and mix like we do now though, that’s the big difference.

Most families only had one car too and rarely went out to eat as a meal out was a treat-not Saturday nights dinner.

we now have no resilience, courage, positivity.

You can have all those things and still not be finding it easy

There was actually an epidemic in the UK thirty years ago that killed about 25000 and there was consequent disruption to postal services, communication, healthcare and education during that time due to illness driven short staffing and, erm, deaths. It was reported both here and internationally as being quite the crisis.

Still fewer than half the number we've lost in the UK so far though.

If it had happened 40 or 50 years ago, hopefully the government of the time would have take measures like today, unlike allowing all the Spanish Flu pandemic deaths that occurred a few decades before.

It depends what you mean by 'just got on with it'.

For some people that will mean, everyone just got on with being in lockdown, wearing masks and following the rules. I think that is the way they would have 'got on with it' 40-50 years ago ie they wouldn't have moaned about missing one Christmas, they wouldn't have sneaked off on holidays abroad and then sneaked out of Swiss hotels to head home, they wouldn't have fled London when asked to lockdown, etc. So yy if that's what you mean by just got on with it then I think they would have. There was no expectation of widespread foreign travel. There was a stronger sense of community and collective responsibility. There were fewer care homes. There were stronger family units. Professionals like teachers, doctors, scientists, were valued and their views and health would have been prioritised. There were no Youtube conspiracy videos trying to undermine messaging or pushing their own agendas so there would have been an unity around messaging. imo everyone would have buckled down to ensure lockdown worked because people cared about their neighbours more than they cared about strangers on the internet.

@TransplantedScouser

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

Why are people like you so absolutely determined not to see that the danger of this virus is not just about death.

Yes. everyone would have just got on with things all those years ago. I was born in 1942, we just had the radio and newspapers to inform us all about all the issues of the days,and what we had to do about various things. It was never a complaining and bitching kind of society all over, People just made do, got on with things,and hoped for better times ahead.

Even if it was just 'a bad flu year' (its not), the Spanish Flu killed nearly 50 million people world wide. Not exactly something to keep calm and carry on about.
I also hate this idealism of previous generations. Humans are humans, some people then would have panicked, some would have thought it a conspiracy, some would have taken advantage. Like all of humanity across the ages. Just read Defoes 'diary of a plague year' (where incidentally theres observations about reckless people crowding in taverns when they'd been told to stay at home)

Humanity has always faced these kinds of viruses, even going back to Ancient civilizations. They crop up every now and again.

Of course we got on with it, just like we are getting on with it now. There was/is no alternative.

@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.

The OP said 40/50 years ago, ie 1970s/80s. Not pre-WWII

Believe me, we were 'in the workforce'. Just not many of us were CEOs

OP To give you some idea watch the 1963 film...........80"000 Suspects.

If it had happened in the 80s teachers would have gone on strike. They were out a lot then anyway about lunchtime length and cover etc Wish I'd been a teacher then and not now. Up with this they would not have put.