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.

I remember my Mum being fearful of us catching whooping cough in the 70's. Classmates were in hospitals for months.

The Whooping Cough vaccine was introduced in the 1950s. By the early 70s there were just a handful of cases each year. There was an unfounded vaccine scare in the mid 70s that meant the vaccination rates dropped a lot in the late 70s and so there were two epidemics in the late 70s/early 80s. If your Mum was scared of you catching whooping cough that is because she chose to not vaccinate you based on a vaccine scare.

In the 1960s there was still rationing.

Rationing stopped in 1954.

I totally agree with a previous poster, in the past it would have been considered a bad flu year, thousands die of flu every year, not a new thing at all, the NHS deals with it every year.

In the 1960s there was still rationing.

No, rationing ended in 1954.

I think some people today are willfully confusing 'resilient' with 'do what you like regardless of the risk as much as possible'. My parents generation were very resilient (and are on the cusp of 80 now and are in good health thanks and not ready to keel over as if they've had their 4 score years and should quietly bugger off) but also treated infectious illnesses with great caution. You'd see people stay off work with anything they might spread, like all the 'ituses' (tonsillitis etc), kids would stay off school for any illness, there was lots of washing hands and care about things that were going round - TV/media would be reporting on health issues/scares, you had things like the 'measles is misery' posters, it wasn't 'keep calm and carry on as if nothing at all is happening'. I think the lockdown would have happened back then too but it would have looked different without social media and without so much travel as now, as different steps would have been needed. We've been having 'lockdowns' or quarantines for 100s of years, think some posters have never heard of the plagues.

@the80sweregreat

My dad caught the Asian flu in the 1960s and was ill for a week ( before I was born) His doctor did a home visit and he told him then that the airplane would carry more virus far and wide. Seems his words came true. Having our own technology at home has helped a lot : back then people couldn't or didn't work from home of course. The doctor used to write it all the notes down by hand. I dread to think what would have happened plus sanitation and hand gel etc wasn't as good : lucky to have a bar of soap around. I suppose there were more hospitals and less population back then : smaller state.

Lucky to have a bar of soap around

I appreciate those weren't the times of daily showers and yes, there was very much still slum housing about. However we did on the whole have indoor plumbing and soap had been invented

@EmbarrassingAdmissions I just wanted to say the same thing. Working class women have always worked for money, whether outside of the home or piece work (e.g., making shots to fire in coal mines).

I think neighbours would’ve supported each other to a greater extent. Things were more localised in 1980.

This is the weirdest thread! We did not have TB hospitals in the seventies! Winter holidays were not unusual - do you think skiing was invented in 1998 or something? Yes there is more travel, but there was still a lot in the 7Os and 80s. My grandfather was born in 1907 and he had regular foreign holidays throughout his life. Of course women worked in the 80s - did none of you have female teachers/nurses/shop assistants?
A big change is the huge number of fat people and the number of very old people with multiple and complex health conditions, so yes we'd have been less concerned about them because there weren't so many. I also agree with a pp that our feelings about all deaths being tragic have changed rapidly and recently, I don't think in the 80s it would have been viewed as tragic if a frail 90 year old had died.
Would schools have closed - who knows? It would certainly have been more tricky but once the hospitals are overwhelmed that's pretty inevitable I would imagine.
Social media - interesting; a huge spread of fake news but also huge numbers of people with accurate information. We can all find out the latest scientific research / data now rather than relying on rumour or tabloid scare stories (which certainly happened in the 80s). I was at primary school in the 80s and people were very panicked by AIDS, I can remember teachers being very careful with gloves when doing first aid.
We didn't have online deliveries in the 80s so food shopping would have had to carry on, there were supermarkets but also more smaller shops (although far fewer by the nd of the 80s).
What people seem to forget is that we have had this number of deaths WITH all the restrictions, so we can't really compare it to flu outbreaks etc where there were no restrictions.

If it caused 80,000 deaths (estimated) then based on a population of 50 million in the U.K. then it was worse than Covid currently.

The actual figures was in the region of 30,000, spread over a much longer period. Also, of course, you are not comparing like with like, @Marieg10: in the 1968 pandemic there was no lockdown, schools stayed open, there were no social distancing rules, no compulsory face covering, etc etc. If we had simply let Covid run its course deaths would have been much higher, to say nothing of the deaths from other causes resulting from the fact that hospitals would be unable to cope.

@nosswith

It would have been different because of the low numbers of women in the workforce, children at primary level walking to school some by themselves, and far fewer winter holidays. However, more people in factory and industrial environments so if it got hold it could spread rapidly there.

A government of able ministers and decisiveness would also have happened, certainly if Mrs Thatcher had been Prime Minister.

There were NOT low numbers of women in the workforce FFS! There were low numbers in executive positions.

Were you there?

@LunaNorth

lucky to have a bar of soap around

Yeah, our pet diplodocus kept eating it.

Jesus.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sorry - not enough coffee

Sweets rationing ended 1953, general food 1954, petrol kept going until 1957 and was reintroduced into the early 1970s (73?)

The idea that you didn't always get the stuff you wanted was an ordinary part of life. What we now called 'prepping' was normal planning, and shops did not run on 'just in time' (other than for fresh produce)

The closures of the 3 day week showed that restrictions could and would be introduced and people did comply. News was via radio, newspaper, and BBC and ITV tv broadcasts twice a day (early evening and 9/10pm)

Thinking back to then, and the changes to reporting which came with the 24 hour news cycle of the 80s onwards, I'm now wondering how much that is a factor

I recall there was a smallpox scare in 1961? 62? None of our parents worried about Bill Gates microchipping them, or whatever rubbish is the current antivac obsession, we all lined up for our jabs ASAP. Because our parents understood that they were fortunate in not having lost chidren to typhoid, diphtheria, polio and a host of other infections that had carried off many of their generation and earlier.

There were NOT low numbers of women in the workforce FFS! There were low numbers in executive positions

Were you there?

Another way to find out about the real working lives of post-war women is to read the obituaries in local newspapers.

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.

It’s like how mobile phones and technology expanded in the 90’s. A mobile wasn’t a weird posh idea in the early 90’s even though only the rich could afford them. You could see it just needed to be mass produced. By the mid 1990’s everyone under a certain age had one and then lots more by 2000. Then it morphed into “smart’ technology.

Same with travel 50 years ago, maybe not on such a mass market scale early 70’s. However kids travelling through India or Europe for a few months etc was pretty common and was how my not posh parent's met in 1968.

Definitely by the 80’s two weeks in the sun was a thing.
I agree city breaks three times a year weren’t a thing but travelling abroad for fun was well established.

@nosswith, how do you think Thatcher managed the new and bewildering HIV? Effectively? I don't have an opinion myself so I'm just wondering whether you do.

There was not a lot of foreign travel in the 70s

In my family, there was one uncle who went abroad on a package holiday
We were in a working class area

@rosy71

50 years ago we had what were called fever hospitals for things like TB & other conditions, they were built away from city & town centres usually in countryside where patients were sent for long term care that included fresh air to help patients recover, patient's beds were regularly wheeled out on balconies & areas outside to get sunlight & fresh air to aid recovery. In reality it is what is needed now, they were also used as quarantine areas to contain infectious diseases like polio, scarlet fever etc.

No we did not!!!!! I was born in 1971 and, during my childhood, quarantining and those diseases were things of the past. A quick Google has just told me quarantine hospitals were wound down following the NHS starting in 1948 and none existed by 1968.

They tended to be used when TB was prevalent post-war. My father was in one in the mid 50s.

After that we had the BCG and better antibiotics and they weren't needed

In the 40s my six year old mum was taken away from her family into enforced quarantine for scarlet fever and didn't see her family for 6 weeks

No self isolation requests then

@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.

Covid isn't flu. That's the number 1 myth people say. If it was a bad flu season instead the world wouldn't have locked down.

@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.

Rationing of what??

Some foods might not have been as freely available but rationing was long gone

I think most people are 'getting on with things', most people don't have the luxury of choosing to do otherwise.
Technology has allowed some people to work from home, but it has also increased the number of jobs that can't be done from home, so as an example, online shopping means more people are employed as 'pickers' or delivery drivers.
I think social media just increases the number of people you hear with a variety of viewpoints. If I look at the people I know locally , we have a few deniers, a few who ignore any restrictions, a few very anxious people, the rest are just keeping going the best they can.

Midge - just because your family didn't travel doesn't mean no one did! In my middle class area and amongst my parents friends many people travelled - mainly driving on the ferry to France but also Portugal, Italy and Spain. Lots of skiing holidays. Safaris, richer people went to the Caribbean, India, Australia... In the 60s young middle class people backpacked and hitch hiked all over the plac.

@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