Why do people keep referencing World War II when talking about covid?

[Covine]

They're not the same at all. The restrictions aren't the same at all. The causes and consequences aren't the same at all. Plus there are plenty of people globally who are actually dealing with both war and pandemic and know that they are two separate things and also know that lots of bad things happened in the world between World War II and now.

It's just weird. Why do people do this?

It was the last disaster on the same scale/lengthy time frame. The comparisons are also made with the Spanish flu even though covid isn’t flu...

I mean we could compare to many of the global plagues throughout history but those are the most recent, and most documented.

People look to comparisons throughout history to see how people coped and for evidence of what we’re capable of and can survive as well as how. It’s not weird or irrelevant but a way of gaining perspective and insight.

I suppose it depends on how you view the phrase ‘those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it’.

To make people feel guilty for not coping with the restrictions. It's like a game of top trumps! "You have a broken leg but I've got 2 broken legs so you can't complain"

I hate it, it really annoys me that people are made to feel bad about not feeling great.

I suppose it depends on how you view the phrase ‘those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it’.

Well I don't think we're going to get a Holocaust or Hiroshima any time soon as a result of not considering WWII in our pandemic response but ok.

Your combining a lot of different arguments there @annevonkleve. It may be anecdotal but most remainers I have spoken to evoke WW2 as a reason to stay in the EU given one of its primary purposes was to avoid another major war.

WW2 is a common shared education point that most people have and have a cursory knowledge of so comparisons with individual sacrifice and community efforts can be made to provide depth to a statement.

It’s become very easy to dismiss WW2 comparisons in recent years as it appears so widely on social media but it doesn’t actually make comparisons invalid.

@Covine

I suppose it depends on how you view the phrase ‘those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it’.

Well I don't think we're going to get a Holocaust or Hiroshima any time soon as a result of not considering WWII in our pandemic response but ok.

And that’s just creating a straw man isn’t it? Taking an example to extremes that were clearly never intended just shuts down a conversation and doesn’t actually add much does it?

If you don’t subscribe to a view or disagree that’s fine but don’t pretend to yourself that elaborately missing the point proves anything.

Well yeah I'll admit to shutting out facile and irrelevant sloganeering. See also: lest we forget etc.

I have no issue with the comparison. Just now reading the Slaves Of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton, set in WW2 and written in 1947. Lots of similarities that I found interesting, the main character Miss Roach, ends up working from home, signs up everywhere 'careless talk costs lives', sense of unease and uncertainty, lots of disagreement. Like now, it depended on where you were at the time. Not everyone saw active service or lost family members, same as now.

It depends on what your motivation is for your comparison to WW2 and how accurate/rose tinted you're being. There are similarities and differences, I'm not sure what's wrong with acknowledging both.

Fair enough @Covine there’s no obligation is there.

I just think it’s daft to dismiss all comparisons; most, not all, are made with more thought and reasoning behind them than just quipping sound bites. There’s no compulsion to think about that but to dismiss them as vapid and meaningless is just wrong.

Someone on here the other day referenced " blitz spirit " as learning macrame and duo lingo during lockdown. I mean , seriously..how insulting.

My parents both served in the RAF in WW2. My mother felt very strongly against dockers striking during the war. To suggest that everyone pulled together is a post war gloss.

Because they have no other argument to use

@Whatever9999

The people who reference it are also usually people who didn't live through it. My Dad actually did and he used to tell me stories about how people broke the rules and didn't follow guidance. He was supposed to have been evacuated to Canada but my grandparents changed their mind at the last minute. (Thank goodness they did, his best friend did go but the ship transporting them was sunk and so his friend died).

There was the black market, looting, and the level of crime was the worst it had been for decades. It certainly wasn't the rosy picture of everyone coming together that some of the posters on here like to think. Probably 99% of people were pushing against the rules in some way or another, even if that pushing was bartering some home grown veg for an extra sausage.

Oh and no one during the war was expected to break off all social contact with their community. In fact the opposite was true, there was an expectation of the communities coming together to support one another (often over a cuppa tea).

My dad said the same and people would tell the wardens if someone's light was on so we're some assoles like today

Because everyone followed the rules, no questions asked. The country pulled together to fight the enemy, sacrificed freedoms forge greater good and none of this moaning you see nowadays happened back then. Snowflake generation. So I've heard anyway.

I mean it's not like we all have older relatives who actually lived through it telling us it wasn't the case. Like PP I have elderly relatives that lived through the wars, telling me that rules were often broken, government decisions were questioned and sometimes met with resistance. Funnily enough not everyone went in to the war happy.

Well no people didn’t follow the rules unquestioningly, from those who dodged conscription to those who facilitated the black market. With the benefit of historical hindsight though we can see the effects of the actions of those who didn’t comply compared to the effects of those who did.

Generally WW2 comparisons seek to illustrate the benefits of acting for the benefit of the wider community or that hardships are temporary.

@Dontforgetyourbrolly

Someone on here the other day referenced " blitz spirit " as learning macrame and duo lingo during lockdown. I mean , seriously..how insulting.

Is it though? The blitz and blackouts must have been terrifying but the majority of the time, for an awful lot of people, WW2 was a time of prolonged anxiety with a hell of a lot of boredom. It’s not so different to now.

I have to say in response to post earlier, education was not interrupted in the war. My mum's convent was evacuated en masse to countryside. And when she was sent into a village to evacuate she and her sister attended the local school, not that it has bearing in current discussion, but I just wanted to correct a fallacy.

Your mum's experience is not universal.

I find it helpful to get perspective personally although don’t tend to mention it . I just think about how I’m not worried about whether I’ll wake up with an intact house. Then I’m able to sleep and carry on as normal.

My dd is about the same age as her great-grandma was when she joined the land army. Dd is doing her A levels online in lockdown. Two very different situations but they both involve a sacrifice of freedom that teenagers normally have, boredom, loneliness and uncertainty about the future. My grandma is still alive at 97 so it's interesting for dd to talk about it.

People (with no lived experience of it or much factual knowledge) try to present it as a time of national unity.
They conveniently ignore the racketeering, the back market, the looting, the disobedience (eg Londoners initially had to break into the underground to shelter from the Blitz as the government ordered them locked).
They ignore the fact the majority didn’t follow the guidance to evacuate their kids.
They ignore the fact that there were wardens to police blackouts because they were routinely broken.
They ignore the general feelings of despair that permeated.

They need to go and watch Foyles War. I know it's fiction but its very well researched in relation to how people actually behaved and felt during the war

@HistoryKitty

I know its not the same thing at all.

I think though people use it as a reference point because its the last time our society was in a major life changing state of upheaval. It was a time when everybody to pull together and majorly change their way of life in order to survive a major threat. That's why its used as a comparison.

this. What is hard to understand?

The comparisons are also made with the Spanish flu even though covid isn’t flu...

It was the last global pandemic on anything like this scale though. The H1N1 virus was a zoonotic virus like Covid 19.

Foyles War is full of anachronisms and not wholly historically accurate.

That’s the point I was trying to make @wowfudge. Situations don’t have to be identical to draw comparisons by identifying similarities.

Ok interesting, how many people under age of 14 had education interrupted during WW2. Would love to know. For the record, my mum came from poor family but a bookish one.