What would have happened if everyone stayed at home in WW2

[IsurviveonCoffeeandWinein2021]

So reading lots of different threads tonight arguing for and against lockdown. How it is not safe and the comparisons to WW2 has got me thinking?

What would have happened if at the start of national service everyone just said no? So instead of fighting they stayed home to protect everyone cause then maybe we would not get bombed? So the war was to protect our freedom and our rights. This virus vs lockdown is now very similar. Protect the NHS? Destroy your own life?

As far as I know CEV was not a thing then. National service was compulsory so how would that have worked? I understand some people got to opt out but where thought of very badly unless severely disabled.

Let's face it not one single person who entered that war or stayed behind was safe.

I wonder what happened with medics then as obviously this predates the NHS. People died. It was sad but we fought for our lives. None of that involved staying in our houses watching Netflix!

Medics, technicians all were conscripted. Where would we have been if everyone wanted to stay safe?

I keep typing replies to the OP, but honestly it is just such a stupid and offensive analogy I can't be bothered.

Also the dig about CEV people is really not on.

for some people staying at home is more dangerous than a war zone. You probably will not believe that but it's true

I not only don’t believe it, I find your statement ignorant and offensive.

Both the previous PP's I'm sorry you find it ignorant or offensive but take that from the equation? You would not have had a choice? Is that ok?

I get your point OP.

My mother, who was evacuated during the war, was quite baffled at the lack of (as she put it) gumption. She said that she wasn't evacuated, away from her parents from the age of 5 until she turned 11, so that people could willingly give up their freedom for a virus. Don't forget, either, that she lived through the Asian flu pandemic of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968. During neither pandemic were people forced into lockdowns. I think that her generation would have scoffed at the idea that a virus was going to make them cower at home, when even war itself could not.

OP, I mean this kindly, but have you had one too many? You are not making much sense.

I think it’s more comparable to the Spanish Flu, where after WWI everyone wore masks and avoided mixing to try and stop the spread of deadly flu...

Can someone tell me what CEV stands for? Not an acronym used where I am and it's been bugging. Also/ your question makes no sense. Utterly different issues and circumstances.

SD1978 Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (to the virus).

More info on CEV

www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19

People aren't staying home mainly because they are scared of death are they? I am more concerned about not staying home spreading a disease which could kill many others including my loved ones.

It's not the same. You can't stop a virus by going out and shooting at it. You might be able to stop an invading army though.

If both sides had stayed at home then no way would have happened because a war is an invention that kills people. A virus isn't.

It's not a question of cowering at home. Cowering at home is the new signing up, i.e that's what we've been told to do. In a way people going to work are the exempt ones and mask refusers are the shamed conchies.

But really the comparison is a load of codswallop anyway.

Confused 😕 so during the war there were no blackouts? Nobody crowded into air raid shelters to avoid the deadly threat? Nobody was rationed to essential only items? Families weren't devestated by unnecessary deaths?
They really all just got on with it?

You could more easily compare lockdown to the blackout. People stopped going out at night and shining lights, they stayed at home with the windows covered so the Germans couldn’t use the lights to navigate and didn’t know where to bomb. And they didn’t whinge about it like people are whinging about lockdown.

Honeybobbin I think OP is trying to say we shouldn't be staying at home watching Netflix, but going out and...well i am not sure really. Lobbing handgrenades at the virus?

There is another way of looking at it though. If they had of stayed at home instead of going to fight we would have still been bombed and Hitler would have over powered us and won the war.
Staying home would not have stopped us being bombed it would have just stopped us defending ourselves and retaliating.

My granddad wasn’t allowed to sign up, even though he tried several times, as he was an engineer and needed to work in London. He really wanted to go to war and defend our freedom and my nana now says we now need to stay home for the same reason.

She says that after the war TB swept through the country and everything closed down. Her school closed and they had nothing to do for a long time but everyone just got on with it as they were so used to living with restrictions anyway.

Whenever war analogies get randomly dragged up, it's normally with some ridiculously rose tinted naivity about complience (black market, street gangs, looting) and minimising the trauma caused to those generations.

If Anne Frank gets mentioned, it's normally by the kind of scum who'd have grassed her up in the name of following the rules.

The reality is that war was a physical situation and stressor which humans are evolved to adapt to, rather than invisible threat. The Great War previously meant that the threat was known and familiar.
There were roles to keep people busy be they medically unfit, retired or women filling the gaps from men sent away.
People had family and community support which has largely been banned in the past year, and it's this that people have struggled with.
Just two utterly different situations.

Course they bloody whinged about it. Jesus this mawkish nostalgia is really starting to pale.

@Puzzler333

I don't think you understand how war works.

This. There was a reason that back gardens were being dug up to build air raid shelters and children were evacuated to the countryside.

Yes op, using your analogy why on earth did they have air raid shelters and blackouts? Fancy, hiding themselves away from bombs like that, they must have been real cowards ... Oh hang on, they did that to stay safe didn't they, bit like we are having to hunker down now. The vaccine is our weapon in this war, along with isolating to stop transmission, there is no cowardice involved.

And they didn’t whinge about it like people are whinging about lockdown.

Of course they whinged! They were still human.

Also the Blitz was only eight months long, we've already had longer than that.

Staying home would not have stopped us being bombed it would have just stopped us defending ourselves and retaliating

Arguably we wouldn't have had to be bombed if we were all sitting at home, not retaliating, therefore thousands of lives would have been saved by rolling over and giving in to invasion by the Nazis.

If one life was saved, would it have been worth it?