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?

Just knew from the title that this would be a pile of poo, and hey presto.

In World War Two the country was facing a huge threat. The government demanded huge sacrifices of the population (some far more than others) and restricted their rights drastically in almost all areas. The vast majority of the population complied because they understood what was at stake, although they whinged a lot about certain aspects (snoek, officious ARP wardens, shortages). The treatment of children was particularly upsetting and a lot of parents revolted against official instructions.

So yes I think it’s a decent analogy for current events on a less apocalyptic scale. But I’m still failing to see what conclusion the OP thinks we should draw.

Our national service is to stay home and not spread the virus. The Lord Haw Haws are the people saying it’s all fake or a threat to civil liberties or that life should go on as normal.

But not everyone did adhere to the black out rules, hence the need for patrols to knock on people's doors to shout at them.

The motto Keep Calm and Carry On would not have been coined now.

More like Panic and Hide Indoors

Or Keep Calm and Carry On At Home?

Actually Keep Calm and Carry On was prepared as a propaganda poster but never used. It was then found and revived in the 2000s. My parents were children in the war and understood about rationing and hardship. I think (if they were alive) they would not have been enthusiastic about people flouting the rules. I expect, like me, they would have ordered in food, stayed home and waited.

@knittingaddict

Just knew from the title that this would be a pile of poo, and hey presto.

Ha ha

@WouldBeGood

The motto Keep Calm and Carry On would not have been coined now.

More like Panic and Hide Indoors

I really, really wish that some people wouldn't keep implying that those obeying the rules are cowards. That is what you meant isn't it? It's a pathetic debating point and makes you look very small indeed.

@thenightsky

Indeed. I think that generation would have viewed as complete wimps and laughed in our faces. Staying in to hide from a virus? Maybe a few people shot for cowardice to make examples.

I don't understand the point you're making?

This is a pandemic. People aren't hiding from a virus because they are personally scared of getting it. They're reducing social contact because every time it's passed on a new chain of infection is started (eventually hitting CEV or someone who is, for reasons we don't yet know, vulnerable to it). Every time someone is infected and hosts the virus, it's genetic material has a chance to acquire mutations, no matter whether they get very ill with it or not. Mutations are bad, because this is how we end up with with new variants that potentially are resistant to vaccines.

From World War2...

Is your journey really necessary?

That is one sentiment that should still be applying.

The more I read this the more I want to bang my head against something.

For the majority of people, the most selfless brave thing you can do to "help your country" is stay the fuck at home, minimise your social contacts, and don't risk starting new chains of infections and increasing the mutation rate. This isn't people being cowardly, it's following basic common sense.

Going out to see your mates and breaking rules isn't being some brave rebel, you're just selfish and thinking you deserve more than others. It takes a lot of tenacity and willpower to follow the guidelines and honestly I commend the people who are sticking to it as best they can.

@IsurviveonCoffeeandWinein2021

I absolutely do understand how it works. Young men where forced to war like we are forced to stay at home?

😱😂

Thanks @pinkearedcow,

It’s hard to compare. Black out curtains as a rule made sense, a bit like washing hands makes sense.

It’s a shame this rule is lost and the performative safety has taken over and become more prominent than the stuff that actually makes a difference.

I think the nuclear adverts of the 80s are better as an analogy, all about giving people something to do whilst knowing that the effect was tiny ? As if a mattress and three tins of baked beans would help🥸

@LakeGeneva

Well OP that's me convinced. I'm now about to load up my gun and shoot loads of Germans. It got us through the war, it'll get us through covid.

Tally-ho.

As a german in the uk should i start running now?

Nip back a few years to WW1 if you want a more accurate view on pandemic during war.

Is this thread an actual joke? For the millionth time, you cannot compare a war with a sodding virus. They're different kinds of risk, take different kinds of approach, and affect people in very different ways.

Are you coming back @IsurviveonCoffeeandWinein2021 to explain the points I asked you about?

@oldegg123

The more I read this the more I want to bang my head against something.

For the majority of people, the most selfless brave thing you can do to "help your country" is stay the fuck at home, minimise your social contacts, and don't risk starting new chains of infections and increasing the mutation rate. This isn't people being cowardly, it's following basic common sense.

Going out to see your mates and breaking rules isn't being some brave rebel, you're just selfish and thinking you deserve more than others. It takes a lot of tenacity and willpower to follow the guidelines and honestly I commend the people who are sticking to it as best they can.

Yes. This.

My great grandfather was killed in the First World War, leaving behind 4 small children. Subsequently the family was broken up and my grandmother was raised by her grandmother and never saw her brothers again. Now that's real sacrifice and trauma.

@honeybobbin "your mother 'scoffs' at 100, 000 deaths?"

No. She didn't 'scoff' at 100, 000 deaths. That's not what I said. Rather, she was scoffing at the likes of people who cowered at home, terrified. Life, to her, was always fraught with perils of various kinds- war, other viruses, even childbirth. You got on with living, because life is always short. This pandemic was just another thing.

Death was just something that happened. To everyone. Sometimes pitifully early. Sometimes painfully. The inevitable end result of being alive.

An inevitable end result that she succumbed to in November, after a massive stroke.

And thank you, yes she was lovely.

People “hid” in bomb shelters during the war and children were evacuated to protect them. Their education was disrupted. All necessary measures.

[quote Shodan]@honeybobbin "your mother 'scoffs' at 100, 000 deaths?"

No. She didn't 'scoff' at 100, 000 deaths. That's not what I said. Rather, she was scoffing at the likes of people who cowered at home, terrified. Life, to her, was always fraught with perils of various kinds- war, other viruses, even childbirth. You got on with living, because life is always short. This pandemic was just another thing.

Death was just something that happened. To everyone. Sometimes pitifully early. Sometimes painfully. The inevitable end result of being alive.

An inevitable end result that she succumbed to in November, after a massive stroke.

And thank you, yes she was lovely.[/quote]
Again.

This is a pandemic. People aren't "cowering" from a virus because they are personally scared of getting it. They're reducing social contact because every time it's passed on a new chain of infection is started (eventually hitting CEV or someone who is, for reasons we don't yet know, vulnerable to it). Every time someone is infected and hosts the virus, it's genetic material has a chance to acquire mutations, no matter whether they get very ill with it or not. Mutations are bad, because this is how we end up with with new variants that potentially are resistant to vaccines.

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

Of course it was. Obviously not using the same terms but do you really think they shipped men with leukaemia, or downs syndrome, or cystic fibrosis, or even near blind off to fight in the war?

And it wasn’t “opt out” either. You have to pass a medical to join up, and if you didn’t pass you didn’t pass, end of.

There was no “thinking badly” of them or men deciding to go anyway. Dh’s dad has a blood disorder, discovered when he went to join up. So he was sent home.

You may want to brush up on your history a bit.