Would Covid-19 have been detected 30+ years ago?

[DollyStardust]

Do you think if Covid 19 had hit 30 years ago it would have been detected? Or would people have thought it was a flu? Wondering what the technology that detected it actually came to exist!

They would have known it was a coronavirus, given these were characterised in the 60’s.

They would have known it was a new corona virus but lockdowns wouldn’t have happened without the internet.
Not sure what they would have done 30/40 years ago, I guess many more people would have died and hospitals wouldn’t have coped?

Why would lockdowns not have happened without the internet? It’s been used as a strategy for controlling epidemic and pandemic outbreaks of various infectious diseases.

The only reason the U.K. had as few restrictions as is did during the 1918 pandemic was that the government didn’t want to damage the war effort.

Well they could identify different strains of flu 30 years ago so they'd know it wasn't that. Plus didn't they have people locked in houses if they had the plague in the 1600's so they had 'lockdown' then too.

I imagine they would have been able to identify it's not flu, but certainly not get the vaccines out as quickly.

I read a fascinating article recently about the 1890 flu pandemic that some scientists now think might have been a similar coronavirus. Can't find the article now, but this Wikipedia Link mentions it.

I wonder how long it would have circulated for before we would have known it was around?

It would have been a lot more difficult to work from home, but schools may still have been closed and educational broadcasts made via TV channels with different time slots for different age groups.

Really interesting question. I did read something about a new coronavirus in the 60s? And everyone just carried on? But I may have imagined it. Say 60 years ago, wouldn't people just have died at home. They wouldn't have gone to hospital and maybe no one would really have noticed unless they totted up the death figures that winter? Pure speculation but I'd love to get others thoughts on that.

how old are you, OP? 30 years ago was hardly the dark ages. I appreciate that the internet has come a long way in that time, but the earth was still spinning without it.

60 years ago was 1962. There were newspapers, televisions, telephones and a NHS even back then. It would have taken much longer for Covid to spread, but I don't see how lots of people getting very sick at the same time would have gone unnoticed.

My DM told me her Primary school having to close for a few weeks in the 60s. (Snow I think- Hebrides) They had lessons via radio! No interaction, just broadcast programmes.

Theres been "flu" epidemics before. 1919 for example.

It was 1992, I think we had scientists back then
Yes we didn’t have the internet but we had these things called “books” and “textbooks” and “worksheets” that would have been sent home for children to work on. Plus because we didn’t have the internet we would have read more and it would have been fine.
Also, people did travel less so it would probably have spread more slowly.
But yes, the early 1990s were not the dark ages.

We managed to detect HIV 40 years ago. I think 30 years ago we may have been able to identify Covid-19.

The Hong Kong flu pandemic was 1968/9
Maybe that's what you're thinking of?

Of course it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed, the flu pandemic in 1968 certainly didn’t.
During the 1950’s my mums school and a few in the area were closed due to the polio epidemic, my mum caught it, as did my grandmother. My grandmother was left paralysed in both legs and her neighbours little boy died. The vaccine became available and people queued to get it. Not many anti vaxxers around then.
30 years ago wasn’t the dark ages.

@CocoaBella

I imagine they would have been able to identify it's not flu, but certainly not get the vaccines out as quickly.

I read a fascinating article recently about the 1890 flu pandemic that some scientists now think might have been a similar coronavirus. Can't find the article now, but this Wikipedia Link mentions it.

This might be the article

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/31/did-a-coronavirus-cause-the-pandemic-that-killed-queen-victorias-heir

Really interesting question. As pp say though, we might not have had the internet 30 years ago but we weren't relying on smoke signals either!

Gosh I was alive 30 years ago, I'm not suggesting it was the dark ages but communication wasn't so instant and people were less in touch with each other generally (i.e.I used to phone and write to family in Canada, now I can message them anytime I want for free!). Up until recently, if no-one ever reffered to Covid as anything other than a cold, me, as a member of the public would have thought nothing of it based on the people I know of having it or evading it. So could the NHS have initially thought we had a flu epidemic and not have even thought to look for Covid?!

I'm thinking of the UK in isolation and without the China warning we had.

I remember growing up heating about nhs preparing for a bad flu winter etc. And just trying to gauge at what point historically could one of those flus have been an undetected pandemic?!

Perhaps my OP wasn't as clear as it could be, I'm finding it hard to explain myself now! Just wondering what are the chances we had undetected pandemics or pandemics that were found much later and at what point historically, Covid 19 could have been missed.

30 years ago - there wasn't really widespread 'home' internet, but universities etc were interconnected. There were usenet groups, message boards, email etc. CERN had http. So I think 30 years ago, scientists would have been able to collaborate (though more slowly) on the investigation.

We would have probably not known about what happened in Wuhan so immediately as our first warnings were came from doctors there, but on the other hand, China wasn't quite so open for travel, so it may not have spread so quickly world wide.

The NHS was better funded then ,OP.

SARS Cov 1 was detected 20 years ago so I think there’s a good chance they’d have detected SARS Cov 2 30 years ago.

Just wondering what are the chances we had undetected pandemics or pandemics that were found much later and at what point historically, Covid 19 could have been missed.

That still doesn’t make sense. A pandemic by nature/definition is when it’s detected. If you are asking how long Covid would have been circulating before people realised it was a widespread problem, well pretty much like every other pandemic over time, when people realised many people were getting sick. Going back to the Middle Ages, they realised the plague was a pandemic without the benefit of the Internet or even exactly what was causing it (they thought rats, as opposed to the bacteria that the fleas on the rats were spreading).

Coronaviruses were identified as a group in the 60’s, so previous to this people would have identified a pandemic but would not have known what it was, realised it was ‘flu like’ but not flu. From mid-60’s on it would have been obvious it was a member of the coronavirus family.

@kittykarate

30 years ago - there wasn't really widespread 'home' internet, but universities etc were interconnected. There were usenet groups, message boards, email etc. CERN had http. So I think 30 years ago, scientists would have been able to collaborate (though more slowly) on the investigation.

We would have probably not known about what happened in Wuhan so immediately as our first warnings were came from doctors there, but on the other hand, China wasn't quite so open for travel, so it may not have spread so quickly world wide.

Yes, China in the early 90s was much more closed. That being said, I don't know if the Wuhan lab was around then.

People also flew less 30 years ago, budget airlines less of a thing. The spread at least initially probably would've been a bit slower.

Definitely. I was at university vthen studying Molecular Biology with modules on immunology and virology and they were warning about inevitable viral pandemics and urging preparedness then. I think the conventional wisdom was it would most probably be an influenza virus flu pandemic a la bird flu or swine flu rather than a coronavirus or other type of virus, but the virology labs and vaccine research and knowledge was firmly in place and had been for some time. We were already doing PCRs in project work and that technology wasn't long invented. my best friend was doing a PhD at the time in a lab trying to come up with a malaria vaccine (constantly covered in mosquitoes!) - which has finally come to fruition very recently!

As PP have said, we were already using JANET network (beginnings of the internet) to communicate with other labs and BBs and message boards were already a thing.

As someone with scientific training from 30 years ago, none of the the last 2 years with the Covid 19 pandemic have been in any way unfamiliar, new to me or in any way unexpected, I have to say. Even the latest Omicron attenuation, I remember a lecturer telling us that viral outbreaks usually tend to get more transmissible but less deadly, as long as the virus doesn't go in too strong initially (like ebola) as that is what it "wants" - constant supply of hosts that live to pass it on into new hosts.

I think the general public just had no idea all this science and knowledge and research was already out there - because unless you were a scientist or a doctor it has zero relevance to you at the time (thanks to the success of childhood vaccination programs that you would have benefitted from from the seventies and eighties).

The other thing they warned us about was antibiotic resistance ...........