What if this had happened in the 70s or 80s?

doxy79

How would it be different? No Internet, no satellite TV. The news about what is happening in China, Italy etc would probably be a lot slower getting to us. International travel was far more rare so the virus may have been slower to reach here too? Can't imagine pubs and other businesses would close as soon as they have today. Practically nobody would have been able to work from home. Fragile economy already. Less medical knowledge than today. Would it have been easier to manage or complete mayhem altogether?

Harry Palmr

Well the vaccine would be at least 10-15 years in the making - the understanding of gene science was so basic back then you might as well have used cave paintings as guidance.

In this case China was far more remote with the initial opening up from 1979/80 so the virus itself may never have got out. Who knows it could have been one of those massive events that we only learned fully of years later

Class MayDresser

Would it have been as rampant? Less flying, lower populations...

Fireball81

People would not be able to cope with staying at home without Netflix and broadband.

On the upside, air travel was no where near as common so would be easier to contain.

_Brian

Awful lot less travel both abroad and commuting to work.
That would have stemmed the spread.

I’d say back in the 70’s it would never have gotten out of China.

whisky_galore

Entire schools wouldn't be fvcking off to northern Italy on skiing trips.

Kids would count themselves lucky having a bag of chips and a 99 in Ballybunion.

eddie73

Would have stayed in behind the iron curtain most likely. Interesting point though OP

markjbloggs

it did - look up Hong Kong Flu and Asian Flu

Alun

I went on a holiday to China in 1988, and it was pretty difficult for Westerners to get in, and almost impossible for the Chinese to get out, so a very different situation to now. Plenty of evidence though of the kind of primitive food preparation and storage practices that caused the current pandemic though, with food markets full of cages of all kinds of exotic and not so exotic creatures for sale as food.

Harry Palmr

Alas that last point remains pertinent.

paleoperson

It's the globalization and international travel that caused it to outbreak here in the first place.

People would have sat at home and read and watched tv, the radio, etc. and probably been more intelligent and educated for it.

Strumms

Class MayDresser wrote: »

Would it have been as rampant? Less flying, lower populations...

There would be less ability to deal with it ie. Less medical resources, less education and information ie. Internet, digital tv...this would be a majorly majorly larger shîtstorm back in the day.

rossie1977

If this happened in 2000 it would be vastly different as Chinese were not flying all over the world in huge numbers and domestic travel within China was a fraction of what we see today

Thargor

Would they have even known it was something different and not just a particularly bad flu season for the elderly?

odyssey06

Most of the the people in the high risk groups would already be dead in the 70s...
The rest would be attributed to bad flu season as thargor notes.
Spread would be gradual as much less foreign travel.
Economic impact minimal.

Das Reich

Italian population would not be as old as it is now.

tdf7187

doxy79 wrote: »

How would it be different? No Internet, no satellite TV. The news about what is happening in China, Italy etc would probably be a lot slower getting to us. International travel was far more rare so the virus may have been slower to reach here too? Can't imagine pubs and other businesses would close as soon as they have today. Practically nobody would have been able to work from home. Fragile economy already. Less medical knowledge than today. Would it have been easier to manage or complete mayhem altogether?

If my aunty had balls, she'd be my uncle.

the_pen_turner

less travel nationally and internationally.
people were a lot more self sufficient
medical system was a lot more local
more of the workforce were outside and not in offices
nurses and nursing management ran a cleaner and more autoritarien hospital
someone going half way round the world was never seen again mostly. now you can pop over and back to the us in a weekend
it used to take us country folk 3 hours to go from Dublin to thurles , now its 1 hour
most food was produced locally or nationally
very little was imported unlike now
everything years ago was repairable , now new stuff is shipped in.
the chemicals and steralisers were a lot better at killing germs(and us in a bad way too)
people had a lot stonger immune system


I don't think it would have spread as much if at all and not with so much speed

doxy79

tdf7187 wrote: »

If my aunty had balls, she'd be my uncle.

Precisely. If your aunt had balls she'd be a totally different animal, just as this outbreak could be completely different in another era.

I think it's an interesting thing to ponder.... a pandemic in the 80s I mean, not your aunty with balls.

grindle

doxy79 wrote: »

I think it's an interesting thing to ponder.... a pandemic in the 80s I mean, not your aunty with balls.

Still tho

Aunty with balls, I'd pay a fiver to see it.

joeguevara

Access to information would be minimal to zero.

Compliance to Taoiseach address 100%.

Church asking for prayers probable.

markjbloggs

markjbloggs wrote: »

it did - look up Hong Kong Flu and Asian Flu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_flu_pandemic

https://www.britannica.com/event/Asian-flu-of-1957

https://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hsc-scen-3_pandemic-1977.htm

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/flu-deaths-rise-to-28-but-worst-of-outbreak-may-be-over-1.4135171

This has all happened many times before. My opinion is that there has been a huge over-reaction and the deaths resulting from the economic collapse will far outweigh deaths from this flu.

GreeBo

Alun wrote: »

I went on a holiday to China in 1988, and it was pretty difficult for Westerners to get in, and almost impossible for the Chinese to get out, so a very different situation to now. Plenty of evidence though of the kind of primitive food preparation and storage practices that caused the current pandemic though, with food markets full of cages of all kinds of exotic and not so exotic creatures for sale as food.

Exotic for Ireland or exotic for China?

otnomart

Purely academic
China had very limited contacts with the Western World
Air Travel was horrendously expensive
Those Irish people who could afford holidays went to Wexford, Bundoran, Trabolgan and Mosney.
So it would have probably not spread outside of China and those Countries that had contacts with it and we would have not heard of it in the West

GreeBo

otnomart wrote: »

Purely academic
China had very limited contacts with the Western World
Air Travel was horrendously expensive
Those Irish people who could afford holidays went to Wexford, Bundoran, Trabolgan and Mosney.
So it would have probably not spread outside of China and those Countries that had contacts with it and we would have not heard of it in the West

Not really true.

Its the wealthy in China who are consuming the vast majority of the wildlife, this class of citizen has no issues with international travel and in fact is more likely to interact with similar international travellers.

The reason it didnt happen so much is that until recently enough, mass "production" of wildlife wasnt a thing in China, it was all just peasants feeding themselves. Since the government declared all wildlife to be property of the government the numbers have sky rocketed and it now forms part of the economy.

paleoperson

Das Reich wrote: »

Italian population would not be as old as it is now.

Seriously? I wish people would stop saying things like this as if it had anything to do with what we're seeing in Italy right now. As if this explained it "ah shur they have an older population". It's a small percentage of older people. Their media age is still something like 41, not too far off Ireland.

It may well be there would be 10% or 20% fewer deaths if Italy's population was vastly younger, but that's still an awful lot of deaths. The difference between Italy now and a younger population then would barely scrape a few percentage deaths.

What about all the long-lived people in Japan with the highest life expectancy in the world? South Korea and I think China also no slouches when it comes to elderly people. What about Iran, one of the youngest semi-developed nations on the planet and it's second only to Italy in how badly it's been hit? Older people in Italy certainly makes it worse but is hardly any explanation.

donaghs

markjbloggs wrote: »

it did - look up Hong Kong Flu and Asian Flu

But the spread was clearly slowed by a less globalised world. And China being very restrictive on foreign travel in and out.

Its clear that China has a problem with wild animal markets. The record on Chinese pandemics is so clear its almost become a cliche of disease outbreak fiction. They could have cleaned this problem up a long time ago. If you look at China's infrastructure programs, loans to Africa etc, they clearly have had to resources to do something about these markets.

Geuze

There was a pandemic in 1957/58:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/the-forgotten-1957-pandemic-and-recession.html

donaghs

paleoperson wrote: »

Seriously? I wish people would stop saying things like this as if it had anything to do with what we're seeing in Italy right now. As if this explained it "ah shur they have an older population". It's a small percentage of older people. Their media age is still something like 41, not too far off Ireland.

It may well be there would be 10% or 20% fewer deaths if Italy's population was vastly younger, but that's still an awful lot of deaths. The difference between Italy now and a younger population then would barely scrape a few percentage deaths.

What about all the long-lived people in Japan with the highest life expectancy in the world? South Korea and I think China also no slouches when it comes to elderly people. What about Iran, one of the youngest semi-developed nations on the planet and it's second only to Italy in how badly it's been hit? Older people in Italy certainly makes it worse but is hardly any explanation.

Attached shows how vulnerable older people are compared to younger people. from here: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51674743
Very very clear difference! (of course there will be outliers).
Of course, this is only based on people who are tested, mostly because they had symptoms. Mass testing shows many younger people are infected but never know as they never have symptoms. So you could widen that gap further.

Geuze wrote: »

There was a pandemic in 1957/58:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/the-forgotten-1957-pandemic-and-recession.html

Hence its referenced 3 times already in the thread.

The 1968 outbreak wasn't as deadly as 1957, but interestingly is remembered for Hong Kong. That's because Hong Kong was a properly functioning society with a health care system and a free press.

It believed that the 1968 pandemic originated in mainland China, but we'll never know as thanks the chaos caused by Mao's "Cultural Revolution". Who know how many died there?