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Originally Posted by LiverpoolWalrus
...or in most of our lifetimes anyway. I'm referring to the the Hong Kong flu of 1968. I vaguely remember it because I watched Walter Cronkite almost every night, but don't recall any change at all to our way of life. According to this source, it killed 1 to 4 million people worldwide, with 100,000 deaths in the US. 1968 flu pandemic | History, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica
There was yet another pandemic in the lifetime of many Villagers - the Asian Flu of 1957. That one killed 1 to 2 million people worldwide and 116,000 in the US. Some people believe a strain of this flu reappeared a decade later to cause the Hong Kong flu. 1957 flu pandemic | Cause, History, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica
Two previous deadly pandemics in our lifetime, and nobody - especially the media - is bringing them forward to see what we can learn from them. I do believe the world didn't shut down during either of them. Perhaps that contributed to the high mortality rate. Maybe someone can confirm that. I do know my school was not closed down - I sure would have remembered that. |
It was a completely different world then. There was no internet - it hadn't been invented yet. There was no such thing as a portable telephone. There was no cable TV, and color TV was still new enough that many households didn't own a color TV set. The 1968 pandemic was also a "new" virus. Most of its victims were over 65 years old. The average lifespan for a man in 1968 was only 66 - so at least half the men of that age already had one foot in the grave anyway. The average age for a woman was only 74.
Compare to 2019 - the average life expectancy was 76 for a man, and 81 for a woman. Pretty significant difference and obviously it means we HAVE learned from then.
Our vaccines are more efficient now, we have better technology and means of communication to engineer medicines and pharmaceuticals. We have more access to more research on a global scale, at lightning speeds.
The media doesn't have to "bring them forward" so "we" can learn from them. We're not the ones who have to learn from them. Scientists, researchers, the medical community, teaching hospitals, pharmaceutical companies - THEY are the ones who need to learn from them. If they're learning it from the media, then I fear for the future of humanity.