Why wasn't there lockdowns during swine flu epidemic?

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I can clearly remember back in 2009 when the swine flu was first spreading from Mexico, and I was worrying then. The number of cases were going up each day in the UK; one, then 6, then 18, then 55, and so on, until after a couple of weeks or so the figures had reached to 1,800. People were being hospitalized, there were reported deaths, and the elderly and those with lung problems were warned that they were at risk of dying from it, and it was all on the front of the newspapers. I was terrified but suddenly it all went quiet and nobody mentioned it any more and we all just got on with our lives.

Also with SARS and Ebola. I remember when I was 12 or 13 kids at school were talking about SARS and it was all on the news and I was in a panic then. But why was there no lockdowns like this? When I first heard about the coronavirus I just scoffed and said, "I will not waste my energy worrying myself stupid about that, as it will just be another swine flu thing". I never, ever thought that a new coronavirus would cause all these strict lockdowns, not in my wildest dreams.

How come these other deadly diseases in the past did not reduce the world to this?

I think the infodemic may be partly to blame. We can't go for more than five seconds without hearing about it or someone talking about it. It's like no one can talk about anything else. It's gotten so bad I uninstalled my news app because I couldn't stop looking up information only to hear how many more people died or will die and I couldn't stand it anymore.

There's a few reasons

Swine Flu didn't cause people to end up in hospital in such great numbers. If everyone has Covid-19 at once, there won't be enough respirators for everyone, including those who need respirators for other reasons. Isolation slows down and may even stop the spread of the virus.

Swine flu didn't cause as much damage to the lungs as Covid-19.

Humans had immunity to swine flu. Covid-19 is a novel Coronavirus which means that it's a type Humans haven't been exposed to before, so have no immunity.

This is an interesting read.

Swine flu affected children and younger people more, but older adults had already built up an immunity to that strain of flu virus.

https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-pandemic-vs-swine-flu.html

In the US this caught us with our guard down. The current President has been taking apart health service infrastructure, while Obama took office during the Swine Flu Epidemic. Obama was looking to build up infrastructure anyways, rather than take it apart, so we were more ready. It is easy to get caught off guard when you are looking the other way or simply not paying attention.

With Swine flu we were lucky in that the older population already had an immunity, so they didn't tax hospitals.

There was also an unfortunate combination. Cruise line passengers. Spring break vacationers. Mistakes that made infected people spread disease in airports. People who couldn't get tested. And a disease infectious enough to take advantage of the situation.

Our luck ran out.

What about when aids was discovered. There wasn't a lockdown on monkeys!

Some more interesting reads:

This one explains the effects observed in the lungs of survivors who have "recoverd

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-recovere ... a-52859671

Here's an interesting article about how it develops into pneumonia in certain cases and why that is difficult to treat.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... t-covid-19


Regarding the throwaway comment about AIDS.




People weren't isolated because you couldn't contract it by accidentally sneezing on your workmate or transferring the virus to your nose after touching something that a carrier had handled after touching their mouth.

By the 80s, when most of the world had become aware of AIDS, it was long past the point of no return. It was traced back to eating a certain species of primate in the late 50s. What would be the point of banning Monkeys.

https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/origin

^ Fluid/debris filled sacs in the lungs, I’m now wondering if those will pose an additional future health risk...
Interesting reads, thank you

Also on the HIV/AIDS: it can only spread via blood, sexual fluids & breast milk.
Horrifyingly destructive, but not a fast spreading virus due to its limited opportunities for transmission.

Covid-19 spreads at multiple times the speed that Swine Flu did. Doctors and scientists are also more educated about deadly bugs now than they were 10 years ago. The technology that they work with is that much more advanced. If technology and knowledge was this advanced 10 years ago, there would have been a lockdown. When we knew better, we did better.