Why wasn't there lockdowns during swine flu epidemic?

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I wouldn't be so sure about that, because-

1: This whole situation is stressing. While it's not the case with everyone, sex drive drops for lots of people when they're stressed.
2: This situation will affect the financial situation of many families. If one struggles to provide for the family they already have, they're likely to be more hesistant to make any new members (which is one of the reasons birth rates have been dropping so much here.)
3: Some of the people who already have a child or two have a hard time right now, so as they realize that they have difficulty handing things with the number of children they already have when things don't go according to their plans, they might be more cautious of making more.

But of course, these only apply to people who think before they act. Some might just do something out of boredom without really thinking things through.

But I remember when there was information about the Swine flu in the newspaper it said that nobody is immune to it because it is new. I definitely remember, because I had a panic meltdown when I read that.

Because they came up with more gobbledygook to panic over with this virus.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/story?id=7647943&page=1

Some Older People May Be Immune to Swine Flu
Past exposure to other variants of H1N1 may be protective, the CDC says.

Schuchat said the findings should be "taken with caution" because of the relatively small number of blood samples and the use of an unconventional test of immune response to flu.

Lots of people don't trust "science experiments." They need real proof.

H1N1-09 (I assume that’s the one you’re referring to) was initially thought to be a serious threat, and classified as a pandemic.
However, although novel it was a hybrid of three other Swine Influenzas all of which had previously spread into humans:
• our immune systems were able to patch up a response to it relatively quickly (in a few days),
• although resistent to Tamiflu the main flu drug it turned out to be vulnerable to Relenza another flu drug,
• it’s capacity to survive outside a host was low (a few hours),
• There was also concern that it might hybrid with a type of bird flu prevalent at the time, but this never occurred.

Covid-19 by contrast is a Bat Influenza:
• it is genuinely novel, meaning it takes longer for our immune systems to fight off (a couple of weeks) meaning more damage is incurred by survivors,
• It’s resistant to all of our existing drugs and vaccines (because it’s a Bat Flu, and ours are for Human/Swine/Bird Flu),
• it has a relatively high capacity to survive outside a host (up to three days depending on conditions),
• Don’t think there’s any concern about it hybridising with pre-existing flu types in the human population, due to its distinctiveness from them (so that’s a silver lining).

And to pick up Ezra’s point: we have a more panic prone political/social climate now than we did eleven years ago: that affects both the response from governments and popular trust in the validity of those responses.

We got very lucky with swine flu- it had a much lower death rate than expected, and a higher proportion of mild cases. It was barely worse than normal seasonal flu, in fact. I also have the impression that it actually spread much quicker than COVID-19, to the point where attempting to track and contain it was pretty much useless. (Might be wrong about this- can't find any concrete info as apparently there wasn't much testing for it!)

COVID-19 seems to have about 10 times the death rate of seasonal flu. For contrast, SARS had 10 times the death rate of COVID-19 but was much harder to catch. Despite it spreading around the world, somehow less than 9000 people caught SARS.

A lot of the concern with COVID-19 is that it's so poorly understood. Researchers are still figuring out how it can be transmitted and how it operates inside the body. Only 10 weeks ago, the situation was so confused we weren't even sure if it could spread directly from human to human.

Would they have cooperated if there was?

I'm just going to post this as a reminder for those people who didn't have SARS become a crisis in their backyard back in '03:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6458609/look ... -outbreak/

SARS, MERS and COVID-19 are caused by an entirely separate family of viruses compared to influenza. It's not a 'bat influenza', it's a coronavirus.

Coronavirus is NOT influenza of any sort; coronavirus and influenza are not related at all, please stop spreading this misinformation. Go spend 5 minutes researching the differences, or if you'd prefer I can provide articles and summarize.

Ah, I was under the impression that “influenza” was a symptomatic description not a specific class of viruses.
Well, there we go: it being a “not Flu” strengthens what I was saying really.

Bear with me, I'm only frustrated sounding because I've posted that again and again over the past few weeks and get tired of seeing the same misinformation.

Media doesn't do a very good job of communicating what nomenclature actually refers to. Colds and COVID-19 are both medical conditions caused by viruses; influenza, coronavirus and specifically SAR-CoV-2 are specific causative agents, the viruses themselves.

Ah, cool: so it’s a bit like calling crocodile a dinosaur!
(My RE teacher did that once and I fixated on the irritation for years afterwards! )

So I shouldn't tell you Nile Crocodiles are my favourite bird?

Not if you don’t want me to call Ebola “tummy flu” you shouldn’t