Comment by dinkblam
6 days ago
also in the 70s people would not even have "noticed" covid. back then people could not even be bothered to use seatbelts or stop chainsmoking (even in airplanes).
what is considered "acceptable risk" has completely changed in the past few decades.
There were 3 million excess deaths in the US alone from Covid, even with drastic efforts to reduce. I assure you, it would have been noticed in the 1970’s the same way the 1918 influenza pandemic was.
In 1976 there was the H1N1 outbreak which only caused 1 death and 13 hospitalizations but lead to a massive vaccination campaign for tens of millions of Americas, so yeah, they would have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak
The 1968 "Hong Kong flu" had a similar case fatality rate and they certainly noticed that.
That’s also because they had much healthier weights and were on average a decade younger.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnair...
1976 new illness appeared, CDC did a full investigation, identified the cause.