I'm 60+ years old, retired, spent almost 20 years working at the health department in IT, so I'm not a medical professional but had to attend all the first responder trainings after 9/11. Being an IT type I'm curious about a lot of things and paid attention to my training no matter what it was. In the 2000's we had a couple of true pandemics that no one gave a shit about. We didn't even wear masks at the health department at the HIV clinic, a human pox we didn't have a handle on yet.
Fast forward to today. My wife of almost 40 years, who (I think) has been voting conservative all this time, is shrieking (not exaggerating) at me for refusing to get the "vaccine". And every other conservative I know has gotten in line to get it. The stupid part is, if YOU have been vaccinated, and you believe it's effective, then why the hell should you care if I've had the shot or not? I can't make her understand this.
I didn't see this kind of hysteria with HIV, and we thought that might kill us all. Something has gone terribly askew on the treadle.
I got real sick in 2009. After a few days in bed feeling like complete shit I figured that perhaps I should seek medical care. I made an appointment to see a doctor and went in, although I was feeling a little better by the time of the appointment. The doc looked me over, swabbed my nose, and said that I probably just had the flu. I got a note for work and went back to work the following day. A day later I got a call from the doctor letting me know that I tested positive for H1N1. That was it, they just let me know, no quarantine or any other bullshit, just an FYI phone call.
I didn't even know about the H1N1 pandemic prior to getting infected because the misleadia barely covered it. There was no masking, no "social distancing", no lockdowns, no quarantines, no vaccinations, no running death count, no hysteria.
And yet if I recall, a lot of people died from that. There just wasn’t this crazy overreaction to it.
Yeah, it was bad, fam. Worst flu that I have ever had before or since. You didn't need a test to know that you were sick, and they wouldn't test you for it unless you had symptoms. It killed mostly younger people too.