Many people who might be reading this post may not be at least 52 years of age, and therefore they probably wont have any recollection of what I'm about to write.
Back in December of 1968, The Hong Kong flu ( a flu as deadly and scary as Covid-19) swept over the world and it killed one million elderly people, 100,000 of whom were in The USA. Most of the people that died were aged 65 or older.
In January of 1969 a music "festival" was being planned for August of 1969 to be held in Ulster County, New York in the small village of Woodstock. (I've been to The Village of Woodstock many times and I can assure you it's tiny. I used to live about 30 miles from it.) The Village of Woodstock government thought that 500,000 people couldn't fit in their tiny village so the promoters were denied a permit to hold their festival in Woostock. The promoters then moved about 40 miles south of Woodstock to Sullivan County, to The Village of White Lake which is in the middle of no where, and got their permit to hold The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair. You know the rest of that story, I'm sure.
Back to the Hong Kong flu.... In January of 1969, the most lethal time period for The Hong Kong Flu, the planners thought that there might be a half million people that could attend the concert/festival. And while most people do not know this, that flu was the most lethal flu - EVER. And there was in fact a pandemic. Interesting how an event with an estimated 500,000 people attending it was allowed to go forward. During the pandemic, no schools were closed, no businesses were shut down, the stock market didn't collapse, you could go to the movies, bars and restaurants didn't close, Congress didn't pass any legislation to thawrt the flu, and there were no mask mandates. The media did cover the Hong Kong Flu pandemic, but it wasn't center stage, like man landing on the moon in July of 1969 was. Of course, the BIG issue was a war in Southeast Asia - Vietnam. The only action taken by government was to collect data, and to watch, wait and see.....
Hmmmmmm. Why was Covid so different? Could it be the 24 by 7 by 365 day cable news cycle? CNN, FOX, MSNBC didn't exist in 1969. Did the media blow Covid wildly out of proportion?? I dunno. Maybe, but it sure is interesting how times have changed. Rant off. Back to FF5. G5