The greatest generation, what would be those WWII vets have done if covid shutdowns
dreher
Member Posts: 8,785 ✭✭✭✭
had been tried in the 50s or 60s?? Can you say this whole ball of BS would have been over in less than a week. Knowing my dad, all his friends and co-workers, things would have not started in the first place. The Feds would have realized that there wouldn't be a live Fed in Washington one week later!! 🤣😁🤣
Lord have mercy!! Washington would be a smelly place with all them dead bodies hanging from trees and lamp posts!
I well remember the 50s and the 60s!! NOBODY would have screwed with that bunch of MEN!!
I miss my Dad and his friends. As a group they were REAL men!! Carl, an island hopping Marine, Dad and his crew got shot down 3 times behind enemy lines, my great uncle Clyde, to old to be drafted, volunteered, ended up being promoted from cpl. to tank commander. All the officers in his group of tanks were killed. When they were found by a Col., he looked them over. Clyde was in his thirties, everyone else was a teenager or early 20s. So cpl Clyde commanded the five remaining tanks and got back into the Battle of the Bulge.
These stories as amazing as they were, were no big deal. These stories could be told of most of the combat troops during WWII. These were men.
What kind of men have the bulk of us been during all this happy azzed BS. Don't do this, don't go there, wear a mask, stay at home, don't go to work, screw your children over by allowing them to stay home from school. All over a virus that has a death rate of less than 1/2 of one %.
If only these WWII vets could rejoin us in their prime for a couple of weeks. All problems would be solved.
Comments
Here's what the greatest generation did during world war I.
Grandpa was Troop K, 3rd Calvary in France WW1. He was more worried about Mustard Gas then the darn Virus.------------------ Ray
The Greatest Generation was WWII. The first flu bug, around the end of WWI was horribly deadly. I knew an old guy, who was in the National Guard during the original flu outbreak. Keith was deployed to Cincinnati, one of the worst places hit. His job was to drive the team pulling the wagon through the streets of Cinci with his coworkers loading up bodies to haul to a mass burial site. When someone died the family took them out and laid them by the curb waiting for Keith and his coworkers to come and pick them up.
Dad was a WW2 veteran and was in the North Africa/Sicily/Italian campaign. He didn't talk about this but he had a NO BS attitude about being told what to do. Apparently, he'd had enough of being told what to do during the war.
I mostly followed his lead and find it difficult to be in a position of being told I can/can't do something simply because some fake politician demands cooperation. I'm a law abiding citizen but I'm not mindless zombie.
Right now, this attitude may cost me a job I worked 10 years to get but I won't accept this mandate w/o a fight.
...Dad landed on Utah beach June 6...fought all thru Europe and into Germany as a sniper...
...I think he would have just shook his head, and laughed that low, almost inaudible laugh he had...he was shot twice, and had frost bite in both feet from living in a foxhole while fighting in the Ardennes...he'd had worse than the flu...
According to my mother, who lived through polio outbreaks in 1949 and 1951 (four-six years after the end of the war): Theaters and libraries were closed, which was a big issue in California where temperatures could hit triple digits. Few homes were air conditioned back then, so theaters and libraries, which were air conditioned, made going to a movie or reading a book in the afternoon a great way to beat the heat.
Schools were not closed, but this was because the outbreaks occurred during the summer, when school was out of session is California. Summer school was canceled, but that didn't disappoint any kids of any age. Public swimming pools were all closed- people believed that contracting polio was a greater than normal risk at a public pool. California has city and state beaches...often literally divided by a line in the sand. City beaches were closed, but state beaches were not.
There were no such things as shopping malls back then, and individual stores remained opened. At that time, California had only one professional sports team: the LA Rams. Then, as now, there were no NFL football games played in the Summer months. There were semi pro sports teams, but my mom had no idea if their games were canceled. She did remember that the Ringling Brothers Circus was canceled.
Based on my mother's firsthand observations, the exalted "Greatest Generation" handled polio more or less more of less the same way as the "Less Than Great's" managed COVID.
In both cases, everyone was eager for a vaccine...which was eventually developed.
How would the American population from WW2 reacted to COVID?
They would have gotten vaccinated.
Like they did with Measles, Polio, and Small Pox.
I struggle to reach any other conclusion.