Food for Thought...

[boatbuilder]

A member of another forum I go on posted this which he had received from a friend in Australia, in relation to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Maybe we don't have it that bad?

It’s a mess out there now. Hard to discern between what’s a real threat and what is just simple panic and hysteria. For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900.

On your 14th birthday, World War I starts and ends on your 18th birthday. 22 million people perish in that war. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.

On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.

When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. And don’t try to catch your breath. On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war.

Smallpox was epidemic until you were in your 40’s, as it killed 300 million people during your lifetime.

At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish. From your birth, until you are 55 you dealt with the fear of Polio epidemics each summer. You experience friends and family contracting polio and being paralyzed and/or die.

At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict. During the Cold War, you lived each day with the fear of nuclear annihilation. On your 62nd birthday, you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, almost ended. When you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.

Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How did they endure all of that? When you were a kid in 1985 and didn’t think your 85-year-old grandparent understood how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was. Yet they survived through everything listed above. Perspective is an amazing art. Refined and enlightening as time goes on. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Your parents and/or grandparents were called to endure all of the above – you are called to stay home and sit on your couch.

Interesting thoughts.

[Abu Nuwas]

BB, that is the most intelligent comment I have heard on this business. My father was born in 1887, went to school in Bermondsey (where the boys used to think it highly humorous to go and watch Tower Bridge go up, with a resulting fall of horse-manure, hopefully on someone) and fought in the Great War, only to return to find his first wife dying of Spanish flu. He married my mum much later, in 1934, and when war came we were evacuated, twice, (II was born on the first occasion), my father refused to evacuate with his school to Surrey, and used to clamber over barbed wire to reach home, and then acted as a warden . Growing up, my bruv and I used to resent his moodiness; only in later life, did it occur to me what he had been through, esp as our area of S London was heavily bombed, partly because a double-agent had convinced the Nazis that the flying bombs were falling too long, so as little adjustment saved C London, but wreaked S London. H bomb aside...
PS Yes, I am somehow back!

[boatbuilder]

Pleased you got your logging-in sorted out Abu Nuwas and hope you are managing to stay safe.

That's a really interesting story. It must have been awful for your father to return from WW1 to find his wife dying. He must have been devastated after all he had been through himself. So very sad.

I did raise a smile though when I read the London Bridge/horse manure story.