# What would we (society in general) have done if the flu mutated to be like Omicron? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [January 10, 2022, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-we-society-in-general-have-done-if-the-flu-mutated-to-be-like-omicron/957542 "2022-01-10T20:13:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2022, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-we-society-in-general-have-done-if-the-flu-mutated-to-be-like-omicron/957542/1 "2022-01-10T20:13:05Z")
I got to idly wondering the other day how society would have reacted had the influenza virus mutated to be more similar to the Omicron variant of COVID-19- i.e. more lethal and more transmissible, instead of COVID happening in 2020? Would we have reacted like we did for the COVID pandemic in any way? I suspect the vast majority of people would have just ignored it as if it was just the flu (after all, it _is_ the flu, just more so). What about the government? I wonder if we’d have seen lockdowns or masking or anything like that? ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2022, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-we-society-in-general-have-done-if-the-flu-mutated-to-be-like-omicron/957542/2 "2022-01-10T20:55:42Z")
There was a flu pandemic 100 years ago and many of the social responses were similar. There were attempts to restrict movement and enforce masking. There were people who protested against it or claimed that it wasn’t really that deadly. A bunch of people died. Then things basically went back to normal and no one spent much time reflecting on it, to all appearances.