What if the COVID Pandemic Went Down in 1991?
I was having a conversation with my son the other day and the question came up, “Dad, what if this pandemic happened when you were my age?”
It’s a good question. I was his age around 1991. Looking back and really thinking about it, things might have been different in 1991 but people were also largely the same. I told my son I’d write up a piece and share my perspective on what it might have been like if the COVID-19 pandemic hit us 30 years ago.
World Events
There were two major world events in play in 1991. The last dozen years or so have yet to see its equal.
The first was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Yes… Rocky, Maverick, Patrick Swayze, and his Wolverines finally won and the Cold War was over. This was a big deal as multiple generations had grown up under the cloud of the Cold War. Now the question: How would this have gone down with a raging COVID pandemic?
I surmise that the socio-economic impact of the pandemic would likely have accelerated and exacerbated the collapse of the Soviet Union. If it was crumbling on its own without the aid of a deadly virus, it might have collapsed harder and possibly violently with its existence.
The second event was the Persian Gulf War. I have a memory of my mother coming home from work and saying, “Turn on the news. We’re at war.” Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the rest of the world wasn’t too happy about it so the U.S. and its allies fought a short but terrible war to push them back.
The interesting questions here are: Would Saddam have invaded Kuwait with a viral pandemic underway? If he did, would the U.S. and its allies have responded? This makes me start thinking about an interesting present-day question:
Has this virus stopped any wars that might have happened if it wasn’t here?
I also find myself thinking about how George H.W. Bush would handle a pandemic. It would all likely be up to state governors back then too
Technology
Major events aside, the question about the impact the COVID pandemic would have had on people is largely a technological one. 1991 saw the birth of many of the information technology we take for granted today. However, much of it had yet to proliferate throughout society at large. Let’s take a look at a few technology facts about 1991:
There are almost 5.5 billion web pages today. At one point in 1991, there was ONE webpage! Tim Berners-Lee introduced the first web page and web browser in 1991. Let that sink in.
The Internet itself was made available for commercial use in 1991. By the end of the year, there would be about one million computers connected to it. Currently, there are over 300 million devices connected each month!
In 1991, PC manufacturers started introducing “Notebooks”. You take your thin, light laptop for granted now but its ancestor was a clunky “notebook”. However, in 1991 it was a big deal for your computer to be mobile, even if it was pretty heavy.
You enjoy your GPS device and the 24 satellites giving you road directions today, but in 1991 there were 16 GPS satellites and the only people using them were soldiers in the Persian Gulf War. Book-form road atlases were still a thing in 1991.
The first Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) phone call was made in 1991. You hear about “5G” today, but this was the OG 1G yo! Later that year, “2G” would launch including encryption and rudimentary SMS messaging.
Think about what technology has enabled you to do during this pandemic. We’ve become professional hermits. We can work from home on our computers, connected to the systems we need to be productive via the Internet. We have face-to-face meetings with colleagues via Zoom and webcams. We can order lunch from our phones on Grubhub or Doordash which comes to our doors. We can do our shopping on Amazon during our lunch break and buy almost anything that is processed, manufactured, and made for sale and it will all come to us.
Unless we are part of the infrastructure that makes this all work and have to physically be somewhere, we literally do not need to leave our homes. All politics aside, from a technological and infrastructure standpoint, we could not have been better prepared for the isolation that COVID-19 brought upon us.
However, in 1991, this was not yet the case. Much of the technology that exists today existed then, but it was merely congenital. The technologies that enable us to work and shop from anywhere were literally born in 1991 and had not yet grown up.
How would people have been able to work in offices? Would employers just make people come to the office, wear masks and sanitize a lot? Probably. Could others still work from home in some way? People would probably shop as they did. There was no concept of ubiquitous e-commerce yet, so nothing was lost there. Would a pandemic in 1991 have accelerated the information age? Decelerated it? Where would we be now if a large-scale pandemic happened in 1991?
Would Dominos be what Amazon is today?
Writing this article and asking these questions makes me realize one thing:
1991 was a more important year in recent history than anyone might realize.
Entertainment
While technology has changed the way by which we consume entertainment, I can say that, for the most part, people in 1991 liked the same things people have an affinity for now. We liked blockbuster movies. We liked television shows. We liked video games. We liked music.
The main difference between my 1991 self and 2021 self today is that entertainment is no longer distributed physically. Entertainment is delivered digitally and there is A LOT MORE of it.
Movies
New films in 1991 followed a path. There were a multitude of great movies released in 1991. Let’s take “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”, the most popular movie released that year, as an example. If one really wanted to see it soon, one went to the theater. That’s the only place one could see T2. Period. End of story. After that, there was a waiting period and eventually, months later, it would be at the local Blockbuster or Hollywood video store. One would have to rush there though because there were only limited VHS copies available. Yes, I said VEE HAYCH ESS! Eventually, the film would debut on HBO, Cinemax or Showtime premium cable channels and play multiple times for months on end.
New films today can now bypass theaters and video stores (which no longer exist anyway I guess) and go straight to digital purchase or distributed on their own digital streaming networks. We can watch brand new blockbuster movies at home the day they are released.
How would 1991 have dealt with theater closures? Straight-to-VHS was a sign that you had a B-movie, but would big-budget movies have gone to VHS for rental at a premium? Would theaters even be closed in the first place?
Television
Television shows were a different story. They were released every week on either network or cable. People had to make appointments with tv shows. One watched their favorite show on a certain day and certain time. I had a date with “Star Trek: The Next Generation” every Monday evening. It was my favorite day and time. Subjectively, there was a lot of good television in 1991.
While network and cable television still exist today, most people binge watch the trillions (exaggeration) of streaming shows. Someone might get through a whole season in one day! These days, people record network shows and bypass ads rendering them useless.
The only thing that would have changed in 1991 is increased viewership of airwave TV and cable. Advertisers would have been quite happy with this arrangement no doubt. People would have watched even more TV than normal (which was probably already too much) and would have watched even more advertising.
Would the post-consumer 90s attitude have arisen if COVID hit in 1991?
Music
1991 was a year that reconstructed popular music and the effects are present today.
That’s an article by itself for another day. Similar to movies on another scale, if you wanted to listen to your favorite artists’ songs, you bought their physical albums on either cassette tapes, or the newer “digital” compact disc mediums. You could also hear them (and record with good timing) on the radio.
Again, a pandemic in 1991 would probably have seen a boom in record sales as well as radio listenership, which advertisers would also have loved.
What effect would this have on the musical revolution happening this year? Would people be exposed to more or less of the artists that changed popular music in 1991?
This may very well have been the biggest cultural impact of a COVID pandemic perpetuating in 1991.
Video Games
There’s one other technology fact I forgot to mention:
1991 saw the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
I don’t know what’s going on much with video games today, but I’m pretty sure that a global pandemic in 1991 would have seen the same levels of SNES gameplay. Nothing would have changed. It was awesome. People played it a lot. They would have continued to play it a lot. They would have bought or rented new games and played them with dispatch. End of story.
What do you think? How do you think the pandemic would have gone down in days past? Let me know in the comments or contact us info@the80sand90s.com.