The psychology of protecting the UK public against external threat: COVID-19 and the Blitz compared

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the World War 2 aerial bombing campaign against the UK between 1939 and 1945 both exposed the civilian population to a sustained threat. Risk, whether from exposure to viral load or the density of the bombing, led to a range of protective measures and behavioural regulations being implemented. The V1 and V2 missiles used in summer and autumn, 1944, functioned as a second wave of bombing, arriving after people believed the danger had passed. Adherence to lockdown and a reluctance to return to work after the lifting of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK were mirrored in the preference for using home-based bomb shelters during the air raids. Heightened sensitivity to risk, or a so-called deep shelter mentality, did not materialise even during the second wave of bomb attacks and some deep bomb shelters were closed because of low occupancy. The most popular protective measures were those that reflected people's preferences, and not necessarily those that provided the greatest safety. As with the COVID-19 pandemic, the public drove government policy as much as they followed it.

An outbreak of appreciation: A discursive analysis of tweets of gratitude expressed to the National Health Service at the outset of the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Clapping has already become a shorthand for social appreciation, although sometimes with ironic overtones. We need look only to the way in which sentiments like ‘Blitz spirit’ still influence people's strategies for coping in times of crisis 54 to realize that the way the pandemic is commemorated will influence how we respond to future crises. Given how contentious thanking the NHS became during the pandemic, the ways in which gratitude to healthcare workers is incorporated into commemorative acts and material culture should be the subject of extensive consultation to maximize its chances of striking the appropriate tone.…”

What positives can be taken from the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia?

“…This is not the first pandemic or large-scale crisis to disrupt daily life, that humans have experienced. It is however, the first at this scale that has occurred during a time of global connectivity via the internet, telecommunications and air travel (9). Throughout our history as a species, humans have endured famines, plagues, world wars, climate changes, nuclear catastrophes and other near-misses of existential threat (10).…”

Tropicality and the Choc en Retour of Covid-19 and Climate Change

“…Imagery of Covid-19 as 'the end of a way of life' comes with allusions to something prior and now putatively lost: to estrangement from national fortitude, resilience and stoicism in the face of adversity. In the UK, 'the war' (as World War II is often simply described), and an associated Blitz - 'we just got on with it' - spirit, is invoked in the present Covid context as the last time the country was truly put to the test, but the over 80s are the only group left with any direct connection to this time and disposition (Jones 2020). Georgina Endfield (2019, pp.…”