INFLUENZA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2236, 8 February 1921, Page 3

INFLUENZA.

Interviewed at Wellington, the experts of the Health Department were not inclined to view gloomily the outlook iu New Zealand regarding influenza, despite the recent cables bearing on the subject sent from England. One reason for this view is that the country underwent a process of inoculation during 1918, the effect of which must last for some considerable time, because the spread of the infection then was so great that it cannot but leave its influence behind. Another matter which makes for optimism is that we no longer have those abnormal conditions of population which were prevalent in 1018. There is little doubt that the massing of troops, more especially of troops from country districts which had not undergone the normal process of immunising which persons who live in crowded conditions must undergo, must have been responsible very largely for the abnormal increase of virulence which was experienced in the epidemic of 1918. Then, agaiu, the reduction of resistance which large bodies of the population had to undergo in wartime must be considerecL- Except for portions of Southern and Central Europe, the conditions of privation which produced this reduction of resistance do not now obtain. Certainly they do not prevail in New Zealand. None of the other conditions specified is now in existence to any extent, and therefore there is not now the opportunity for the organisin of the disease to exist in the surroundings which would enable it to increase to abnormal virulence.