The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1930 OUT OF QUARANTINE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 909, 28 February 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1930 OUT OF QUARANTINE

MANI citizens will hope that the Director-General of Hospitals and the Health Department’s medical officers in Auckland have not done the wrong thing today in releasing from brief quarantine on Motuilii Island the majority of the Aorangi’s passengers to New Zealand who were segregated there last Monday because of their shipboard association with or rather proximity to a smallpox patient on the Pacific liner. In the circumstances five days ago, everybody was convinced without any doubt or qualification that the health authorities did the right thing in enforcing the quarantine regulations governing the prevention or restriction of a higlily-infeetious disease. Is there now the same cause for complete satisfaction and unqualified confidence? It is not for laymen to attempt a conclusive answer.

There is no reason to suggest or even to infer that the medical experts concerned do not know their business and duty. But the laws dealing with precautionary measures against a possible spread of infection are either of their own making or have been made on the advice and with the full approval of the best medical authorities, Arql these laws do not permit the taking ot any risks. In the New Zealand enactment it is specified definitely that the period of quarantine for smallpox shall he eighteen days, no less and no longer. After five days on Motuilii Island, eighty-one of a hundred quarantined passengers have been released on certain conditions as to subsequent observation and other efforts at safeguarding the public. They have been set !t J' aS - ljeon announced officially, on the contention that, atter effective vaccination, early freedom from isolation follows tiie lines ot modern practice. Although Motuilii Island is a delectable retreat in summer weather and is in itself a health resort, no one would care to be detained there compulsorily or would wish tourists and folk coming home from far countries to suffer the same compulsion. -And the quarantine law always causes much individual inconvenience and deranges business, sometimes with serious loss. All that is regrettable and deserving of sympathy. But even mild smallpox is an unpleasant disease against which every commnnitv should be protected with the utmost vigilance. It was to provide such essential protection that the period of quarantine was fixed statutorily at eighteen days, not at less than a third of the protective time. Modern practice, of course, may be impeccably right, but it appears as though the latest practice moves much faster thau legislatures and the medical profession when serving in the role of political advisers.

Happily, the Dominion has been singularly free of this infectious disease which, in its mildest form lias a*morbidity rate so fractional as to be scarcely worth recording—less than from 0.1 to 0.3 per cent, in Great Britain as against a mortality varying from 10 to 30 per cent, in respect of the severe type. Since 192 i only two cases of smallpox in this country have been recorded by the Government Statistician. There have been no deaths. This record is so excellent that nothing should be done in any circumstances to spoil it or even jeopardise it. If responsible medical authorities have no hesitation about pruning their own law to fit special conditions, the public presumably need not give way to any anxiety at all. But let it be understood clearly at least that the authorities realise their responsibilities and are ready and able to justify their policy and action. A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the value of vaccination and, without arousing the old anti-vaccination war, the efficiency of such protection need not here be disputed. But medical experts themselves do not go so far as to suggest that vaccination against smallpox gives immunisation to unvaccinated persons. It only protects those who have been vaccinated. Thus vaccination does not protect the community unless everyone within it has been vaccinated as a safeguard against the spread of smallpox. Within recent years compulsory vaccination has been slack enough almost to have become a dead law. The conscientious objection clause is by far the most popular provision in the Act. Thus the public in this country, as elsewhere, is beginning to think that smallpox is trivial. It is to be hoped that the health authorities are not beginning to think so, too. CONCILIATION OR COERCION? 4 TUB invitation to the Mau chiefs in Samoa to meet the Administrator and the Hon. J. G. Cobbe at an amicable conference suggests that wiser counsels are beginning to prevail in official quarters. It is time the policy of coercion was dropped for one of conciliation. Hitherto almost every overture of the Administration lias had a string to it. The Mau chiefs have been required to swallow their pride and their dignity, and they have naturally refused to do so. If the Administration has shown that it can be stubborn, the Samoan can be stubborn as well. The present deadlock might be ended by gunfire and bayonet after the amicable manner advocated by Commodore Blake, but the pursuit of such methods would mean the survival of distrust and bitterness long after Commodore Blake’s term in New Zealand had expired. With a guarantee of safe conduct, immunity from arrest, and cessation of the Administration’s punitive operations, the Mau chiefs have no apparent reasons for declining the Administrator’s offer. It has been suggested that there may be difficulties in the way, but they should not be insuperable. There is now a responsibility on the shoulders of the Mau leaders, as well as on the • Administration, and as a demonstration of sincerity they should fulfil it. Unfortunately the one man above all others who in these circumstances would have been reasonable and tractable, Tamasese, is dead. The others may be too cowed to leave their fastnesses; but if the meeting should take place, and the Adiiiinistration is prepared to discuss possibilities of settlement without insisting on harsh terms of surrender, the conference should be a happy augury for future peace. Among the blessings thus conferred would be the possible disbandment of the Samoan military police force, which has now completed its training at Trentham. The only benefit the formation of the corps has provided is that it has kept a number of able-bodied men in employment. But it is not a very profitable investment for the country. If they embark for Samoa the police will perforce follow ingloriously in the path of the original Samoan Expeditionary Force, but with what radically different purposes. The one sailed in the flush of patriotic fervour, acclaimed throughout the country. The other goes to subdue by warlike measures an unarmed and fundamentally friendly people. Their task would be a parallel to the conquest of the Waikato Maoris, yet with less justice, and less public support.