The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1918 IS IT INFLUENZA?

Taihape Daily Times, 18 November 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1918 IS IT INFLUENZA?

(With which is Incorporated The Xaihape Post and Walnmiho News).

No disease of a pestilential, contagious character has so disastrously affected the whole community in' this country since it was founded as that now raging. The Dominion. Bacteriologist has isolated the germs of contagion and he states they are influenza, but he also states that the germs of pneumonia accompany them, and are likely to seize upon the influenzaweakened patient and cause death. No Statement with respect to the"presence of the pestilence is necessary, that is too disastrously obvious, but it seems that the influenza story, from the scientific point of view, is only half-told that does not very clearly elucidate the processes or moans by which the whole of the people of a country like New Zealand become so subject to its ravages. It has been insinuated that this virulent form of influenza originated on the battlefields in France, Put surely the authorities would not have kept New Zealand people ignorant of such a baneful, life-destroying epidemic being amongst our soldiers. The first alarm of the disease was given when it invaded troopships eft their way to Britain loaded with our soldiers; it was then it became evident that what I was stupidly termed Spanish influl enza was an affection of an extremely Ito be dreaded character. No more is ! heard of the disease of an alarming | nature till reports from Auckland apprise the whole community that it had taken a strong hold fa the northern city and that it was pursuing its deadily course amongst Auckland people. It seems very plain that neither the Health Department nor medical profession generally, saw any real danger of its spread from the Korth Cape to the Bluff. No precautions were taken anywhere until people were succumbing to a terrifying extent from the spreading pestilence. If, as the Government bacteriologist .states, the I cause of the trouble is simply the in- ( fluenza germ, it was natural fhe j Health Department would not train its | guns on an insignificant foe that is ever under its notice, hut we are also | told that the influenza germ is peramj bulating in company with the pneuj monia germ, and it is the one superj vening upon the other that is doing I the mischnef. Influenza has an ally ! in its war against human life in the | pneumococcus on this occasion, which I we do not regard as novel, but still the Health Department did not warn ! unaffected districts to prepare for the j fight. The pestilence became so widespread and dangerous in Auckland that nurses and doctors were hurried there in considerable numbers from various parts of the North Island. Then reports came from town's | south of Auckland that the epidemic j was travelling southwards; people ■were dying daily in Ohakune, and then its virulence was poured out over Taihape, and the flourishing allied germs passed rapidly down, over Cook’s Strait, to the South Island. If the suggestion that our soldiers brought this virulent form of Injflucnza from the battlefields is correct, we cannot understand why the Health j Department has done nothing to safe- | guard the community against it; but, j then, the Bacteriologist infers that inI fluenza only puts on the deadly viru- * lent aspect under insanitary conditions, therefore it may be that our Health Department thought the virulence under somewhat insanitary campaigning in Prance would not obtain In sanitary New Zealand. If so, we

have the explanation of how it commenced its ravages here, but that does net explain why it is so virulent that death is frequently the resultant. It Is a fact that in New Zealand there has been for many years both the influenza bacillus and the pneumo-coc-cus. and yet there has never been an outbreak so terrible as the present outbreak is. If the disease is only virulent undcr\ insanitary conditions, New Zealand is not b3 r any means as clean as a Health Department costing a huge sum of money annually should have it; but if the scientist has been

unlucky in isolating tho germ, and"lie is crediting the ordinary, less offensive influenza bacillus with the crime of a much more deadlier foe the Department may only be accessory after the fact. The indications are that the contagion, -whatever it is, was brought to New Zealand; that it is not the ordinary influenza bacillus or it would not produce any more deadlier results than "hitherto under precisely Similar conditions. That the Health Department regarded it as ordinary influenza is shown by the Tact that it did nothing to stop its importation and spread until its true character was made undeniable and disastrously known. The fact, if fact it is, that pneumonia germs are hunting with those of influenza is only understandable if the whole country is in a much worse sanitary condition than it has been hitherto, for we have had both with us, neither of them are strangers,, and neither needed bringing here either by soldiers or anyone else. Urgently as sanitary conditions need attention in this country. Taihape not excepted, it does not seem feasible that the degree of insanitation in New Zealand could give such virulence to the ordinary influenza bacillus as to convert it into a veritable plague. The people will await some fuller and better explanation.