1918: Our True ‘Greatest Pandemic’

November 4, 2018

By AHNZ

Historian discusses what we can learn from our deadliest pandemic

“I think it’s about ensuring that our communities are ready, are prepared, have plans in place..”

This trite statement of the obvious is all that Newshub had to offer in backing up that headline. I don’t fully blame Dr Clarke although he left out, as State historians will, the truth about the epidemic…

To Dr Stephen Clarke, historian,-

I know editors pick the headlines, not you. But still the most important thing to be said about the epidemic was that it was government caused. That’s what we really need to learn in order to avert disaster.

Assumption of martial responsibility. Medical Theatre in place of health. Control of drugs. Promotion of whiskey and stout as medicinal. Public gas chambers to congregate the sick and then poison them…

I think you’re on to something big in talking about neighbourly communities facing life and disease together back then. If we could just leverage that into full-on laissez-faire free market economics and tell everyone *that* then we’d really learn from our greatest pandemic: Statism!

#influenza

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