1918: Uncle Scrim’s Pandemic

September 2, 2021

By AHNZ

‘Imagine, if you will, a vaccine so safe you have to be threatened to take it. For a disease so deadly you have to be tested to know you have it.’ We live in strange days indeed! The New Zealanders who faced the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 no such propaganda was required. They were quite aware of what they were going through.

Some 9000 New Zealanders were killed. It was obvious they were dying of the virus not with the virus. Lung tissue damage meant oxygen wasn’t circulating enough in the afflicted’s body so our corpses were blue or dark purple or black.

“I carted dozens and dozens of corpses on a wagon…I took out the groceries..and usually I came back with one or two corpses..the corpses were generally black.”– INTERVIEW WITH COLIN SCRIMGEOUR RNZ National Programme (c.1970s); The New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound

Colin Scrimgeour (Uncle Scrim) was just 15 at the time of the epidemic. Later he would be the major media celebrity and government bureaucrat of his time. It was by no means unusual for anyone of his age, in that time period, to be employed transporting goods or even collecting the dead. Scrim reported first hand that there were a great many fatalities and that the cause of death was conspicuous. In what we call a pandemic in 2020/21 it is far from obvious, especially if you don’t watch TV! In the initial justification for government lockdowns we were told to expect an over-whelmed health system and widespread corpses yet this justification proved premature. Instead, our 2020 hospitals became under-worked and started making dance videos in their empty halls.

Interviewer: It was quite true then that people just collapsed as they stood?

Scrim: Oh, they just collapsed and died.

One similarity Scrim mentions is the uselessness of masks, even back in 1918…

“Everybody who traveled was wearing a piece of rag around their nose, around their faces, as a kind of a mask. But of course it was quite ineffective. It didn’t make any difference whether you had a mask on.”

“I had the flu myself. I got the plague. And I was given a bottle of something called laudanum. And you were supposed to take a teaspoon-full twice daily. I knew that I had the flu because I had been in contact with the dead bodies so I drank the whole bottle which was enough to kill anyone. And I was completely unconscious for four days…I couldn’t drink, I couldn’t eat…brought me over a large basin of rose-lemon jubes and of course in the sub-conscious state I ate the lot. And I think that saved my life.” – ibid

Another similarity between then and now is that the government utterly mishandled the response to the outbreak and under-played it initially. A source, if not the source, of the initial infection was the Europe to New Zealand ship the S.S Niagara. Her master sent a radio message one day before arrival in Auckland: “Please advise Health Department Spanish influenza cases on board; increasing daily. Present time over 100 crew down. Urgently required hospital assistance and accommodation for 25 serious cases. Arriving schedule.” The Government’s response to this important message was to have those exiting the Niagara have a lung-full of government placebo gas and be on their way. Apart from a few (25) who were isolated, the rest were cleared to go back to their home towns and seek treatment there as required.

Scrim mentions another dissimilarity between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu. Not only was Scrim’s pandemic an obvious one but it was one people took deathly seriously. Young Scrim took his infection so seriously, he was so sure his life was on the line, that he took a risky over-dose of alcohol and opiate; An entire bottle of laudanum. He reasoned that it would either kill him or save his life based on the fallacy that more of a good thing must be more good. It was a rash thing to do of dubious use in fighting the virus and should have killed him. It does serve to illustrate just how desperate and convinced a man of that time was of the pandemic banging on every door in New Zealand.

In 1918 we knew damn well there was a pandemic. All we really know about the 2020 ‘pandemic’ are the huge sacrifices made at the demand of our Labour 6.0 government. Look at what they make you give. Our counterparts 100 years ago would be very puzzled at our over-reaction to a tiny fraction of what they were up against.

—

• 1918: Government Placebos for Influenza
• 1918: Influenza Memorials
• 1918: Our True ‘Greatest Pandemic’
• 1918: Ratana Fever
• 1918: The Truth about the Influenza Epidemic
• 1930s: I’m envious of Uncle Scrim

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