100 years ago Victoria faced a global pandemic similar to the current coronavirus pandemic. While there are many similarities, especially in government and public responses, as Darren Linton reports, there may not be many lessons to learn.
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It is late 1918, the war to end all wars is over but many Australians are still to return from active service overseas.
The home front, depleted by years of war, is still recovering when word arrives of a looming threat.
The influenza outbreak is the first global pandemic to be widely reported, so Australia is forewarned.
In September 1918 a priest from Shepparton visits Caniambo and his observations make the local papers.
“Influenza is unpleasantly in evidence here and there in the town. A recent victim is Mr Horne, head teacher of the State School, who is doing his work under great difficulty, rendered much worse by the shortage of his staff.”
By January 1919 the “Spanish flu” is spreading rapidly, and eventually an estimated 40 per cent of the population will be infected.
Cr R. Roe, president of Shepparton Shire, calls a meeting which decides “. . . at once to adopt precautionary measures against the influenza epidemic.”
Local doctors have been charging 15 pence a patient for two inoculations, but the meeting resolved to provide free inoculations for all who attended the Shire Hall.
“The Agricultural Society and the Defence Department are to be asked for the use of the showgrounds and the Drill Hall respectively, in the event of those places being required for patients, and the ladies of the branch of the Red Cross are to be asked if they will make masks,” a report of the meeting stated.
At the height of the pandemic the medicine men and charlatans of the time were spruiking their miracle cures.
A Dr N. Featherstone, who claimed to have cured epidemics of typhoid, dysentery, diphtheria and consumption addressed a small gathering of influential Sheppartonians at the public hall in late 1918.
Timber merchant E.J. Vibert chaired the meeting, which happened to clash with an important War Loan public meeting — hence the small turnout.
The townsfolk were asked to move a motion calling for a national inquiry into Featherstone’s claims.
Mr Featherstone said there were many swamps about Shepparton, and there might be a bad time for the town when the hotter months came.
“There is a lot of influenza in Shepparton; can it be prevented?” Mr Alex Graham asked.
“There is a lot of it all over the world. They call it influenza,” he responded implying he thought this was something else and he could cure it.
Despite desperate times ahead the community wasn’t swayed, with he chair noting that at every level Featherstone had been turned down.
At the start of 1919 Tatura was among many towns forming local committees to deal with the influenza pandemic.
The state school holidays were extended by a month; ‘poor Mum’, one report noted.
A research paper compiled by the Victorian Parliamentary Library — Epidemics and pandemics in Victoria: Historical perspectives — said the litany of miracle cures led to a ban on advertisements without official approval from health authorities.
“Although panic arose as people rushed vaccination centers, erroneously believing injections would afford protection from the virus, no evidence has been found of panic buying, since limited reserves prevented individuals from stockpiling goods.”
The research paper puts into perspective the similarities between two pandemics a century apart.
There was much altruism evident as local suburban women’s groups formed and developed rosters to prepare food and visit the sick – households would put an SOS sign in their window to show help was needed.
Australia's first line of defence against influenza was quarantine.
The new Australian Quarantine Service was alerted to the existence of the new influenza type in July 1918. Monitoring its spread, they implemented maritime quarantine on 17 October 1918 after learning of outbreaks in New Zealand and South Africa.
In late November 1918, state ministers of health, medical authorities and the Commonwealth Government met for a national influenza planning conference. The meeting adopted a 13-point plan for dealing with the spread of the virus, which centred on the Federal Government taking responsibility for proclaiming which states were infected and organising maritime and land quarantine.
The states would arrange emergency hospitals, vaccination depots, ambulance services, medical staff and public awareness campaigns
Under the agreement, state authorities were required to promptly report any cases to the Commonwealth, which would then close that state's borders to protect its neighbours. Once cases were reported in other states, the Commonwealth would lift the border controls.
The plan was cumbersome and did not work, as Victoria and NSW soon came to disagreement.
The first diagnosed case within Australia occurred in NSW at the end of January 2019.
Victoria immediately followed suit, also reporting its first case. However, it was already public knowledge in the newspapers that Victorian doctors had been treating for almost a week what they suspected might be the new influenza, but were not yet prepared to declare it.
When they did so, the NSW Government blamed Victoria for failing in its duties under the national agreement and causing interstate transmission.
Under the federal agreement, NSW and Victoria were now supposed to be declared a single ‘quarantine area’, but NSW closed its border nonetheless, walking away from the November agreement.
The November agreement broke down and each state followed its own course.
While Victoria imposed no restrictions, NSW extended its border closure to South Australia and a few days later Queensland closed its border with NSW. Those wishing to move between states were quarantined in tents for between four and seven days before gaining permission to cross the border.
Western Australia closed its borders, while anti-Commonwealth sentiment led to the impounding of the transcontinental train.
Tasmania maintained the most rigid measures and clashed with the Commonwealth over how long steamers should be quarantined in its ports. By the end of the pandemic, Tasmania had one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.
Historian Humphrey McQueen wrote later: "In 1915 an external menace had driven Australians together; by 1919, an internal danger revealed yet again how easy it was for Australians to stand apart. If national unity involved loyalty to the Commonwealth as an administrative machine, the Pandemic showed how little of it there was.”
The end of the crisis was marked by an achievement of unity, when the Commonwealth Government established a new Department of Health in 1922.
While politicians bickered, places like Shepparton were busy trying to get by. Racing was suspended and billiard halls closed. Schools shut and major public events like the Shepparton Sports Carnival were postponed.
Almost daily the newspapers would list the latest influenza victims: "The news of the death of Mr Joseph Kerrins was received throughout the district of Shepparton with universal regret" one report started.
Having contracted the influenza, Mr Kerrins died peacefully on Friday, August 8, 1919 at his home, Sarronne, in Kialla West.
Mr Kerrins was secretary of the Farmers and Settlers’ Association, and maintained a keen interest in the Shepparton Agricultural Society. The influenza claimed the influential, the powerful and the poor without discrimination.
One of the interesting questions posed in the research paper is why there is so little to commemorate the victims of the 1919 pandemic, or the brave citizens who fought it.
Much has been said and written about frontline workers during the current pandemic, from epidemiologists, doctors and nurses to supermarket workers.
Despite the pandemic being more deadly globally and just as deadly for Australians as World War I, historian Peter Hobbins writes: "Compared with the Anzac memorials that peppered our towns and suburbs in the decades after the Great War, few monuments mark the impact of pneumonic influenza.”
Compared to the 62,000 monuments to Anzacs, there are fewer than a dozen public Australian monuments to the pandemic dead which Spanish flu historian Mary Sheehan believes is because of the ‘invisible nature of the disease in comparison to other natural disasters like floods and bushfires.”
The pandemic, Ms Sheehan adds, "was not a sudden dramatic event like these disasters, no traditional heroes emerged, and it did not leave a visible legacy of destruction — except, of course death, and rises in the number of single parents and orphans".
Consistent with mortality rates elsewhere in the world, almost a third of deaths in Australia were adults aged between 24 and 34. Consequently, more than 5000 marriages were affected by the loss of a partner and more than 5000 children lost one or both parents.
The parliamentary paper concludes that while there are similarities, history has no lessons for the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“Historians and other experts also recognise that the history of health crises often warns us of the limits in drawing historical analogies: sometimes there are few or no parallel lessons.”
As leading science journal The Lancet noted at the beginning of the current crisis: "When the present is viewed through the lens of former disease outbreaks, we typically focus on similarities and overlook important differences. In other words, analogies create blind spots.”
Shepparton News chief correspondent