Short, sharp and deadly
Whether New Zealand gets an epidemic this time remains to be seen, but in 1918, the body count left no doubt.
When the Spanish flu arrived in New Zealand in October 1918, it struck with a vengeance. It could be so swift-acting that a person could show no symptoms in the morning and be dead by nightfall.
Within two months, 8500 people were dead, half the number who died in the four years of World War 1. Many of the flu victims were young adults, some of them soldiers who had survived the trenches of World War 1 only to come home and succumb to the flu.
“It was short and sharp, from late October and it had petered out by December,” says University of Auckland history professor Linda Bryder. “Not only did it have that death rate, but it is estimated that up to 90% of the population contracted it.
“The other scary thing that is quite different from the current Sars coronavirus 2 and any of the others, such as [the first] Sars, is that in 1918 the main population group that died from it were between the ages of 20 and 40.”
The high incidence of mortality among otherwise fit young people is thought to be due to the way people’s immune systems reacted to the virus, attacking it with such ferocity that they overwhelmed their own bodies. Most people who died had complications, such as pneumonia. In 1918, there were no antibiotics.
Because it was so infectious, it attacked people from all sectors of society, though it had a higher rate among Māori, Bryder says. “The reason for that has never really been explained other than that perhaps their living conditions were so much worse.” There were 2000 Māori deaths out of a Māori population of 51,000, so their death rate was disproportionate, considering New Zealand’s population was a little over a million at the time. Adding to the fear and distress was that it left many orphans, because the virus attacked young adults.
From her studies of the 1918 epidemic, Bryder sees similarities and differences in reactions to today’s threat about the Covid-19 disease.
One similarity was the public’s tendency to panic, she says. In 1918, health authorities tried to keep people calm. One initiative was to establish “precautionary steam spray inhalation chambers”.
In Auckland, a chamber was set up in the Chief Post Office. People would enter and inhale a 2% solution of zinc sulphate, which would be “atomised by means of steam under pressure”. The aim was to help them acquire immunity to the virus, and though it was popular, with 1000 people a day passing through at the height of the epidemic, there was no evidence it worked.
The Medical Officer of Health at the time was quoted as saying, “It was of considerable mental value to the nervous.” Bryder thinks it may also, inadvertently, have been a good way of spreading the virus.
Little bottles of medicine were also dispensed by the Department of Health. Bryder has been unable to find out the medicinal components, if any, but they had a high alcohol content. “One volunteer manning a particular depot had been amazed by the 30,000 bottles that had
been dispensed. ‘They seem to like it,’ he said.”
Another reason the alcoholic medicine might have been popular is that there was little entertainment. Places where large numbers of people could gather, such as swimming pools, pubs and picture theatres, were closed down. The exception was when the armistice was declared on November 11 – a cause for public jubilation – which probably further spread the virus among the crowds who turned out to celebrate the end of the war.
Bryder says both now and then there was a tendency to blame certain groups for introducing or spreading the virus. In Auckland, which was the focus of her case study of the 1918 epidemic, the finger was pointed at
Asians and at women generally, who were deemed not to be looking after their own families – and the sick – well enough. In fact, women formed the bulk of a voluntary brigade who went to people’s homes to care for the sick.
Although public gatherings were avoided, there was no attempt, except in Coromandel, to quarantine people. Coromandel sealed itself off, allowing no one in or out by boat or car “and actually they didn’t get any cases, which was impressive, though it could have been good luck”.
Australia did try to quarantine itself and managed to hold the virus out till early 1919.
Public health advice during the epidemic was holistic, Bryder says, with a focus on healthy living. Hygiene messages were very much to the fore. The germ theory of diseases had only just been identified at the end of the 19th century. “They were becoming very conscious of cleanliness as a result. Kissing the Bible suddenly went out the window.”
Businesses were quick to pick up on the commercial possibilities and the therapeutic value of a range of products was promoted, regardless of how unlikely the claims were. In an era long before the Fair Trading Act ruled out false advertising, products including Lifebuoy soap, Oxo, Aspirin, quinine, opium, turpentine, iodine, ammonia, cinnamon, smoking, cocoa and disinfectant were all promoted as having properties that could either prevent the flu or ward it off.
Of course, none of them were a cure, but by the end of 1918, the virus had largely burnt itself out. “People who’ve written about it have called it the forgotten epidemic, because people just accepted it as an act of God. It was so much easier to focus on the war, and this epidemic came from nowhere and disappeared quickly, but it did leave a lot of dead in its wake.”
For people who are employed but with no investments, their main concern is retaining their jobs. Those who are middle-aged and have investments are most likely to be concerned about what’s happening to their savings, Norling says.
If people have more than 20 years left to work before retirement and have a greater tolerance for risk, they probably will do nothing. If they have a diversified portfolio that is well managed, they would have been selling shares as they went up in value to keep a proportion of their investments in fixed-interest securities.
Now, as shares fall in value, he says investors should be thinking of selling some of those securities and re-investing in shares to keep the proportions of their portfolios balanced.
The people who thought they were big risk-takers and have now discovered they are not, are in the most difficult situation, he says. “It might be a case that they do need to take stock and make a careful reduction of risk after the horse has bolted.”
Other investors will simply need “hand holding” to improve their understanding of market volatility and to be assured that they still have time on their side for their position to recover.
Though no one knows how either the virus or the markets will behave in the coming weeks, banks expect economic activity to pick up again when the Covid19 threat passes.
In the meantime, for those who are acutely worried, Wilson suggests not looking. “People who watch a lot of news coverage of anything distressing risk developing stress reactions that can be stronger than those in people who have been directly affected.
“People in the US who watched wall-towall 9/11 coverage ended up as stressed, depressed and anxious as people at ground zero. My advice to those people is to limit your doses of Covid-19 coverage.”
A person could show no symptoms in the morning and be dead by nightfall.
The OECD has halved global growth forecasts to a meagre 1.5% and warned that some countries could tip into recession.