campusreview . com . au industry & research was the major outbreak of scarlet fever among children . That ’ s the first time really that the government tried to develop a process of understanding and controlling . And the measures they used were simply the measures that are used today . Lockdown , quarantine , removal of cases , the establishment of places where you can put cases . Nothing really has changed .
We also have another form of pandemic , and that is a slow pandemic . The best example of that in Australian history is polio , which stretched on for 50 years . Or HIV / AIDS , and there are other examples .
Pandemics and epidemics have two largely important aspects . One is the simple cases and deaths , but the other , which we tend to ignore , is how people regard risk in their lives . How they regard fear , panic , hysteria . All pandemics have produced a tremendous outbreak of human reaction .
In the flu pandemic of 1919 , and in the plague pandemics in the early part of the 1900s , people avoided everybody , locked themselves away , tried to find somebody to blame , pointed the finger at the Chinese , argued that we need to lock ourselves away completely .
And in a sense , governments today still do not understand how ordinary people regard risk . Risk is a social , psychosocial activity . It ’ s nurtured by what the media tells us , what people around us do , what we foresee , what we understand , how we value our family , etc . And governments often continue to ignore that , or not understand that . And while there ’ s a widespread belief that Australia has always responded effectively and humanely , in some ways , nothing could be further from the truth .
With the possible exception of HIV / AIDS , when you look at how the state and federal governments in Australia behaved , then all you see is an endless battle between the two , as to how to control it , how to institute barriers .
In late 1918 , when the Australian government was concerned about the flu pandemic raging in Europe , it called a meeting of all the state leaders , and set out a policy on how to address an outbreak in Australia . That included giving the federal government responsibility for border controls , for shipping , demanding that all states immediately acknowledge the first outbreak , and inform the Commonwealth .
When flu broke out , it all fell apart . States went their own way . Queensland closed its borders with New South Wales . Western Australia threatened to leave the Commonwealth . Tasmania closed its own borders . We struggled to work out a policy of cooperation , and understand what that means during times of severe stress .
How did the working classes or the indigenous populations fair in previous pandemics ? Well , during the plague or during the influenza outbreaks in the 19th century , businesses went to the wall . Everything was closed down . All the schools were taken over as public hospitals . And indeed , people really struggled to survive .
Australia had suffered dengue outbreaks since the 1870s . The 1925 / 26 outbreak of dengue in the eastern part of Australia was an unbelievable epidemic . There were almost 600,000 cases and the disease spread almost right down to Sydney , from north Queensland .
It created an incredible fear . Not many people died from it . And that ’ s one of the great ironies of a disease like dengue . In some ways , our public health system is based on , if something kills us , they do immediately do something about it . If it only incapacitates us or makes us ill , we tend to be forced to live with it .
There was a major outbreak of smallpox in New South Wales between 1913 and 1917 . Who remembers it ? Very few .
And we tend to have not learned much from the past . We say , “ All right , we ’ ll quarantine the suburb . We ’ ll move infected cases . We ’ ll set up places where we can put them .” Exactly what ’ s happening in the coronavirus , now . And that ’ s exactly what was done in the mid-19th century in Australia .
During the plague outbreak in Sydney between 1900 and 1910 , literally thousands of people were forcibly evicted from their homes . Many didn ’ t have plague , but they had the misfortune to live next door to somebody or be thought to have come in contact . They were immediately taken over and forcibly removed by the police .
One of the aspects of pandemics and epidemics is that we ’ ve got to find somebody to blame . You ’ ve got to find somebody you can point the stick at and say , “ They were responsible for introducing it .”
The plague epidemic is the best example . Immediately , people thought it ’ s from China . A good proportion of Sydney ’ s
Chinese were living in The Rocks , and their houses were demolished . The search for somebody to blame is part of the human behaviour . And in some ways , we don ’ t fully understand that .
Since 2003 we ’ ve seen SARS , MERS , Ebola , swine flu , to name but a few . Why are we not more prepared for these ? In some ways we are more susceptible to infectious disease . We tend to ignore the significance of the biophysical environment . You ’ d think that if we were going to have a comprehensive health system we ’ d have one that combined human and animal health but , unlike many other countries , the two are distinctly discreet and we tend to ignore it .
We still do not simply understand that infectious diseases mutate , change , adapt , and are beautifully adapted to our lifestyle .
As we see with the coronavirus , it takes considerable time to investigate and develop an antiviral drug . In some ways , I think we ’ re more likely to be at threat from viral infections , particularly ones from zoonotic harbours or any animal diseases , in the next 20 to 25 years than ever before .
What do you think world bodies should be doing to prepare for the next outbreak ? There ’ s been a lot of criticism of the World Health Organization . A pandemic should be something that affects all the people in most countries . Rarely does that happen , of course . And we usually are dependent on the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic , when they believe a most virulent disease has spread .
In some ways , they ’ ve let us down . The Ebola outbreaks in West Africa are a classic example , where the World Health Organization took so long to respond , that literally thousands of people died . And in some ways , the same applies here .
Some people can avoid infection by isolation or limited contact with others , or a degree of personal immunity , or perhaps just good luck . I guess it ’ s interesting to contemplate whether we can rely on institutions , like the World Health Organization , who ’ ve been very disappointing over the last few years in their recognition of outbreaks .
Hundreds of millions of people cross international borders every year . So how do you control something like that ? It ’ s impossible . ■
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