If we face a new pandemic will our government protect us?

All States and Territories agreed to immediately notify the Commonwealth the moment influenza broke out within their borders and that the Commonwealth would have absolute authority for quarantine and restricting inter-state movements. Once influenza cases began to appear in 1919 all this fell completely apart, and each State and Territory went is own way.

Some States delayed or refused to inform the Commonwealth and other States that influenza had broken out within their borders and instituted their own border controls ultimately forcing the Commonwealth to abandon its plans. Each State developed its own set of quarantine and border protection policies and took over racecourses, schools, church halls, kindergartens and other buildings for temporary hospitals.

Fear and panic raged through city streets and people avoided public transport, declined to go to the pub or to sporting events and avoided walking city streets as well as avoiding contact with neighbours. Fear and panic raged through the workforce and impacted heavily on business and Government services.

The 1919 influenza pandemic ranks as Australia’s greatest social and health disasters during which more than 15,000 people died and hundreds of thousands caught the disease.  Epidemics and pandemics are also as much psycho-social events as they are epidemiological ones. Regrettably Governments have tended to overlook this.

One of the consistent themes in Australia’s history of infectious disease is a failure to appreciate the dissonance between how “experts” and ordinary people perceive risk, infection and contagion.

Risk to our “experts” is a definable, measurable phenomenon. For most of us, however, risk is shaped by personal attitudes and the way we view the world around us. It is a social phenomenon, socially constructed, largely intuitive and emotional. Unfortunately, Governments tend to not understand this.

In the final analysis is our past any guide to the future? If coronavirus breaks out in Australia, our Government will surely fall back on the same measures advanced against the influenza pandemic. Given our experience I wonder how successful this might be and whether we could have any confidence in our Government’s ability to protect us.