Counting the costs.

Spanish Influenza - New Zealand's worst disaster

The tiny virus was deadly. Little Michael Dravitski was placed in the morgue when he was still alive!  He looked dead and felt dead but he wasn't dead. Perhaps the doctors were too busy to do a proper check.

Michael's amazing tale is part of last week's story and there is more about the rampaging influenza virus this week.

Rewind

It's 1918. What was happening way back then? Are the statements below true or false? You decide. Check your answers at the end of this week's Treasurelink.

1. Schools are closed.

2. White flags are put on letter boxes to show there are dead people inside the house.

3. A ship called the Niagara arrives in Auckland. There are sick people aboard but no one leaves the ship.

4. Many people volunteer for quite dangerous jobs.

5. Many people know nothing about hygiene or how infectious diseases spread.

Answers at the bottom of the page.

Recap

Pair up with a classmate or try this in threes.

Here are the problems. You find a solution that deals with part of the problem at least.

1. This influenza spread very quickly. One or two people would get it and pretty soon almost everyone had it.

2. All sorts of workers were sick including essential people like doctors, telegraph operators, shop owners and tram drivers.

3. Undertakers were so busy they were ordered to speed up funerals.

4. Hospitals were full.

5. Whole families were sick and there was no-one to help them.

6. Soldiers were crammed together in military camps.

Tiny but deadly

Viruses are as tiny as 1/100,000th of a millimetre across. Their spikes attach the virus to the host cells and help disguise it so the immune system doesn't recognize it.

In 1918 some patients died within two to four days of the symptoms appearing. Large amounts of fluid would gather in the lungs and the victims more or less drowned.

Other people died of secondary infections with bacterial pneumonia. Antibiotics were not around in 1918 so doctors had no way of dealing with these infections.

Click here and decide if an ad like this one would be allowed today. Print it out and highlight what you think are facts in one colour and fiction in another.

Wordwise?

The words below are all in this week's story. Choose (a) or (b) for the best meaning and then check your answers as you read the story.

1. scaremongering (a) haunting or (b) spreading frightening rumours

2. demise (a) death or (b) decrease

3. annihilated (a) completely destroyed or (b) badly affected

4. fallout (a) side effect or (b) when soldiers leave the parade ground

5. symptoms (a)  signs or indications (b) evidence

6. vulnerable (a) weak or (b)unguarded and accessible

7. mutated (a)twisted or (b) changed

8. influx (a) arrivals or (b) commotion

9. gruesome (a) awful or (b) hideous

10. magnitude (a) greatness or (b) volcanic

Answers at the bottom of the page.

Read on

World War 1 ended in 1918 but by the end of this year many more New Zealanders would die. The final figure for flu victims represented more than a third of the casualties suffered by the country in the war. This disaster was a shocker.

Read the first part of this week's story and find out whether the same disaster affected people worldwide.

Inglewood hammered

Read this short part of the story and decide how the Inglewood Record got the information they needed for their table. Would this have been a dangerous job for the reporter?

Harsh times

The next two parts of the story describe how the flu affected Maori. At this time most Maori lived in their own rural villages rather than in the towns. Read on to find out what happened when the deadly virus reached these villages.

Draw up a Tchart . Head up one side The village and the other The town. List some factors on each side that that may have helped the virus spread quickly or may have slowed its spread.

Public notices

Find and read the two public notices in the story. The main aim of each notice is to limit the chances of the virus spreading by preventing people mixing with each other.

Make up a diary that shows all the times you have mixed with others in the last three days. Give each meeting a risk rating. 1 = low risk, 2 = medium risk, 3 = high risk. Compare your score with a classmate. Which things in your diary would you eliminate if a virus like the 1918 one struck today?

How easily it spreads

Read the next part of the story - "Virus not really Spanish" and then read about the military camp described in the story. Find it here and look carefully for a possible reason for the virus starting. Look too for the reason for its rapid spread across the world.

Niagara gets the blame

Read how this ship was blamed for bringing the influenza virus to Auckland.

For more details read the first two paragraphs here and decide whether the Minister of Health, George Russell was right when he allowed people to leave the ship. Talk it over with a classmate.

This virus came by ship to New Zealand with people and entered other countries in the same way. What if a world wide epidemic was around today but hadn't reached New Zealand?

Form a group of three and come up with a plan for keeping it out of this country. New Zealand had a practice run at this when SARS was sweeping the world. Think about the travellers like those who have been overseas in recent days, those who are about to return and those who wish to leave. What rules will you set? What special facilities will you set up?

That's a bit radical!

Finish the story now and then decide if you agree or disagree with these radical ideas for slowing the spread of the flu in 1918. (These are TreasureLink ideas but would they have worked?)

1. Keep ill people in their homes. Building more hospitals puts more people at risk.

2. Stop doctors seeing patients with the flu. They can't do much anyway.

3. Organise food drops in each street. Each family must pick up their food parcel when no one else is around.

4. Ban all volunteers. They are just spreading germs.

5. Ban the inhalation chambers. These were in the last story. People met there to breathe special fumes but they probably just spread more germs.

Inhalation chamber

Fast forward to 2004

Influenza is still around today and outbreaks happen from year to year.

The 1918 strain has gone but the way we catch the flu hasn't changed. When victims sneeze, cough, or even talk, the influenza virus is expelled into the air and may be inhaled by anyone close by. Influenza can also be passed on by direct hand contact.

Influenza works quickly and after infection it only takes 24-72 hours for the symptoms to take hold. Victims usually have a fever, chills, weakness, loss of appetite and aching of the head, back, arms and legs. They may also have a sore throat and a dry cough, nausea, and burning eyes.

The temperature goes up but after two or three days, it usually subsides. The patient is often left exhausted for days afterwards.

Flu busting vaccines

High risk people can get a flu vaccination these days. Elderly people are in the high risk group because their immune system isn't as strong as it once was. People like doctors and nurses who work with them get vaccinated too.

New vaccines are made every year. They are made from the viruses that are expected to cause illness that year. The viruses in the vaccine are inactivated so it's impossible to get influenza from the vaccine. The viruses develop protection in the body instead. It takes the form of substances called antibodies.

The antibody number is at its highest one or two months after vaccination and then it gradually declines. This is partly why a high-risk person should be vaccinated each year with the new vaccine. Another reason is that a new strain of the virus appears each year.

Healthy children don't usually need the vaccine. The one good thing about catching the flu is that you will never get the same one again. You are immune for life! Unfortunately you can catch another strain. Your antibodies can fight off the one they know but may not recognize the new one! If this happens it's bad luck and it's off to bed.

High risk jobs?

These jobs were all around in the olden days. Decide weather they would have been high risk jobs in a flu epidemic or low risk ones. Just have a guess then check what each job actually was, on this website.

• Apothecary
• Besom maker
• Bloodman
• Buryeman
• Purefinder
• Sewer rat
• Snobsat
• Vulcan
• Tapster

Answers

Rewind

1. True- because of the influenza epidemic

2. True

3. False. This ship did arrive but people did leave the ship. They included the Prime Minister William Massey and Finance Minister Joseph Ward.

4. True. The volunteers did things like delivering medicine to sick people.

5. True. Doctors soon found this out.

Click to go back to the questions.

Click to go back to the questions.