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Show How Infiuetfzo Got In Over S2,000 deaths were atL-i kited to Influenza and pneumonia between September 8 and November 9, according to reports from forty-si large cities with a combined population of 23,000,00' ). The estimate of deaths from all causes' in the Aihc rican Expeditionary-Forces Expeditionary-Forces is 40,000. The Literary Digest says: "Influenza does not arise; it travels. It reached the United States by crossing the Atlantic, and it would seem that it might have been" kept out." The Scientific American, a New York publication, quoted in the Literary Digest, under date of November 2, in an editorial "A Carelessly Guarded Gate," charges that the laxity of port authorities on our Eastern Coast is responsible for an invasion that has caused more deaths among peaceful citizens than the deadly weapons of the enemy have effected on the front of battle. The Scientific American says: "There is a growing conviction that the sudden invasion inva-sion of the United States by that European epidemic known as Spanish influenza ,and the speed with which it has spread throughout the country, are due to the laxaty with which the port authorities along the Atlantic seaboard sea-board have carried out their duties "If ever there was a period when the quarantine laws for guarding the ports of the United States against the entrance of disease should have been enforced with redoubled re-doubled vigilance, it was during the summer and autumn of the present year, when it was known that a highly infectious in-fectious and fatal disease was sweeping through Europe like a scourge of the middle ages. "In view of the imminence and deadly character of the disease we had every reason to expect that the Federal Fed-eral authorities would set a double guard at our ports of entry, and instruct our quarantine officials to take every ev-ery possible preventive measure ayainst the landing, not merely of influenza patients, but' of every passenger who had been exposed, during the ocean voyage, to infection. "Nor can any carelessness be-excused on the ground that influenza has never been classed with the deadly diseases, such as yellow fever orthe beuboiiic plague. While such an excuse' might be valid for theiayman, it can not be allowed in the case of the expert professional men, whose duty it is to enforce the quarantine laws of the country. For they know full well that this was no ordinary epidemic of influenza or grip. The medical records of Europe were available; and the most cursory reading of the data that have appeared in the medical journals (to go no further than that) should have revealed re-vealed to these men that there was a disease the pypIii. sion of which from America called for the most exacting and rigid enforcement of the quarantine laws. "The obvious thing to have done, when the first ship with influenza patients on board cast anchor at a quarantine quar-antine station, was to isolate tht ship, with every soul on board, until the slightest possibility of carrying infection ashore had been, removed. The rigid precautions that would be taken, if an arriving ship had yellow fever patients pa-tients aboard, should surely have been taken in the case of this deadly scourge. . "But what are the facts? IncredJble as it may seem influenza cases by the score and, for all we know, by the hundred were taken ashore and placed in the general wards of the hospitals. Fellow passengers of the patients who must inevitably have been exposed to infection, and must many of them havejjeen carrying the disease, were allowed to go their several Ways throughout the land. "Was ever official fatuity Stretched to greater lengths than this! r.- "When once the ship's.company had scattered, whether wheth-er to spread the infection among fellow patients in a general gen-eral hospital or among the unsuspecting and unwarned citizens in home, office, passenger car, or theater, the , mischief was done.. But even when the plague burst forth in all its wide-spr.ead malignity, both New York and the country at large seenjed slow to awaken to the enormity of the peril. Only here and there did the authorities act with swift and effective measures, closing schools, theaters, thea-ters, and public, meeting places. It is certainly a disconcerting fact that, at the very time when the country had organized itself through the Red Cross and other famous organizations, to fight disease dis-ease and prevent suffering, we should be smitten with a visitation which caused more casualties and deaths in the homeland than occured among our troops in the great world war." |
