Letter to the Editor

Familiar story

It is sad that the odd teacher at the local school feels unable to join the national effort against Covid. I assume that primary schools still promote public health measures. But I fear that the heroes of modern medicine such as Simpson, Fleming, Lister, Pasteur, Jenner and their stories have faded from the classroom.

Why not tell Edward Jenner’s story? He noted that dairymaids commonly caught cowpox, but afterwards they did not contract the often-fatal smallpox. This observation and his subsequent work set in motion a train of events that has saved untold millions of lives over the last 200 years.

As a result, by the ‘50s, children no longer feared smallpox, nor rabies, diphtheria and the like. We feared polio. We saw classmates with legs supported by metal callipers and horrifying pictures of rooms full of children in iron lung machines. When the Salk vaccine became available some years later, it was administered in schools and there was no hesitancy.

And why not tell the story of the English village of Eyam? In 1665, the plague came to the village. As the outbreak developed, those that could wished to flee. But under the strong leadership of their ministers, the whole community decided to quarantine itself. Not only that, they put in place measures that we would recognise as rudimentary forms of bubbles, social distancing and sanitising,

The cost in lives was high for Eyam but surrounding villages did not suffer outbreaks. Eyam’s collective action showed courage, sacrifice and altruism. In stark contrast are the examples that we see today, of petty but dangerous individualism masquerading as “freedom”.

Jim Colvine
Mangawhai Heads