John Roughan: Faith and comfort seem to be our answer to a virus

The high priests of modern life are unquestionably public health mandarins. When they condemn our pleasures we tremble. Liberals lower their heads; laws are passed.

The priests and priestesses of public health can declare tobacco smoke to be a killer even when diluted in a pub fug and we believe it without question.

They can blame underage drinking on the lowering of the legal age and MPs are conscience-stricken. They can rail about media images of emaciated models in one breath and tell us we have a teenage obesity problem in the next.

We don't stop to wonder why second-hand cigarette smoke is deadly yet the open fires we grew up with appear to have done us no harm. Or why hamburgers made by multinationals are a dietary disaster but old fashioned fish and chips can be forgiven.

When Sue Kedgley finds toy cigarettes on the market there is a national intake of breath and the offending merchants scurry to remove them. There was no nicotine there, merely an implication, heaven forbid, that smoking might be fun. How long before we mustn't give a little boy a plastic gun?

Possibly we accept social injunctions in the name of public health not because we are entirely convinced of the science but because we like the consequences. Though I'm an occasional contributor to bar smoke, I look forward to the day, not far off now, that law makes the pub more pleasant for all.

When they tell us there is too much fat in our food, who cares to quibble that compared with our grandparents, who fried everything, we are wholesome today? Food can always get better. The preachers of public health, bless them, are not interested in progress, they're on an agenda to perfection.

If they can't immediately banish evil, they can restrict its sales or marketing and they entertain no argument. When the advertising industry called a conference at Parliament not long ago to challenge the Health Ministry's call for restrictions on fast-food commercials, the ministry refused to attend.

Nevertheless, Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey began wagging his finger at advertisers, suggesting they were pushing the boundaries and must heed concerns about child obesity and teenage drinking in the direct advertising of medicines.

To the priesthood we are all children, susceptible to anything we see.

We believe in these people even as we lose some of the old uncritical faith in medical expertise. Strangely, public health advocates are accorded an infallibility denied these days to those who advise on personal health.

To question the seers of public health, or even to plead for a sense or proportion, is to invite their wrath and the ridicule of their believers. Since they know the public good, anything that tends to undermine their message is by definition a danger to society.

Not that I'm complaining. There are times our faith in the guardians of the general health can be an enormous comfort. Like now.

Some nearby countries have been close to panic over the mysterious virus that has spread to 22 countries since surfacing in Hong Kong last month and still goes by the vague working title, severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Not here. We're not panicking. The presiding high priest, Director of Public Health Colin Tukuitonga, remains reassuringly serene.

Weeks ago he thought it likely one or two cases would turn up in this country but wasn't overly concerned. "I'm appealing for people to put that in perspective," he told a press briefing. "Don't overreact."

At that time the World Health Organisation was working feverishly to find out whether the virus could be transmitted during its 10-day incubation period and a new outbreak in a Hong Kong housing estate had cast doubt on the hope that it might be spread only by direct contact.

In New Zealand schools and universities were breaking up for term holidays and anxious to know how they should deal with students or staff who went to infected areas in the break.

Should they be asked, for example, to spend 10 days in quarantine when they return next weekend? Evidently not. Some, such as Auckland University, imposed a quarantine period. Others, including Waikato, did not, saying they were following ministry advice.

Then a Chinese sister-city delegation was given a cold shoulder at Masterton and the Government weighed in, more concerned about giving offence than the continuing suspicion that southern China, the source of Sars, harbours more cases than it has yet disclosed.

The Human Rights Commissioner, too, was worried that precautions against people from infected areas might not be nice to an ethic minority. Well, yes, but disease can be discriminatory, as Aids has proved.

The vast majority of reported Sars cases so far have originated in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore. Should New Zealand at least be screening those who arrive at its airports? "Impossible", said Dr Tukuitonga, although nurses were stationed in arrival halls this week.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong has barred people from leaving the territory if they have had close contact with infected patients during a 10-day quarantine period. In Thailand, movie theatres are spraying seats, taxi-drivers refusing to pick up passengers at airports and flight attendants are afraid to work.

So far Sars does not sound so different from other pneumonia. It has killed about 4 per cent of sufferers, almost all already frail, and seems to be spreading by contact rather than through the air.

Our high priests are maintaining their calm. This time I want to believe them.