The Rise Of Australasia

Chapter 619 - 473: Accountability and Blame Shifting

If before June, the governments of European countries were confident, since August began, they can be described as ants on a hot pan, and even using "panic-stricken" to describe them would not be an exaggeration.

The high number of deaths kept the priests of the Church extremely busy. European funerals almost all require priests to preside, perform baptism for the deceased, and wash away their sins.

The problem, however, was that the number of deaths in each country soared linearly, while the number of priests remained basically unchanged. Even many priests were within the scope of the influenza infection, after all, they needed to come into contact with corpses, naturally putting them at high risk.

Fortunately, Europe does not have the tradition of flying white sails; otherwise, it would be a sea of white at this moment.

In many areas, funerals even became a collective activity, with a single priest often having to preside over several funerals at once, allowing the deceased to meet God as a group.

It was an unavoidable situation – if they didn’t let the deceased meet God as a group, the priest would probably have to meet God himself.

Thankfully, Arthur had some scruples and didn’t hoard supplies in advance for sale, like in the previous war.

Without saying anything else, the coffin merchants earned bucket loads of money this time. Coffins literally became one of the most urgently needed items in Europe overnight, with prices doubling or even tripling.

If Arthur were really heartless, he could have hoarded coffins in advance for resale, making at least millions of Australian dollars in revenue.

However, doing so would indeed hurt his reputation, and for Arthur, who was already wealthy, it was unnecessary.

Making money from national disasters and deaths is taboo for Arthur, as those who profit from such things really have no conscience.

When European countries began implementing various systems to curb the spread of influenza, they realized that copying from others was not easy.

It is very difficult to completely isolate a country; the attitudes of the people, the guarantee of supplies, and the implementation of various levels of government all need to be controlled by the government.

Even if the European countries completely closed their ports at this moment and stopped trading with foreign countries, it was already too late.

A virus is not something that can be blocked just by saying so. Even though Australasia introduced preventive measures two months in advance, there were still thousands of cases of influenza and more than 10 deaths.

The situation in European countries is even more miserable, with the number of deaths in the United Kingdom alone breaking 300,000. After spreading from Britain to India, the number of deaths in India becomes an unknown figure.

It is important to note that the health conditions in Europe are first-class in the world. In colonies like India, the hygiene conditions are very poor.

It is no exaggeration to say that the number of deaths in India is at least 20 times the number of deaths in the United Kingdom, and there is no upper limit.

Even the Dutch East Indies, so far away from India, began to spread influenza, which led to the tragic record of an entire small village with hundreds of people infected and all of them dead.

Since August, the streets of Europe have become desolate, and the phrase "hundred-mile-empty-street" is not an exaggeration.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the wailing in the air of the urban city, with countless people losing their families. Funerals can be seen everywhere in the city, with up to 20 funerals being held in a single village in one day, setting a record in France.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Europe is a hell because people feel that their current lives are even more miserable than hell.

But there is a key issue: in the far away Oceania, there is a country whose situation is completely different from Europe’s and is essentially unaffected by the crisis to a severe extent.

As the saying goes, there is no harm without comparison. People originally had a good impression of the government’s free distribution of supplies during the influenza period, but with Australasia as a comparison, most Europeans feel that their own government is doing nothing and that it is the government’s negligence that led to the current serious crisis.

At this point, the Frenchmen returned to their tradition and began to take to the streets in large numbers to protest. However, some of them wore masks, while others remained the same as before the influenza outbreak.

One cannot help but admire that when Europeans protested against the government, they were really fearless. In such a severe influenza situation, some people did not wear masks.

The people’s protests caused the French government a lot of headaches. If they implemented strict isolation measures like Australasia, the people would protest that the government had deprived them of their freedom.

But if they implemented loose measures instead, the French people would protest that the government had no action, making it an arduous choice.

In order to quell the people’s anger, the French government could only change its tactics, announcing an investment of 4 billion francs to save the influenza crisis, with 2.5 billion francs being used to purchase supplies for the people and 1.5 billion francs for drug research.

With this, the people’s anger began to subside somewhat. At least the government came up with real money, which can be considered as doing something.

Seeing that the number of protesters on the street decreased slightly, the French government breathed a sigh of relief and urgently communicated with other countries to try to purchase some supplies.

As one of the countries with the largest casualties in World War I, France’s consumption of materials was also huge.

Even in the middle and late period, France relied on support from the United Kingdom to help the French government hold on.

After the victory of the war, the French naturally could not get support from the United Kingdom and could only rely on the colonies to transport supplies back to the country.

But the problem is, with the current severity of the influenza outbreak, dare the French allow ships from the colonies to dock?

It is important to note that, according to British tracking, the second wave of the epidemic started with merchant ships traveling from West Africa to British ports. This means that the epidemic in Africa is far more severe than in Europe, it’s just that the various colonies and indigenous countries do not have the same statistical capacity.