Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 May 1903 — THE SCARE IS OVER. [ARTICLE]

THE SCARE IS OVER.

f-No new cases of varioloid have been reported for the last week and tbe quarantine has been raised on most of those who had the disease in their families. As previously stated by The Democrat, there was ho necessity at any time for making snob a noise over the few oases here. While it was right and proper to take precautions to prevent the further spread of the disease, all this could have been done just as effectively without advertising it in scare headlines and thereby causing all the neighboring towns to place guards at their corporation lines with shotguns to keep every person from Rensselaer from entering the place, and their own people from coming here, and unnecessarily alarming the country people and causing them to shun us like they would the leprosy. Not one of the patients here have at any time been dangerously sick; most of them would have been about all the time had it not been that that they were quarantined. Diptheria or scarlet fever, a hundred times worse than small-pox, could have entered the town and not one tenth part as much noise would have been made about it as was made, all unnecessary, over these few cases of varioloid. It is hoped that the resnlt of this scare, which will be felt by Rensselaer all this season, will learn a few people something. There is a vast difference between giving the news as it actually exists and and that of enlarging upon and commenting on every sensational rumor that may be afloat, no matter how unfounded it may be.