SARS: the sequel
Jan 21, 2020
PANIC has begun to set in over the new coronavirus. Footage snatched by a smartphone and shared on Twitter purports to show an isolation ward in Wuhan, with a scrum of hospital workers wearing hazmat gear. Social media resounds with rumours and anecdotes and allegations of a government cover-up, and many are already claiming the outbreak is far far worse than is being reported. Many point out - as if they are the first to notice - that the mass transit of a few hundred million people over Chinese new year will create a multitude of new vectors along which the disease can spread.
Vituperative online critics of China say that this putative "cover-up" - of which there is no solid evidence as yet - proves that the "totalitarian" state is incapable of acting in the best interests of its population. There seems to be an element of wishful thinking and confirmation bias in all this: they want to find evidence that the authorities are conspiring to keep information from us, putting our lives at risk just as they did in the dark days of SARS.
My instinct, as ever, has so far been to downplay, and to put into context. China’s authorities have acknowledged that SARS was a catastrophic public health failure and have learned their lessons, seeking now to manage the flow of information rather than block it completely. Meanwhile, three deaths and a few hundred infections, though devastating for the individuals concerned, are nothing in the scheme of things, even if the figure is multiplied by 10, especially when the fatalities involve elderly and already vulnerable people. There were, I also note, 127,706 cases of viral hepatitis in November last year alone, with 53 deaths.
I refresh my memories of the original SARS outbreak. As I wrote in 2003:
..by now the panic is more infectious than the virus itself, and even the sturdiest of observers are struck regularly by the thought that infection is just a stray droplet or contaminated elevator button away. As is the case in most health scares, the very act of paying attention - of isolating, analysing and comparing statistics - creates a potent symbolic space, one which draws on all our fears about mutating bacteria, outfought immune systems, and mass pandemics, and leaves very little room for a sense of proportion.
Everyone seems anxious for signs of cover-ups and conspiracies. Everyone seems to believe we are heading towards catastrophe. I read an old essay in the London Review of Books that says "the most unremarkable thing about Sars is its novelty", explaining that infectious diseases evolve all the time. After seventeen years, I feel pleased to reacquaint myself with words like zoonosis and to contemplate whether it is in the best interest, so to speak, of a virus to become more or less virulent.
