It may not yet have killed as many people as the US-led invasion of Iraq, but while the world’s attention has been focused on the grim events in the Middle East the mystery illness Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has been continuing to spread.
Although the death toll is still below 200 and only 3,500 have reportedly been infected, the impact of this killer virus has already been immense. Throughout Asia, most particularly in Hong Kong, hotels, restaurants and other public places are empty. Airliners are flying in and out of the region with just handfuls of passengers. The economic impact of the panic that is setting in is already immense and looks set to worsen.
The fear of the contagion is as immune to reason as the pneumonia-like disease itself is resistant to all known antibiotics. It matters not that many more people have died each day in car crashes than have perished from SARS. The fact seems to be that the number of victims of the disease is rising exponentially and if the trend continues, this could become an epidemic of plague proportions.
We should all therefore be concerned, while remembering that what we should fear most of all is fear itself. Blind panic will only make matters worse. What ought to be concerning us above all else is the genesis of this disease. There is no disputing the fact that it began in China. What is also clear is that for a long time, while the authorities in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the Far East were reporting growing infection statistics, health officials in Beijing were playing down the degree to which the disease had spread within China itself. Why?
The easy answer is bureaucratic incompetence. China is a vast country with administrative systems that are still largely paper-driven. Collating diverse and far-flung records and spotting the outbreak of a new disease will not have been an easy task.
There is, however, another answer that is as sinister as it is difficult to accept: That SARS is the product of a Chinese biological warfare laboratory, which somehow escaped into the outside world. Scientists investigating the disease are convinced that this is an animal condition which has crossed to humans. Throughout history, diseases have jumped species, most recently AIDS from apes to humans. It is nevertheless relatively rare. What makes the Chinese origin of SARS so suspicious is that it was only a few years ago that another disease, Chicken flu, managed to bridge the species gap and infect humans. That too started in China, was initially played down by Beijing and then mercifully died out.
If SARS is indeed the product of a biological warfare laboratory, probably in Guandong province, where the disease was first noted, then the extreme reluctance of the Chinese authorities to admit to the seriousness of the outbreak begins to make sense. Had SARS arisen innocently, Beijing would have been reluctant enough to lose face and admit to the outbreak. If, however, this is an accidental escape from a germ warfare laboratory, or even, though it is barely credible, a deliberate testing of the bug on the wider population, the stubborn stonewalling of the Chinese in the face of mounting evidence worldwide begins to make more sense.
