Threat Of SARS Virus Overblown

by Yoichi Clark Shimatsu

Grossly overblown," I replied. "SARS is a media circus more than a medical crisis."

The physician was delighted to hear this nonplussed answer from one of his professional nemeses -- a journalist. Raising alarms over a viral outbreak, the media has been waging -- and winning -- a dirty war against the medical community.

"If all the media coverage is right, then why aren't there a million dead already?" he asked. "This SARS disease is probably no different than any other contagious diseases -- for every case that's reported, there are probably a hundred people who get a fever for a few days, develop antibodies and immunity, and recover."

The doctor explained that a random test for antibodies in the general population hasn't been conducted yet due to the panic that has preoccupied every medical worker in the region. If he's right -- and a recent sampling at the heavily infected Amoy Gardens apartment bloc vindicates the doctor's assertions -- then the death rate from the atypical pneumonia is far less than the 4 percent now recorded. Even if that official figure is correct, it means that 96 percent of the more severe cases documented so far have recovered. By comparison, only one in 10 ebola victims survive.

Dr. T was expressing the same skepticism of the one-in-four commuters who have the temerity not to wear masks in the metro. Nobody, of course, dares to speak out in public against Hong Kong's own version of homeland security following the sudden appearance of the pneumonia strain in the Kowloon Metropole Hotel's Room 911.

If I was to identify Dr. T, chances are that the Hong Kong media would demand his head on a platter. The post-colonial press in this panic-prone city lives in a pathological fear of anything to do with mainland China and has an inordinate affection for all things British, cheering for example the British advance into Basra. Chinese public health officials have been raked by international media organizations for an alleged cover-up of the new disease. A less than scientific press conveniently overlooks the fact that humid, semi-tropical southern China is a center for emerging pathogens and chronic diseases, including influenza, hepatitis, and even the plague left over by the Japanese military after World War II. Initially and even now, it is difficult for Chinese hospitals to determine whether atypical pneumonia patients weren't suffering from measles, the mumps, influenza, the common cold or allergic reactions to cold dust.

China obviously leaned too far in the direction of caution in warning the public about the illness, mainly because the misdiagnosis could have had disastrous consequences, from prompting wrong prescriptions to inciting panic. Several people in south China died of poisoning by boiling vinegar to disinfect their homes, and street sales of ephedrine have skyrocketed. Here in Hong Kong, patients with diabetes and other chronic disorders are skipping their regular checkups out of fear of the bug. The death toll from fear among these errant outpatients has yet to be counted.

To put some perspective on the present threat, SARS has to be compared to other causes of death. Worldwide, slightly more than 100 people have died of "atypical pneumonia" over the past six months, while in an average year in Hong Kong alone more than 3,500 people die of typical pneumonia -- not that there is anything typical about the pneumonia virus, variations of which are constantly mutating. Malignant tumors account for about 10,000 deaths annually in Hong Kong, or one of every three deaths here, while heart disease kills about 5,000 people a year. In 1998, the world was saved from a much more serious threat than SARS when microbiologists at the University of Hong Kong quickly identified the avian influenza and nipped a potential epidemic in the bud.

While putting the extreme cases of SARS under quarantine is a necessary precaution, sticking thermometers into people's ears at airport security checks makes sense only if countries are also willing to ban the tobacco, fat-drenched food, pesticides, killer automobiles, and bullets and bombs that U.S. multinationals are delivering around the world.

Dr. T. concluded, "We just have to live with the coronavirus or whatever it is as we do with a lot of other diseases. There are greater threats to public health than SARS."