PHA-Exchange> The SARS farce?

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SARS, Wars and the FARCE
Satya Sagar

The depression hits  me  on a warm and humid Bangkok evening. I am just
through with dinner in the city's crowded Sukhumvit business district, my
head full of the War on Iraq and I spot these people- with masks on their
faces.

A couple of weeks ago anybody with a cloth covering his face in this city
would have been branded a `jihadi' a possible Arab/Muslim/dark skinned/dark
intentioned `terrorist'. The city has been on alert well before the war on
Iraq started to prevent `Arab looking' people from doing bad things- for
eg., looking Arab.

Just around the time of the Anglo-American attack on Iraq,  if  there were
to be an  `Arab' behind a mask in Bangkok - the entire city would have been
evacuated.

Apparently, not anymore. Respectable people wear  masks now in Thailand,
Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong. In fact mandatory they say to save yourself
from SARS- the flu-like virus that has much of south-east Asia in deep
panic. Tourists are canceling their trips in droves, schools are closing
down, economies plunging, governments in crisis and the Chinese- oh those
`super-contaminating  Chinese'- are being spurned everywhere.

Suddenly, an irrational panic grips me.  God- there is no escape. If the
Apostles of Armageddon running the White House do not get you some
mysterious malevolent microbes will. For a fleeting moment, a deep frozen
moment, I lose hope. We are finished. They will get us one way or the other.

This is what the new/OLD colonial world order is going to be all about-
complete helplessness for us common citizens. Caught between SARS and THEIR
Wars the only safe place is soon going to be- you guessed right- on planet
Mars.

Yes, the people I saw wearing those masks have a right to protect
themselves. I will not mock them in any way. To paraphrase Voltaire I do not
believe these masks medically help them  in any way but I will defend to
death their right to wear them. And then there are so many of THEM out there
who deserve to have a mask fixed on their faces anyway (so we won't have to
`read their bloody lips').

Yes, there are these microbes and many of them are dangerous. Yes, people
have died and still continue to do so. And it is indeed true we really do
not know which way this pandemic is going to turn out. There are constant
references to the great Influenza outbreak after World War One which killed
an estimated 20 to 40 million people. Is SARS going to be that big ?

I am no kin to any Indian sage and I cannot predict such things. But I am
betting neither can the `medical experts' or the `media' give us a real idea
of what is going to happen. At this stage, given the sparse information on
hand about SARS, it is all idle speculation- an activity that SOME people
usually make lots of money out of.

Even assuming the deeply depressing thought that much of humanity is going
to be wiped out by SARS over the next year (that is what the media is making
it sound like) let us take a step back from this approaching abyss, take a
deep breath (go ahead, do it while it is still safe) and reflect on a few
questions about other aspects of this PANDEMONIUM of a  pandemic.

First the CONTEXT:  Why are we so full of fear only of THESE microbes and
not those dozen other ways in which people die completely avoidable deaths ?

To anyone who is not already aware of these facts let me spell them out:
- 250,000 to 500,000 people die every year around the world due to ordinary
influenza, the common `garden variety' flu. In the United States alone, with
a vaccine and medical care available, flu kills 36,000 people die every
year.
- Anywhere between 1  to 2.7 million die every year due to Malaria- a vast
majority of them in Africa, particularly children
- Tuberculosis kills 2 million people every year and 98 per cent of these in
developing countries
- HIV/AIDS claimed 3 million lives in 2002, including an estimated 610,000
children.
- Traffic accidents kill 300,000 people every year in Asia alone.
- The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq killed at least 10 to15,000  Iraqi
soldiers and over 2,300 Iraqi civilians in just the initial two weeks and
maybe several hundred British and American troops.

And I am not even counting those millions who die of poverty and
malnutrition around the globe annually. Every year the Indian media
attributes hundreds of deaths to the `cold wave', `the heat wave', `too much
rain' and `too little rain'. The fact is these deaths have nothing to do
with the weather- in my country there people die every hour, wantonly, in
PERFECTLY good weather. We all know WHY.

I would say this. If we choose to cover our faces let it be in anger and in
shame- not just due to some microbes alone.

The RECORD so far: Here is the latest status of the number of SARS cases
worldwide and deaths so far since 1 November 2002 when the disease is
supposed to have broken out in southern China. In almost six months since
the outbreak a total of 4439 cases of SARS and `suspected' SARS have been
recorded in 26 countries  and 263 people have died. The mortality rate due
to SARS is estimated between 3 to 4 percent- just above that of normal
influenza-but even this is not confirmed because the total number of real
SARS cases is not yet known. Nor is its exact method of transmission clearly
understood- which is why wearing masks may not be a useful precaution at
all.

The MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT: The alarm bells about SARS started ringing only
when the WHO issued a global alert in mid-March . A war of words broke out
soon between the WHO and the  Chinese health authorities- the latter being
accused  of `hiding information' about SARS in its first few months. The
Chinese said something back, which nobody understood (they are never going
to be a `superpower' this way).

One of the big critiques of bodies like the WHO from health activists has
been the way they have adopted a purely `vertical' approach to global health
problems at the cost of a sustained, holistic and long-term approach.  So
whenever there is an outbreak or more usually an `outcry' about a particular
disease WHO and other global health officials organize a `posse', mobilize
some resources, and ride into the wilderness ready to `lasso' the villain.
Once the `critter' is temporarily caught or suppressed the issue is then
mostly forgotten.

There is no attempt to even address underlying causes of new virus and
diseases emerging for eg., due to super-intensive techniques of animal
husbandry, recycling of animal offals in animal feed, the use of a variety
of artificial hormones and growth-enhancers  and of course from biological
warfare experiments. Nor is there any attempt to mitigate the conditions,
such as overcrowding, poverty and lack of housing infrastructure, under
which infectious diseases such as SARS spread so rapidly. The WHO has
failed to push policies that tackle other basic social and economic
determinants of public health also - such as conflict, environmental
pollution and privatization of  health care.

The MEDIA: Has anybody really asked how much of the SARS scare is due to the
media's penchant for simplistic, alarmist reporting ?  One of the first `big
' SARS cases to make the headlines was that of Johnny Cheng, a
Chinese-American businessman who died  at a hospital in  Hanoi, Vietnam
after flying in from Hong Kong. Just a month ago Hanoi was one of the
`epicentres' of the SARS pandemic going by media reports. No more.  The
country seems to have slipped down the hit list of  `no go' places with just
63 reported SARS cases and 5 deaths.

How did this `super-contagious', `killer' disease get contained in a crowded
country like Vietnam with a very average public health system ? Nobody in
the media is following the Vietnam story anymore because that is not on the
map of the usual globe-trotting elites.  Hong Kong, Singapore and Toronto
are on that MAP and hence the panic about viruses traveling on the business
class seat next to THEM. (If nothing else, maybe there is a great `success
story' out  there in Vietnam, with details of how a poor, third world
country has successfully contained this deadly new infectious disease.)

And what happened to the media follow up to the various other health scares
we have had in the past decade all around the globe ? Bubonic plague in
India, Ebola in Africa, the Mad Cow Disease in the UK ( I won't take a dig
at Tony B on this one) ? And why was there virtually no coverage in the
`international media' of the  influenza outbreak in Madagascar in mid-2002,
where more than 27 000 cases were reported within three months and 800
deaths occurred despite rapid intervention ?

There is an apocryphal story going around this part of the world which shows
how much of a media `thing' this SARS scare probably is. The question asked
is why is this new form of flu being called the Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome ? `Severe' and `Acute'- two synonymous terms together - WHY ?
Apparently- the term `Severe' was added (only in early March this year) to
avoid an awkward acronym resulting from what was originally dubbed  the
Acute Respiratory Syndrome ?  What's the secret here- cover your face and
save your --- ?

That story is most probably a  bad joke-but let me tell you- I think so is
the way the entire SARS scare is being reported and played out.

I AM NOT SAYING that the deaths due to SARS are not a real, serious tragedy
or that it could not turn into a dangerous pandemic. Far from it. There is
no moral mathematics involved here, please. Every human life is precious-
Iraqi or American, Chinese or Singaporean. A very unique, irreplaceable
Universe of its own- disappears forever with each physical death.  All I am
pleading for is some more PERSPECTIVE.

WHY are those dying of malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and poverty in most
developing countries every day not making the headlines ? Is it not because
those who die unseen, unheard, untreated are not in the same league as the
Gold Card holding frequent flyers of our world ? Is it not because there is
such a `low probability' of a TB infected African child coughing in the same
air-conditioned corridors as our elites frequent ?

A couple of years ago a senior editor of one of India's major newspapers,
when asked by a women's rights activist to publish a story about high rates
of malnutrition among girl children, is reported to have refused and said `
The readers of our newspaper do not suffer from malnutrition'.  Sure, Mr Let
Them Eat Cake-  but aren't YOU and YOUR readers who are the CAUSE of
malnutrition in India. ( Ahem, what I wanted to say was -' Will someone pass
me that cutting edge of the French Revolution !')

When one hears stories such as these a question arises in my mind. This is
just a nasty, nasty question that I just can't get out of my head. COULD IT
BE that those who die unseen, unheard, untreated are themselves MICROBES in
the worldview of our Masters ? Has the microbe become a metaphor for the
unwashed, unwanted millions who don't fit into the corporate globalisation
of our Empire builders ?

Good riddance, THEY suppose, of those teeming, troublesome microbes- of so
little value to the Empire. Microbes, who cannot afford to BUY and have
nothing to SELL.

And from this high point of MORAL CLARITY it is just a little leap away to
identifying  those other microbes that need to be dealt with. The bearded,
turbaned, different, DISSIDENT, multi-tongued microbes. To be screened and
searched at every airline check-point, discouraged, disinfected, disposed
off like a dirty secret. Microbes, whose very EXISTENCE, is a form of
biological warfare to SOME.

No, I  really want to bring this subject up.  However depressing the subject
is to me and many of you reading this. It is important to see where our dear
world is headed towards. A world in which there are perishable, pestilent
MICROBES and there are those HUMAN BEINGS- moulded in the image of GOD.

OK, OK not all of us are microbes of course. Many of us are a slightly
higher caste- tolerated, employed, paid, domesticated, sheep, cattle. And
there is also that special category - well-fed, trained dogs. God bless the
creatures- I really have nothing against their species. ( In fact, some of
them are my best friends) But I can't help objecting to the worst of  canine
qualities  that many of these four-legged ones in our midst display. Whining
and Dining with the Masters, Biting and Barking at the Poor.

 I know all this is getting a bit too depressing and I don't like it one
bit. I have been reading too much Orwell these days, and that too, on the
front pages of daily newspapers.

So how does one get out of this Animal Farm we all seem to be trapped in ? I
would say- let's go back to our roots and our traditions- the great
traditions of the ancient microbes.

Think of it- the microbes- the first form of LIFE on Planet Earth. Microbes-
mating, multiplying, mutating into higher, more virulent forms of cognitive,
COMBATIVE life. Weathering all storms, RESISTING all predators and surviving
every sterile environment.  Microbes evolving, exploring, EXPLODING till
every form of LIFE finds its place under the sun.

I have got it figured now. What this globe really needs now is a Movement of
All Microbes  and the Mother of All Movements. A million MOAMS to match the
challenges ahead.


Satya Sagar is a journalist based in Thailand. He can be reached at
sagarnama at yahoo.com