We cannot allow SARS threat to change the way we live

Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, Journalist, Jakarta

Just as Sept. 11 changed forever the nature of international relations, the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) also has changed the way many people in Asia live.

Within a matter of weeks, the endemic nature of the disease changed the way people interact. With no effective vaccine to counter SARS, combined with the prevalence and ease in which it is transmitted, millions have literally changed their lifestyles.

With an all-out global effort, health officials have to some degree been able to contain the disease. In the past fortnight there has been a significant drop in the number of cases compared to two months ago. Scientists and doctors have made SARS a top priority, and for the time being it has even nudged past HIV/AIDS as the most dreaded global killer.

With changes in lifestyle come changes in spending habits, which ultimately effects business, particularly in areas where the disease has been most prevalent. Over 2,000 people were quarantined for over a week when it was feared that a SARS outbreak had occurred in the Pasir Panjang market in Singapore.

Asia's fourth largest airline, Cathay Pacific Airways, at one point was reported to be losing US$3 million a day. Even lesser airlines such as Garuda Indonesia cut back the number of flights to Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. also very briefly suspended operations at its factory in China.

Students from countries identified with a high prevalence of the disease were reportedly also being looked over twice before being accepted to universities in the United States.

It is ironic that while just months earlier innocent university students were being subject to discriminatory screening simply because they came from countries with large Muslim populations -- like Indonesia -- a similar paranoia is now affecting budding academics from China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

But such pandemonium is an explicable part of human nature when dealing with the inexplicable. Once again one can draw parallels with Sept. 11. In the immediate months following that horrific day in 2001, out of sheer ignorance, a creeping fear of Islam prevailed among many people in the United States. In the case of SARS, anxiety pushed people into seclusion and caused hasty prejudicial reactions to anyone with a cough. Tourists began to vacate places like Bali and Phuket even though no cases had been reported in these popular holiday destinations.

This is, however, not to be dismissive of the threat posed by SARS, or even to suggest that the danger has been blown out of proportion. How can we be dismissive when 730 people have died? The danger is real. Despite the various precautions taken around the world, new casualties are still being reported daily. But just as the threat of terrorism is real, the response to it should be measured to reflect the immediate danger at hand.

The glut of media coverage has exposed and alerted the public to the dangers confronting us. At a time when scientists are still in the "courting" stages in their study of the disease, the extensive coverage probably saved countless lives. But it is a fine line between enlightening and alarming the masses. Overzealousness and paranoia will do more harm than good, spurring bias and bigotry not only against those who are ill but those whose come from countries affected by the disease.

Just as it is perverse to avoid traveling by air simply because terrorists slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center, it is excessive to cancel vacations to countries in East and Southeast Asia because of SARS. By all means avoid countries where the disease has been found to be ubiquitous, but do think twice before suspending altogether business or pleasure-related travel within the region.

The objective should not be how to change our lifestyle in the age of SARS, but rather how to maintain that lifestyle while at the same time taking the necessary precautions.

We have come a long way since the dawn of HIV/AIDS, in which those infected were shunned and abstinence seemed to be the only alternative. Since then, despite the lack of a cure or vaccine, people have come to terms with the presence of HIV/AIDS and have found ways to adapt. They have not, presumably, stopped having sex.