Overview - SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) as the movie "12 Monkeys" circa 2003

Day 1: Summary of events to date (April 3rd, 2003)

While war threatens and the world's attention is turned elsewhere, a mysterious and fatal disease breaks out in a distant land. At first, it is just a curiosity, covered on the back pages or at the tail end of the "world" news section, the panicked donning of surgical masks by the local residents more a source of amusement than anything else. War breaks out, and the numbers keep climbing; the disease is no longer confined to distant lands, but is showing up everywhere, courtesy of modern jet air travel. The doctor who identified the disease dies of it. More educated and worldly portions of the population become a little uneasy, thinking of science fictional scenarios, tales of deserted cities with yellowing newspapers blowing through empty streets (such as in "12 Monkeys", or "The Andromeda Strain"), headlines screaming of disease, panic and war all at the same time. News of major outbreaks far closer to home emerges. Headlines begin appearing in local papers: "County mobilizes to battle Mystery Disease". The numbers become exponential, and begins to attract serious attention. Children are kept home from school. Gossip on the Internet begins to take on an edge of paranoia. The disease is now clearly out of the authorities control. The fatalities have yet to number in the hundreds, but it seems that is only a matter of time.

Day 2: Events Develop Further (April 4th, 2003)

The leader of the nation issues an executive order allowing the quarantine of SARS patients, but officials assure folks that they have no such plans. As outbreaks emerge across then nation, concerned politicians begin demanding that scientists deployed abroad to investigate be brought home. The war still dominates the headlines, SARS remains barely visible in the headlines, although it is now the lead story in the Health section, with a number of supporting items.

And there is where we leave our story, still unfinished... the war continues to rage, unease has yet to turn to panic or even much alarm. For most of the world, it remains a distant curiousity, the moral equivalent of "News of the Weird", with a fatal twist. But there is still that tinge of uneasiness. This site is intended to document history in the making.

Informational Links (so we're all up to date)

Commentary

The only good thing about this disease is that it is not 100% fatal (mortality rates hover around 4% according to WHO officials), or even mostly fatal--at least with medical treatment (current CDC statements estimate "10-20% of victims will require mechanical ventilation", which is a proxy for the mortality rate in the absence of medical care). This is an evolutionary advantage. But this comes with a big "yet". The "backstop" of limited mobility that keeps a disease from exploding into a pandemic, due to poverty (such as Ebola in Africa) or authoritarian restraint (such as in the original outbreak in China) or just plain old fashioned time and distance does not apply in this case - this may well be the first real pandemic of the globalized and deregulated jet air travel era.

Thirty years ago, when nature struck back as some Chinese farmer destroyed one too many pieces of formerly undisrupted habitat (1), the rest of the world would never have noticed. Quite possibly, not even anyone in China. There would have just been an unexplained blip in the pneumonia statistics for some obscure department, and that is it. The fact that this disease did not explode last fall, demonstrates how much the grip of totalitarianism and poverty still holds on mainland China. The fact that it did not vanish shows how far the Chinese people have come towards freedom (also, of course, the lowering of barriers between static Communist China and dynamic Capitalist Hong Kong likely helped as well, as the latter is an ideal environment for the disease to propagate itself in an uncontrolled fashion). Should the disease mutate into a more fatal form while retaining the apparently close to ideal incubation period (2-7 days, possibly 10), the carnage would be terrible while it "burned itself out"--the normal restrictions on propagation (due to human populations being grouped into individual pools, where too high a mortality rate means the disease kills people faster than it infects them) clearly do not apply anymore.

Foot dragging by China points up that we are a truly global society - repression and lack of democracy in one country can now have an effect on the health of the entire world. BTW, the emerging news that the scope of the epidemic in China is much more widespread than initially stated, and that it is not over and done with, is not a unique developlment, as those who've followed the developing AIDS crisis there, which was (and is still being) deeply aggravated by head in the sand approaches to gathering blood donations and efforts by local bureaucrats to suppress information flow up the chain of authority. The epidemic there reaches into the millions, and yet is completely off the world's radar.

News

April 4th, 2003: It looks like SARS has broken out into the general population in Canada (article date: April 2nd). Somehow, I don't think homeless people are frequent flyers to Asia, nor are they close associates with such people. This is strong evidence that the chain of infection is now more than a couple of links away from traveler's to Asia.

Economic Effects

SARS is poised to execute a major smackdown on the Asian economy. And, realistically, if it happens there, I have severe doubts that we won't have to replicate their measures here, although the authoritarian nature of the regimes in Singapore and Hong Kong make that a much easier and much earlier sought option than it will be here in the United States. WebEx must be look like an compelling alternative to airline travel if Hong Kong businessmen and or prospective visitor to Asia. Morgan Stanley is predicting a "worldwide recession", with SARS being a major aggravating factor.

See my Personal Weblog for up to the minute developments and commentary.

1. "The World Health Organization has recorded over 36 new emerging infectious diseases since 1976; many of these, such as malaria and dengue fever, are the direct result of landscape influence on disease ecology."

About The Author and The Designer

Thomas Leavitt (seen at right on his way to a peace protest in San Francisco earlier this year) is a life-long entrepreneur and community activist. In high school, he refurbished and sold used computer equipment he purchased at swapmeets - and served in student government, while also working as an intern for a Santa Monica City Council member. In college, he was an e-commerce pioneer, buying and selling computer equipment over the Internet via Usenet News, long before Mosaic was even a glimmer in Marc Andressen's eye. He also helped organize a three day sit-in/takeover of his college's administration building. In 1993, he self-published a book based on his experience buying and selling computer equipment, "Thom's Little Guide to Buying a Computer" and sold it over the newly emerged World Wide Web - he also published "The Canter and Siegel Report", a widely read compendium of information about the Internet's first large scale commercial "spammers". In 1994, he founded Web Communications, LLC, the world's first self-service web hosting company, which was later sold to Verio Communications (now a unit of NTT) for $8 million - he also attended the Green Party's 1996 Presidential nominating convention as a delegate from Santa Cruz. After leaving WebCom, he help found TargetFirst, Inc., which grew through several funding rounds, then scaled back down as the Internet advertising market collapsed. In November of 2002, he ran for City Council, earning 2,309 votes. Today, he is helping grow his wife's web site design business, searching for employment, and pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities. He may be emailed at thomas@thomasleavitt.org.

Gunilla Leavitt has been a professional web designer since 1994. She has designed and built so many web sites, she's lost track of the number (at last count, it was something north of 250). These have ranged from large scale government projects, to small scale personal sites, and everything in between. She is the mother of two children from her first marriage, and a Swedish national. Gunilla finds American politics and government strange and frustrating, but has become very much of an activist since meeting her husband in July of 2000. She has served as President of South Bay Bisexual Organizers and Activists (SOBOA) for the last two years, and also regularly offers her web site design and culinary skills (she has also been a professional cook) to the many community organizations and non-profits she and her husband are involved with. She says, "My job is to make things look pretty!" Something she does with skill and panache. Not to mention speed: the site you are looking at was taken from concept to completed design in less than 4 hours. She may be emailed at webmistress@godmoma.com

For information about how you can put Gunilla's talents to work on your company or organization's web site, click the "Design by Godmoma" icon below.

Thomas Leavitt normally earns his living as a Unix Systems Administrator, and is currently available for hire. See his resume for more information.

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