Atypical Pneumonia and Ambivalent Law and Politics: SARS and the Response to SARS in China

1.For further analyses of these issues, see, for example, Jason W. Sapsin et al.. SARS and World Health Organization ("WHO") declared the outbreak contained, the disease killed 812 people and infected more than 8,400 people. 7While such human losses are tragic, and defining an appropriate level of concern over a new threat to public health is problematic, SARS prompted alarm and reaction disproportionate to the death and illness it caused, in comparison to other diseases that have stricken more people in the same period, are no less highly communicable, or have higher mortality rates. 8To be sure, some of the reaction derived from an inevitable period of uncertainty about whether the new illness might be far more catastrophic than it has, in fact, turned out to be.But the limits of science were only part of the problem.What made SARS an international crisis-and one that brought great pressure on the PRC to conform to international standards and demands-was that SARS could spread from country to country rapidly and potentially devastatingly along the pathways created by globalization.Greatly expanded and jet-speed international mobility of people-many of them traveling because of the opportunities accorded by global investment and trade-made possible the quick and unpredictable spread of SARS and the economic and human harms it could cause.SARS quickly showed that it could exact a significant short-term economic toll, and, if unchecked or recurring, a devastating longer term one in the Greater Chinese region and beyond.The impact of the several thousand SARS cases in 2002-2003 9 made clear that a serious SARS epidemic could produce costs that might rival the Asian Financial Crisis of the mid-1990s.1O Like the financial system-centered meltdown that spread from Thailand throughout Southeast Asia and into Northeast Asia in the 1990s, the atypical pneumonia that began in southeastern China raised the prospect pf a domino effect that could damage advanced industrial economies.Some of the immediate impact was far-flung indeed.SARS fears and WHO-prompted travel bans led to sharp downturns in airline and travel industries that were still reeling from the aftermath of the September 11til terrorist attacks.In Toronto, the most severely affected area outside East Asia, SARS caused over 30 deaths among over 200 infections.ll It cost Canada tens of millions of dollars per day in lost economic activity and the prospect of a halfpoint drop in its economic growth rate. 12Although Toronto's problems were not replicated elsewhere beyond China and the immediately adjacent region, such developments left national and municipal leaders throughout the developed world to monitor the trickle of SARS diagnoses in their jurisdictions and worry that they might find themselves in the shoes of Toronto's mayor, facing dire economic consequences, railing at the WHO, and desperately trying to convince the world not to stay away.13Closer to the epicenter, international buyers, whose orders for clothing, toys, and electronics keep many of China's industries and Hong Kong's offices running, and international investors, who keep China's economy growing, stopped showing up.Multinational corporations had to contemplate what could happen to their intricate global supply networks if SARS were to disrupt the manufacturing of a vast range of consumer goods in the factories of Guangdong or the production of computers in Tqiwan-invested facilities farther north along China's gold coast.Here too, the dire scenarios did not occur.Commercial relations muddled through with local agents, the internet, video conferencing, and the like until the disease began to ebb.International investors merely paused or perhaps postponed new ventures.The links in the complicated production chains remained unbroken.But, again, the lesson was clear about what could have been and what might be if SARS re-erupts.SARS' immediate economic impact was, of course, greatest in the most affected areas of China-which included some of China's most economically dynamic areas such as Beijing, parts of Guangdong, and other industrial and service sector-oriented coastal regions.In addition to the consequences of foreigners' and foreign markets' worries, local residents reacted as well.Although there was soaring demand for surgical masks, rubber gloves, disinfectants, vinegar (the boiling of which, some rumors claimed, would kill the pathogen), and train tickets (to escape SARS-stricken Beijing), economic activity otherwise slowed greatly.In Beijing, and other affected or worried cities, people stayed home from shopping malls, restaurants, and work.Excepting the exodus from Beijing, domestic travel fell as people forewent trips to potentially affected destinations and as local authorities erected roadblocks 11.

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