http://www.reason.com/hod/dmc041703.shtml April 17, 2003 SARS: Panic or plague? Misinformation spreads even faster than the virus itself. By Declan McCullagh Fear of an epidemic can travel and mutate even faster than the deadly disease itself. During the early days of the SARS outbreak, an intensive-care specialist at a hospital in Hong Kong turned to mailing lists to distribute his stark, first-hand reports. "This pneumonia is out there in the community," Tom Buckley told the Critical Care Medicine mailing list in a widely-distributed message on Mar. 24. "The numbers are increasing daily, and a third hospital is being prepared for the influx. How big this is going to get is anyone's guess." Buckley warned: "HK Government is downplaying the whole thing presumably because of the economic implications." Buckley was prescient. Since then, cases of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in Hong Kong have leapt fivefold, from 260 to a current total of 1,268 infections. Now the beleaguered community is shunned by travelers, its GDP projections are shrinking by the day, and surgical masks are as common as cancelled airline flights. Tuesday's death of nine SARS patients in Hong Kong, five of whom were younger than 45 years old, set a sad new single-day record. SARS is the first epidemic of the Internet age, preying on the fact that as information becomes more communicable, rumors become more communicable too. A teenager's Web hoax claiming Hong Kong's borders would be closed prompted runs on canned foods and toilet paper. A supermarket owner in Sacramento spent two weeks arguing that, contrary to rumors, neither he nor his family is infected with SARS, and his stores are entirely safe. On Tuesday, a Sacramento city councilman tried to quell panic by bravely chewing a ceremonial Granny Smith apple from the produce section in front of reporters. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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