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SARS wasn't hysteria. SARS was a very dangerous disease that was brought under control. While SARS was not nearly as transmissible as the flu, if I recall correctly, it was still surprisingly transmissible. Most cases of infection occurred in apartment buildings or hospitals. When that occurred, many people in the apartment buildings or hospitals became infected, and in many cases they never had direct person to person contact. Once people became aware of SARS' characteristics, they took actions such as donning breathing protection, washed their hands more often, opened windows, quarantined people for ten days, and put on breathing masks over the victims. Then the transmission rate plummeted. Out of about 8000 reported cases, about 800 people died. If China would have acted faster, it might have been half of that. If health authorities would have acted slower, it very well could have become a pandemic, though it probably wouldn't have had done too much to the US (where people don't congregate as often in stale air environments and where the health care system is equipped to handle such a disease). Nonetheless, I believe that health authorities around the world saved millions of lives due to their actions (and in some cases sacrifices such as Dr. Urbani who died researching it).