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Posted on 04/08/2003 9:01:11 AM PDT by WaveThatFlag

First there was denial, then a sluggish response — and now irrational fear out of proportion to the danger.

The denial was in China, where the disease appears to have originated, the sluggish response was by Hong Kong, and the fear has spread worldwide. Advisories from the World Health Organization, governments, airlines and trade fairs warning against traveling to Hong Kong and Guangdong have combined with intense news coverage to make the recent outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, seem more dramatic than it really is.

To be sure, there was reason for major concern when it was thought that this could be an unusually virulent and fatal form of pneumonia. Some concern is still justified, since the identity of the virus and the main methods of its transmission remain unknown.

The statistics of the disease, however, scarcely suggest the need for the restrictions being imposed on travelers, which are slowing trade and hurting tourism around East Asia. (Yesterday, Continental Airlines said it was suspending some flights to Hong Kong.) The disease is routinely described as "highly contagious." If it were, there would now be tens of thousand of sufferers in this crowded city of 6.8 million. But there have been only 883 cases, or one in 80,000. Most have been within three clusters — one housing block and two hospitals that treated early victims.

Even among the infected in Hong Kong, fewer than 15 percent have needed intensive care. The mortality rate has been around 4 percent, the norm here for pneumonia, which kills 2,000 to 3,000 people a year. The vast majority of the deaths have been elderly people and those with chronic illnesses. To warn against visiting Hong Kong and Guangdong seems curious when there are more widespread or virulent diseases like dengue fever and encephalitis in the Southeast Asian tourist havens of Thailand and Malaysia.

Disease threats make big stories, so the news media have focused on the day-to-day progress of the illness and tend to lose perspective. That is all the more reason for governments and the World Health Organization to keep a better balance between caution and spreading worry.

An obsession with risk not only creates disruption but also diverts attention from dealing with ever present health and safety issues that in human as well as statistical terms are far bigger threats to life.

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