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All these are happening in Hong Kong now:

70% of the population wear a face mask. Some with disposable gloves too.

Lifts buttons are covered with a plastic sheet which is changed every 2 to 3 hours. All public places are fumigated daily. some twice.

An entire housing complex is cordoned off with all residents sent into quarantine.

Strictly no family visiting of all patients (including non-SARS patients) in hospitals. No last rite allowed. Patient cannot see their family before they die.

No make-up allowed for patients died of SARS. Coffin must be sealed. Can’t even say last goodbye.

All schools suspended (3 weeks). Some even indefinitely in infected areas. All students must pass temperature check and step on disinfectant soaked carpet before entering school. Hand wash every hour. Strict all day face mask rule. Heavy dose Vitamin C for every student. No school lunch in canteen. Teacher supervised lunch in classroom only (strictly no talking). No physical contact with other student.

Temperature check at airport. One passenger found sick, entire plane is quarantined.

All shops, banks, offices, restaurants, schools will be closed immediately for disinfection if one case is found among the staff. Entire team of staff will be sent into quarantine.

Cinemas and restaurants are closing down. Airplanes are grounded. Hotel are empty. It is now causing an “economic meltdown” in a once prosperous city.

The catastrophy happening in Hong Kong can happen to Beijing as well. Is this mere media hysteria?

A catastrophe is when a quarter of the city is lying dead on the streets. Taking precautions to stop the spread of a virus is hardly a catastrophe.

Please look at a map of China....it is a big place, and I have a feeling that peasants in the Xinjiang or Yunnan Province don't even know where Bejing is, let alone give a crap about the people there.

Frankly, no it can't. Hong Kong is an incredibly overpopulated island that is a throughport for thousands if not hundreds of thousands every day.. HK goes into hysteria every time the bird flu comes through.

Beijing is not HK, not even close. Sars will not cause the economic collapse of China, and it surely will not cause the abandonment of its manufacturing. Sars is not instant death, as originally believed, in fact last things I saw on it was mortality for it was under 25% and falling fast the more people infected that were being tracked.

China is a nation of over a BILLION people and has all sorts of true problems... THe government cannot even effectively feed its people, it has a large HIV/AIDS problem because of government denial and coverup, SARS is just one more thing. It will no more bring about the collapse of China economically than the current starvation problems or AIDS problems. A few thousand dead, hell even a few million dead from a disease would not cause the total collapse of the Chinese nation or economy. Wouldn't be a good thing, but belief that it will destroy it as a manufacturing base is naive.

Anyone believing a disease like SARS is going to collapse China in my opinion is incredibly ignorant of just exactly how things are in China day to day. They see pictures of Beijing and think China is a modern nation, reality could not be farther from the truth. China is largely a 3rd world country with a few urban centers.

More people are dying in N. Korea from starvation and in China too daily than SARS will ever kill. Yet the governments are no less stable than they ever were. If anything SARS will force a long overdue reinvestment and policy evaluation of the Chinese public health system, but it won't destroy the nation.