Indeed, preliminary studies of early SARS victims here in Guangdong have found that an unusually high percentage were in the catering profession — a tantalizing clue, perhaps, to how a germ that genetically most resembles chicken and rodent viruses has gained the ability to infect thousands of humans.
One of the earliest cases, last December, was a seller of snakes and birds here who died at Shunde's First People's Hospital of severe pneumonia. His wife and a several members of the hospital staff contracted it as well, setting off an outbreak that now sounds eerily familiar.