Never mind how CNN and the American media in general has inflamed their international audience about SARS. Much more serious seems to be how bureaucrats and politicians, ostensibly in place to protect the health of the weal have been acting. Here, although there seems to be some merit to the argument made by Canadian epidemologist and nurses, alleging that Health Canada is downplaying the latest local outbreak of the contagious respiratory illness and that physicians at North York General Hospital ignored warnings from SARS nurses, there are self-centered blunders have most obviously been made elsewhere.

I write these lines as one who escaped “self-imposed” quarantine only through blind luck. Others have not been so fortunate. A busy schedule postponed a scheduled visit of someone in a health-care facility that is now total quarantine. As bad luck would have had it - the person that I would have visited, had time allowed it, was sharing a room with a suspected SARS patient. A number of days later a public warning came, calling for quarantine of all who had been in that facility over a specific time period.

Let it be said here - I have nothing but admiration for those on the front lines, dealing calmly, cheerfully with a stressed out public. An already high degree of respect for our underpaid, overworked, medical professionals, often misused if not abused by a very demanding public, has ratcheted up many a notch during this present situation.

Our democratic society has no means of “enforcing” quarantine. That is how the thoughtless, selfish people who failed to pay attention to what their body told them have brought about this latest wave, now thousands riding out the last days of home imprisonment. The Hewlett Packard worker, the Markham high school student - neither individial could have argued being unaware of the fact that a deadly form of pneumonia was being battled. Such is the power of the media today.

Well, then, how to bell the cat? If individual decisions have been made, resulting in infections in others, what should be the role of the state? If these individuals infected others, leading to death, what should be the moral responsibility of the state?

It is far simpler, when the state is the one making decisions. Such as has been the case in China and Russia, the first being merely the cradle of SARS and the world’s most populous country, ruled by a brutal, law-ignoring totalitarian regime; the second being a country that due to its vast size is almost impossible to govern by any other means than fear and punishment.

Who will punish China and Russia? Not the World Health Organization, that may be sure. Evidence came to light last week that both China and Russia have concealed vital information about SARS cases. Considering the rapid transmission of the disease, considering that it is a global concern - the Canadian cases resulted from one single individual case where a traveller imported SARS to Toronto from China - one would have expected CNN to latch on to this news. Nope. Too far from home.

Toronto, on the other hand is close, and thus under serious scrutiny. The double standard is worrisome, for an explosion of SARS in Russia, for example, could very well spread into Europe, and make the present scare a true epidemic.

Last week, the Helsingin Sanomat published the results of an investigation that showed that Chinese authorities concealed vital information in March and April that could have saved the life of Pekka Aro, a Finnish WHO official. HS alleges that Aro’s fate may have been sealed by a general falsification of SARS-related information in China. There is evidence that China attempted to keep secret the SARS diagnosis of a Chinese official, who sat beside Aro on a flight from Bangkok to Beijing. Others on the flight may also have been infected - but those being mostly Chinese that evidence was hard to track by the Finnish newspaper. Pekka Mykkänen, the investigative journalist who exposed the situation, claims that it is evident that information relating to the Aro case is not being provided honestly even today.

The Russian case is also contemptibly stupid. A 25 year old man living in Blagoveshchensk near the Chinese border had been suspected of having SARS as far back as May 5th. Yet Russian health officials refused to confirm this. A battery of tests was performed - one presumes so that they could be doubly sure. Who wants to have the stigma of a case of SARS in their country? It took until May 28th for officials to admit the truth. Shockingly, residents of Blagoveshchensk learned about SARS being in their midst from national TV! Russia has now taken the step of suspending all movement through the 31 border checkpoints with China and Mongolia. As Russia’s border with China is immense, then that in itself is a challenge. A cough at a checkpoint may be all it takes.

Curiously, Canadian and Chinese official delegations to the St. Petersburg 300th anniversary celebrations were not screened for SARS - as a gesture of respect?

Make of this what you will, underlying the scare-mongering prevalent in North America is the fact that governmental decisions in the hotbed of SARS have allowed the infection to spread. Conspiracy theorists must enjoy allegations that the WHO is not acting against China for political reasons. However, one fact is crystal clear. Torontonians have dealt with SARS for the most part with reason and sense. CNN has inflamed fears to the extent that some Americans are reluctant to even have symptom-free visitors from Toronto as their guests. For all the sense and courage shown by those battling SARS in the hospitals, concealing information elsewhere can undermine all that has been done here to halt the spread.

In medieaval times one knew that a leper was on the road by the ringing of the bell that the leper was forced to wear as a warning. With SARS, no such warning is available. Thus, it is imperative that all countries, regardless of political fall-out be open and up front about infopormation. This may be too much to ask for in the case of China and Russia, the totalitarian thought process is embedded far too strongly. But in the case oof the US and CNN, a modicum of restraint and common-sense would not be too much to ask for, would it?

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