01 April 2003

This morning there are big events to report, The Queen of English is ailing from something that might be Covid and could be a fatal affliction, given her age. The Olympics we did not watch have just concluded in Beijing, and that may be a signal for the Russians to play their hand in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Pandemic has entered a new phase, if the President’s quiet signing of a year-long extension of Emergency measures is any indication. With some of the panic dying down- sorry to use the “D” word- we thought it might be time to roll with these words scribbled in 2003, when one of us was in an improbable position as a special assistant to the Secretary of Health and Human Services assigned to Dr. Tony Fauci’s emergency medical team. It was dealing with something frightening, and also the direct antecedent to Covid- the SARS virus. We have not talked about much, but the words that made up the acronym demonstrate the gravity of the issue: “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.”

The Writer’s Section has largely held back on a reprise of the real experience two decades old. With the possibility of war in Europe, this “two part” narrative may be interrupted. But here is the start of the “WHO’s on First” story.

Here are the words from 19 years ago:

“American Flight 128 from Narita to San Jose was the issue next up, the cabin crew reporting to the flight deck that some people looked sick in the back. The Captain radioed ahead and Gray Davis, intrepid Governor of the Golden State, had the airplane quarantined when it arrived. The sick passengers were whisked away. The remaining travelers were issued cards, that instructed them to monitor themselves and call in if they didn’t feel well in the next week or so.

The “Q” word- what we called “Quarantine” in short hand- is fraught with peril. The last time it was used in earnest, with the power of law, was in the McKinley Administration. In the year “1901.” It wasn’t even used in the 1919 pandemic. The power of the “Q” is reserved to the States and locals. And so that is why California was a big deal today.

The Transportation Secretary was on travel himself, and he wanted to “Q” Flight 128. That would be unprecedented, and cause of some consternation in the Health Community. Not to mention the swirl of the Department of Homeland Security. I had to meet with them and swear with my Boss undying support to the new Department. Then I had to go and make a speech to the regional directors of our Department on how we will craft and execute our Continuity of Operations program, the one where we need to vacate our buildings and go to someplace safe.

Then there was the explosion of SARS itself, and the pitch we need to get to the President, and the questions I drafted to put the spooks on record for what they known, and differently, what they think. If they waffle they will be hoisted on their own petard of secrecy. This is a huge deal. At the senior staff meeting this morning I asked, ironically, what we would do when SARS came to our staff. It is coming. I recommended self-diagnosis and ten days in quarters to see if the diagnosis was correct. A very distinguished physician opined that he felt a little feverish and thought he needed to get to the liquor store to see if Maker’s Mark or Jack Daniels was the better prophylactic. A field trial, he said, one with the left hand and the other the right.

Sometimes I don’t think they take me seriously.

This morning the explosion of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome was significant enough to come right after the story of the beginning of the Battle for Baghdad. There are hundreds if not thousands of cases of SARS diagnosed in China. Hundreds in Hong Kong and hundreds in Hanoi and hundreds possibly in Canada and nearly seventy dead from it. It starts with a headache and a fever and then it gets into the lungs and then it interferes with breathing and then, in around 4% of the cases, the patient dies. Doesn’t sound like much, after all 96% live, but think what a number 4% of China’s population is. Or anywhere.

From what we have learned, SARS first popped up at the Metropole Hotel in Kowloon, and then leaped over to the Amoy Garden Apartment Building in Hong Kong’s New Territories. It got there from four visits of one of the ill patients at the hospital to a relative. Then it jumped into a few hundred residents there. The World Health Organization physician who first identified it died from the exposure. But the queer thing is how it jumped from Guangjong Province to the smoking floor of the Metropole and then across the Pacific to Toronto and then across Ontario. And London and Paris and Australia and now it is popping up across the U.S. It will be visiting a city near you soon.

Then there was word of the contaminated tank truck of liquid egg. Think about it, all those egg McMuffins and cookies and cakes that are made with industrial egg. A test came up positive somewhere in the food chain, somewhere validated from liquid truck to powdered product in some other state and the whisper that it might have been bound for the production of Meals Ready to Eat. Or Meals Rejected by Ethiopians, as the troops called them in the Horn of Africa. More will follow that in the morning.”

So, that was some of the view of another dread disease that did not play out the way this latest one did. There is more, since it may have resulted from testing on the original SARS vaccine that escaped- or was let out- of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And it was played in a much different manner by people who reacted less to something more severe. SARS. It will be interesting to see if the history of this will ever be revealed. The real history, I mean.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com