There has been a storm of old and new paperwork at Big Pink. We have mentioned that the search for documents regarding the purchase of the new condo turned up some other documents from the same chaotic phase of life. The mortgage people were quite insistent about seeing old Decrees and current statements of worth. Some of the ancient papers contained mild insight regarding current events. Actually, it was a reversal in what should be the official approach to take with the spread of viral infections.

We naturally support all sorts of unlikely things. One of us, whose opinions were dated on a document from April of 2003, involved people in the Public Health sector. We touched on the context of one memorable pronouncement this morning. It was from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who then as now served as the Dean of Public Health response matters.

Back then, the SARS virus had been identified as a threat to public health at the same time that bio-weapons research became an issue. Some types of research were banned in the United States. As part of the wrap-up to the crisis, there was a pronouncement at the end of a meeting on the 4th floor of the Hubert Horatio Humphrey building in Washington. That was the HQ of the vast enterprise known as the Department of Health and Human Services.

Doctor Fauci was in charge of the task force. His brisk pronouncement at the end of the meeting was that additional research could be performed elsewhere, and he had the matter of the SARS virus “covered.” That conversation made the later revelations about the role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the COVID pandemic not particularly surprising. You might remember the assertion the Lab had a role in the outbreak was controversial and widely touted as misinformation. Twenty years ago, the concept was memorable enough to actually write down in the context of the dangers of Quarantine in disease prevention. This excerpt from a memo written on 02 April of 2003 is illustrative of how things changed:

“There is something else to mention from the meeting today. Something just as scary as SARS and it already has secured all sort of bridges. Late yesterday [01 April 2003] American Flight 128, inbound from Tokyo’s Narita International to San Jose, California, reported that some people looked sick in the back. The jet’s Captain radioed ahead and Gov. Gray Davis, intrepid Governor of the Golden State, acted swiftly. He had the airplane quarantined when it arrived, and the sick passengers were whisked away. The remaining travelers were issued cards, instructing them to monitor themselves and call in if they didn’t feel well in the next week or so.

The “Q” word is fraught with peril. The last time it was used in earnest, with the power of law, was in the McKinley Administration. 1901. Wasn’t even used in the 1919 pandemic. The power of the “Q” is reserved to the States and locals under the Constitution.

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

It 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 it. 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.

This is a huge deal. At the morning meeting yesterday the question came up, ironically, about what we would do when SARS came to our office. The WHO is recommending self-diagnosis. If you feel the onset of headache or fever, you should voluntarily isolate yourself for ten days. In going around the table, there was a recommendation we follow that regimen. If anyone felt a little headachy they should call in and say they are starting self-diagnosis and would be back in ten days. One of the staff said he wasn’t feeling so good and needed to get to a liquor store. He was going 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.”

Dr. Fauci warned us about the consequences of Quarantine on the larger society. While attractive as an option to shut down transmission of the virus, the consequences of implementing “Q” could well prove to be more severe than the disease.”

Talking about it this morning, we wondered what it was that changed his mind. The COVID pandemic was a severe sort of respiratory infection, but also a bit less severe than the SARS outbreak twenty years ago. The whole thing is a little interesting, you know? We thought Dr. Fauci was right in his assessment a couple decades ago. We wonder what changed?

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