It has a lower death rate than the common flu. It is the reason why Andy Wong has no more playmates in the neighborhood. It is the latest prodigy of the clever media to avoid reporting real, though more mundane, news. It is the latest fetish in this pornography of fear.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's SARS!
Like Superman, it is real entity pumped full of fanciful speculation and exaggeration until it becomes a looming super... something. Not to claim that it is a product of imagination. It may be a real threat in other countries, but there has been no (read: zero, nada, the big O, 0!) deaths in the U.S. from SARS. Isn't there some sort of minimum requirement, entertainment factor aside, to become an epidemic?
What is the rhyme and reason behind this meaningless hysteria? Why does so many news sources focus on SARS? Perhaps they need something new to focus on since the Iraqi War has grown quite wearisome and is no longer deserving of 24-hour coverage. Perhaps SARS and the Iraqi War is merely the last in a long lineage of a culture of hysteria and fear. Anthrax and 9-11 immediately comes to mind as possible predecessors of this role.
No one can contest that a fearful nation is a doe-eyed, obedient nation. When there is danger, people keep their heads down, mind their own business, and work hard. It's the good ole Protestant work ethic, only fear of God has been replaced by fear of SARS.
This fear, or other variations on this fear, is good for the unity of the nation as well. For example, Bush's polls have soared while "coincidental" catastrophes keep the people baa-ing like sheep.
Meanwhile the pharmeceutical industry and biochemistry thrive and teem with activity and promise of future prosperity. Capitalism at its best.
Meanwhile, airports in Asian countries are vacant, bustling tourist destinations are ghost towns, economy in Asia as a whole plummet. Chinatowns all over the world are avoided like the plague. Asian kids are practically quarantined from their non-Asian counterparts, though they have done nothing - besides being Asian. This is racism, not even thinly veiled. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but perhaps the challenged hegemony, known as American capitalism, has finally found a way to tame the Dragons of the Asia.
(Isn't Severe and Acute repetitively redundant?)
But that's horrible, Susie! The American economy has suffered too! And SARS are quite the terror in other countries. It's not an invention of a mendacious tyrant!
Maybe. Maybe not. But for the sake of not appearing like a zealot who slipped just a little too far left, I will concede that SARS was not brewed purposefully to send the world into a maelstorm. But then how else would you explain it? It would then be the accidental offspring of the media. It's because frightful news sells. And anything and everything, even the news, must sell. Everything must be a commodity.
(BIG SALE! OF COLOSSAL PROPORTIONS NEVER BEFORE SEEN! EVERYTHING ON THE SHELVES MUST GO!!! ALL FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF YOUUUURRR SANITY!)
Suddenly I'm having trouble breathing.
previous - next