SARS spreads panic faster than illnesses

INCHEON, South Korea — On Cathay Pacific Flight 410 from Hong Kong to Seoul, Jonathan Hatch skipped lunch because to eat would have necessitated removing his surgical mask.

The mask also kept him from chatting with other passengers, although if he had, he might have yelled at the fellow several rows ahead who had the temerity to sneeze, sending ripples of anxiety through the cabin.

"I wouldn't say I'm exactly scared," said Hatch, 34, a Chicago-born lawyer who admits that upon arriving at Seoul's international airport in Incheon the first thing he did was wash his hands with soap to disinfect. "But things are definitely getting bizarre."

The mysterious new pneumonia known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is sowing panic at an even faster pace than the rate of new infections. Throughout Asia, surgical masks have become the fashion accessory of the season. Some airlines are starting to hand them out to passengers on flights between affected areas even before the peanuts and headphones.

Air travel is especially suspect because of the close quarters and because of its potential to allow infectious diseases to trot the globe with frightening efficiency. In San Jose, Calif., an American Airlines flight from Tokyo was quarantined on the runway Tuesday after four people who had come from Hong Kong were suspected of having the illness. It turned out to be a false alarm, but this incident illustrates just how deep the paranoia is running.

Conferences are being postponed, vacations canceled and business plans torn up to an extent that some economists believe the virus could depress world markets more than the war in Iraq.

Among the high-profile travelers who have shelved Asia tours of late are the Rolling Stones and Vice President Dick Cheney, whose spokeswoman gave the Iraq war as the main reason for postponing a two-week trip this month to China, South Korea and Japan. Fear of the disease has led many companies to restrict travel to Asia, while others are asking families of employees working in Hong Kong to return home.

The World Health Organization issued a rare warning on Wednesday for travelers to avoid Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province, where the largest number of cases have occurred; and said it did not believe the disease had peaked.

Malaysia ordered a freeze on the hiring of foreign workers from affected countries while Hong Kong and Singapore continued to keep schools closed and thousands of people under quarantine. Hong Kong officials moved more than 240 people from an infected apartment complex to quarantine camps.

In Indonesia, health authorities say there are five suspected cases of the disease. Yesterday they declared SARS a national epidemic threat.

Controlling the spread of the disease poses a major challenge for Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country. Many doctors are poorly trained and the health-care system is already overloaded. Rather than see a physician, many Indonesians prefer to go to traditional faith healers who are less likely than doctors to recognize or report SARS cases.

Thailand, meanwhile, said it would bar any tourist showing symptoms of the illness and require all visitors from the most affected areas to wear masks during their stay in the country.

"Until a few days ago, I would have told you that people are doing a good job of shrugging it off, but now it has gone from being an irritant and mildly upsetting to quite a downer," said Geoffrey Barker, chief economist at HSBC in Hong Kong. He said that his firm has rearranged its offices so employees are separated from one another, the idea being if one floor gets quarantined, others can carry on with the firm's business. Most of his firm's employees are wearing masks and some carry cotton swabs to avoid pushing elevator buttons with their fingers.

"It feels like a hospital ward here," Barker said. "It's hard to know what is being reasonable and what is paranoia."

Hong Kong is at the epicenter of the panic with schools ordered closed and many employees ordered to work from their homes. A prank by a teenager who

e-mailed people a fictitious newspaper story on Tuesday claiming the entire city was going to be quarantined triggered a plunge in the stock market and a massive run on the grocery stores as people rushed to stockpile food.

Chillingly, after 200 cases of the illness were discovered in one apartment complex, Hong Kong authorities began to move people who might have been exposed to a quarantine camp to the north of the city.

Hong Kong residents find themselves ostracized when they go abroad. A Hong Kong banker flew 12 hours to Europe last week for an important meeting to discover his client was too fearful to see him in person. They met by conference call instead, although they were in the same building.

Several major financial firms have lowered their economic-growth forecasts for Asia this week with China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia among the most hard-hit.

The panic is affecting even countries that have not so far had any reported cases of the disease, such as South Korea and Japan.

David Patten, a London-based economist who is getting married this weekend to his Korean fiancée in Pusan, South Korea, said that even his father had been threatening not to come to the wedding because of the epidemic.

Korean health authorities are taking strict measures to prevent the contagion from seeping in through the borders, but they concede it is most likely a losing battle in this age of globalization.

In normal times, some 60,000 people travel each day through Seoul's Incheon Airport, potentially carrying deadly diseases. Arriving passengers now are being asked to fill out a form indicating if they have fever, coughing or shortness of breath — symptoms of SARS — but the system is voluntary and doctors believe it possible that somebody could be carrying the disease without knowing it.

Health officials say that SARS is not nearly as contagious as, for example, the common cold. It so far has killed an estimated 78 people and sickened 2,151; but the far more common influenza is believed to kill more than 250,000 people worldwide each year.