Crashing an Epidemic

Every morning residents of Beijing’s Yongali neighborhood gather in the concrete plazas scattered among their apartment buildings to begin the day with calisthenics. Recently, someone has been keeping a close eye on who shows up and who doesn’t, and it’s not the fitness police. It’s Sun Shuqing, a 50-year-old retired factory worker who is the neighborhood’s Communist-Party approved busybody. “We are so used to everyone going outside to the courtyard in the morning that if we see someone doesn’t come out, we get information,” she says, cheerfully explaining how she and 100 other volunteers have been asked to report on residents with possible SARS symptoms. If a neighbor informs her someone is acting funny – and many have been more than willing to do so – Sun grabs her thermometer and pays a house call.

Stunned by a deadly new disease that has killed more people in China than anywhere else in the world – more than 270 by mid-May – the nation’s Communist Party has mobilized millions in a “people’s war” against SARS that recalls the mass political campaigns favored by Mao Zedong.

A 30-year-old driver in Yunnan province says he’s terrified of how people have reacted to the government’s broad call to arms: “It reminds me of what I’ve heard about the Cultural Revolution.” People across the country are manning “fever checkpoints” and refusing to let strangers pass, scrubbing down cars and taxis, even imposing quarantines on friends and relatives with the slightest sniffle. Local officials have sealed off entire villages and euthanized countless pets. Last week Beijing threatened to execute anyone who intentionally spreads the disease.

To outsiders, the “war” looks like overkill. But China’s unorthodox approach to fighting SARS just might work. The pace of the epidemic has slowed significantly in recent weeks, with government reporting fewer and fewer new infections daily. Meanwhile, in democratic rival Taiwan, the contagion appears only to be worsening. Which raises the question: is an authoritarian government better equipped to squash an epidemic than a democratic one?

Traditionally, political scientists argue that democracies are better than dictatorships at preventing disasters, be they famine, flood or pestilence. A free press, an active civil society and elections that hold officials accountable to the public help ensure that governments prepare for the worst and act quickly when it comes. Indeed, it was the rigid, top-down nature of the Chinese political system, which for months treated SARS as a secret to be covered up, that allowed the virus to flourish. But this same obsession with control may now give China an advantage against the disease. “A highly authoritarian regime can enforce a lot of measures, particularly at the grass-roots level,” says Stephen Morse, director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness at Columbia University.

On a recent visit to Hebei province, World Health Organization investigators were floored by the drive to register and track every returning migrant from Beijing, a SARS hot spot. Volunteers in the villages were assigned to monitor 10 households each. “They have mobilized the entire society,” marvels WHO expert Alan Schnur. Another WHO investigator, James Maguire, described the entire town placed under quarantine after only a few residents displayed symptoms: “A whole village of 2,000 people was out into isolation for two weeks! It’s just incredible.”

Frightened Chinese seem to be going along with the crackdown despite their harsh memories of other mass movements, in part because they believe they’re now fighting a real public enemy. For people like Xu Aihu, director of the neighborhood committee in Yonganli, the campaign provides an adrenaline rush. Tall and athletic, the former college volleyball player glows when she talks about the battle against SARS. Recently, Xu boasts, her team volunteers forced 4,000 families in 50 buildings to dispose of 100 truckloads of trash. “Some of the old grandpas and grandmas came outside as the trucks were being loaded and wanted to rescue their old pieces of furniture,” Xu says smiling. “But we had issued a lot of propaganda toward the young generation, so their sons and daughters persuaded them to cooperate.” Xu claims hardly any residents have complained about the neighborhood’s prevention measures, which included twice-daily temperature check for all.

Other governments in Asia have fought the disease with less stringent measures. Singapore announced the first home quarantine measures, putting electronic bracelets on violators. But city-state officials were equally serious about their public-information campaign, holding detailed daily briefings to update citizens. Taiwan, on the other hand, has been struggling to enforce its quarantine orders. “When I was in Beijing, I felt more comfortable because if the government wants to do something, then they can do it,” says Edward Huang, Taiwanese businessman under quarantine in Taipei. “Taiwan has become too democratic, too open, so a lot of things the government wants to do, it can’t.” The government is now installing videophones in quarantined homes, but Taipei’s Mayor admits there are limits. “Until and unless we lock them up, there’s no way to be sure,” says he. “But we are not a fascist country; we can’t do that.”

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

Vocabulary. Now read the articles carefully, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use these words in the further discussion of the problem.

1.

To respond to treatment, to take to doing smth, a mortality rate, frail, an outbreak of (a disease), to take tough measures, to come into close contact with smb, to distribute fliers, a communicable disease, to undertake an investigation, a health-care worker, to pinpoint smth, unwittingly, to disseminate (a disease), to emerge, to contribute to smth, to verify smth, to contract a disease, to understate (numbers), a mutated virus (to mutate).

2.

A busybody, to report on smb, to act funny, to be stunned, to recall smth, to impose a quarantine on …, to spread a disease, an (un)orthodox approach to smth, authoritarian, to hold smb accountable to smb, to enforce measures, at the grass-roots level, a hot spot, to be assigned to do smth, to place smb under quarantine, to dispose of smth, to hold a briefing, to update smb.