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SARS Burst

Has the dreaded SARS virus finally gatecrashed its way into India? Let's hope not.

SARS: Is India next?

So - has SARS attacked India or not?

No. That's as categorical as it gets. In a recent statement , the Indian Union's Health Minister, Sushma Swaraj, assured the nation that it had not. And that she had this on the authority of the World Health Organization (WHO), no less. India is SARS-free.

What a relief ! Anyway, barring the odd pop tune by Shankar Mahadevan, breathlessness is not a very Indian affliction. Yet, tempting as it is to end the story right here, anything real or imagined that disrupts business so severely, ought to be investigated, or at least reported widely (in the interests of greater public information).

First of all, we the people must accept that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) exists, and is causing havoc in large parts of Asia. Cyrus Bagwadia, managing director., Essel Propack, a company that has some 300 employees in Guangzhou, confirms that the disease is worrisome and that he has ordered his people to adhere to WHO guidelines. Clearly, the international media is not getting hysterical for nothing, though perhaps it takes an unseemly degree of hysteria to alert authorities in 'closed' countries that something needs to be done. Better to be safe than sorry.

It was in that spirit that India's own SARS-trackers sounded the alarm once somebody in Goa showed up - having traveled to East Asia -- with symptoms that could possibly indicate SARS. Then came the inevitable 'spread' story: from Goa to Pune, and from there to more or less everywhere. By now, it was clear that this was a very serious phenomenon - perhaps the beginning of an epidemic that would change the course of history.

That business would suffer was obvious. Merrill Lynch was the first to sound a warning. "The outbreak of SARS is significant enough to affect growth across the region," it noted, in a paper. Indians responded almost immediately to the news, as Zubin Karkaria, COO, Kuoni Travel India, confirms. And now, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has put a 'damage estimate' to the syndrome: $ 28 billion. Enough to choke on by itself.

But then, just as India's own mask-makers were getting into the act (the scale of the demand in itself would be breathtaking), the story got... er, spiked. In a sense.

The question that now haunts Indians is this. Was the story 'spiked' spiked (to prevent public anarchy)? Or was there nothing to it in the first place?

The medical evidence, alas, has been of little help --- leaving ordinary people to come up with probability estimates of their own. At least one back-of-the-envelope calculation, taking East Asia's incidence rates, flights to India, population densities and so on into account, puts it this way. The likelihood of an Indian getting choked by SARS is much lower than that of the many other dangers that this sturdy old fellow has acclimatized himself to. There are other things to get breathless about.

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