In 2003, for a frantic few months, a virus assaulted humanity with a fury that seemed apocalyptic. This novel disease came from China but quickly slipped that country’s boundaries to bound halfway around the world in a matter of hours. Its speed left doctors and researchers gasping in the wake, struggling to erect walls both physical and intellectual against the onslaught. But their reactions were nothing compared to the fear that gripped the nations of the world as they suddenly confronted a strange, invisible, and unexplained foe that killed one out of every five people it touched.

Panic ensued. Thousands...

The origins of the SARS coronavirus can be traced to China’s Guangdong province, though it was some months after the disease’s initial outbreak in the Western world that a full timeline could be constructed. Secrecy on the part of the Chinese government is the main reason for this, followed closely by the difficulties of tracing public disease pathways in reverse. But even after locating the earliest-known examples of human-related SARS, investigators were still left questioning where the virus had come from before entering the human population; viruses aren’t createdex nihilo, so the disease had to have its origins elsewhere....

From Aesop’s fables to Navajo Trickster stories, from Serbo-Croatian epic poems to the works of Homer, humankind has always been interested in the concepts of “how,” “why,” and “where”: “How did the sun get up in the sky?” “Why does the fox have a white-tipped tail?” “Where do we come from?” In the field of medicine, questions of origin are not only critical but can mean the difference between life and death: Where did the patient contract this disease? How did the patient contract the disease—from an animal, a human, a rusty nail? How long ago? Where was (s)he?...

The common threads between SARS narratives and the genre of contemporary legend as a whole are not limited to AIDS, nor to diseases in general. While the previous chapter focused on etiological legends and the commonalities between those related to SARS and other diseases, this chapter focuses on issues of physical locations where large numbers of people congregate. These gathering places, especially those pertaining to and involving people of Asian descent, were the nexus of many SARS narratives, providing a feeding ground for public rumors. Especially relevant are Asian food establishments, such as Toronto’s Ruby Chinese Restaurant, which collapsed financially...

According to Linda C. Garro, “to understand the impact of illness . . . on a person’s life, it is necessary to develop an understanding of the narrative context” (Garro 1992, 133). In other words, any true study of the actions undertaken by a group suffering from an illness must take into account “the meaning that they place on these actions” (Calnan 1987, 8). In the SARS epidemic of 2003, public transportation became anathema, with airports in Toronto, Singapore, Australia, and numerous other countries showing marked decreases in passenger numbers. Many narratives expressed fear and concern over long-distance and intercontinental...

The 2003 SARS epidemic in Toronto, Canada, resulted in the stigmatization of ethnic groups, neighborhoods, and eventually the entire city. The effects of this stigmatization included, on a widespread level, consumer abandonment of Asian businesses, citywide losses in tourist-generated income, and public avoidance of hospitals. On the level of individuals, reactions ranged from mild cautiousness to self-imposed quarantine, at least one collected instance of which lasted more than six months. As Arthur Kleinman and Sing Lee point out, social stigma is intimately tied to health system responses (Kleinman and Lee 2005, 173–95). Yet despite the well-publicized narratives of loss...

When confronted with a disease, it is a natural human reaction to want to escape. Self-preservation is deeply ingrained in our psyche. Barring this possibility, the next logical step is to find a way to prevent the disease from affecting us. And if those attempts fail, we begin to search for ways to heal ourselves and rid our bodies of the invading forces. The SARS epidemic provides a unique opportunity for examining all three of these approaches, because the border-crossing nature of the virus led to situations in which individuals found themselves suddenly confronted with a disease that only a...

In 2009, for a frantic few months, a virus assaulted humanity with a fury that seemed apocalyptic, slipping the boundaries of cities, states, and countries to bound halfway around the world in a matter of hours. Its speed left doctors and researchers gasping in the wake, struggling to erect walls both physical and intellectual against the onslaught. But their reactions were nothing compared to the fear that gripped the nations of the world as they suddenly confronted a strange, invisible, and unexplained foe that killed thousands.

The virus was everywhere. Even when not physically present, its name was every day...

The disease-related narratives that fill this book were collected from hundreds of oral and written sources, in some cases have existed for scores of years, and have circulated in dozens of countries. In addition, these narratives have been told at varying times about a significant number of diseases. The SARS narratives alone constitute an adequate cross-section of the rumors, gossip, legends, jokes, and other oral forms that circulated during the 2003 epidemic. But when these are placed against narratives pertaining to AIDS, Hansen’s disease, influenza, syphilis, H1N1, etc., patterns begin to emerge. Like photo mosaics, where thousands of individual photos...

In 2003, for a frantic few months, SARS brought the world to its knees. But it vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared. Life quickly returned to normal, and for the better part of a decade the disease was all but forgotten.

Then on September 23, 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) detailed the case of a forty-nine-year-old male Qatari national who had been admitted into an ICU in Qatar on September 7, 2012, presenting acute respiratory syndrome and renal failure. Due to the nature of his symptoms, this man was transferred to a hospital in the United Kingdom...