To SARS or not to SARS

When the threat of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) descended on Asia and splashed across the headlines, some travelers asked, “To go or not to go, that is the question.” We had no question about going. We had plans and we were going.
To mask or not to mask, that was the question many passengers and airline personnel had to answer this spring.
We packed masks, but we never wore them – neither did the vast majority of our fellow passengers, nor did the majority of the flight attendants and pilots – except the parade of flight attendants dressed in their crisp purple uniforms with pale green masks fit snugly over their faces hiding their friendly smiles. The other masks at the airports varied from home made looking gingham covered ellipses to surgical masks with straps over the ears.
Children’s masks slipped below their tiny noses. Families lined up to eat lunch with masks tucked under their chins. A young adult woman strutted through the airport with a mask worn as a necklace while the large teddy bear she carried wore his face all the time. A tough looking, but obviously scared dude from the states, wore his mask all the way from Taipei back to the states. He did not even consider it safe to take it off after landing in New York City where an official checked his paper work and asked him, “can you breathe through that thing?”
My guess would be that the only time he removed the mask was to get his passport stamped. The sign at the immigration station dictated, “Please remove mask for identification purposes.”
The flight attendants who chose to wear masks kept them on – with one exception. An elderly lady broke the stillness of the sleeping passengers with loud cries of distress. Several attendants moved to calm her and surrounding passengers. One attendant pulled her mask off, knelt down on the floor by her seat and chatted at length with the distressed passenger.
To worry or not to worry about SARS was the pressing, unasked question. I didn’t worry. Not after suffocating under the olfactory assault from the antiseptic spray that suffused every plane and airport in the Orient. If that didn’t reassure me, every flight included a detailed description of the extensive cleaning and de-fumigating done by the airline after each flight. I also didn’t worry because every flight included a video of the extensive steps taken to clean and fumigate each plane between trips.
Plus, the Taiwanese government required that we leave a SARS related paper trail of our trip: Every bus ride and plane departure in Taiwan required our signature and home phone number.
Also, before we could board the bus, the station manager lined up the passengers, pulled out a wand-like thermometer, placed it at the side of our forehead for a second, read it and individually okayed each person’s health before boarding. At the airport, we joined other, incoming, potentially contaminated visitors, stood in a designated spot and saw ourselves on television with distorted bodies reflecting our bodies’ heat radiation. We weren’t hot enough to be noticed, so we joined the rest on the plane.
A week and a half after we arrived home, we pronounced ourselves safely pass the incubation period for SARS.
Now the only question is to keep or not to keep the stack of papers we picked up regarding SARS paper work. If they don’t end up in the trash bin, they will be unique reminders of our adventure to Asia as it fought to keep a threatening epidemic at bay.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)


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