War’s over, so expect those tourists to come pouring off the planes, looking for sun, sand, Kalik and conch. Maybe not.
Turns out Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has had a much bigger effect on travel than did bombs and bullets in Baghdad.
By Monday, there were 144 people dead and 3,300 infected with SARS, according to the World Health Organisation. And Cathay Pacific Airways, the world’s busiest airline, had become one of the unbusiest as a transporter, but was still frantically denying rumours it planned to ground its fleet rather than continue flying empty planes into ominously deserted airports throughout the Far East and Australia. Despite the denials, its stock plunged to the lowest level in close to two years.
That’s a big part of the problem with something like SARS. In terms of measurable effects on the health of the world’s population, there are virtually none, not to minimise the potential. But, just as the physical spread of SARS is invisible, so is its reach through rumour and innuendo, which make it in some ways more threatening and dangerous socially and economically than tanks and helicopters.
Round-the-clock efforts by teams of Canadian and German scientists seem to promise a reliable test for SARS may be only days off, which could relieve some of the mystery fear-factor of the illness, but the damage seems already to have been done. The economic fallout through cancelled vacations and altered travel plans seems likely to have far-reaching and long-term implications that could be around long after this particular Corona virus has morphed into something else.
There hasn’t been one case of SARS in The Bahamas, but that doesn’t mean the nation’s economy hasn’t caught a chill.
Editorial, The Nassau Guardian
