CHINA
The truest sign of fear is the sound of silence. In Beijing, a city whose freeway-size avenues usually over-flow with packed buses and armies of bicycles, there are no traffic jams anymore. Restaurants and shopping malls resemble abandoned movie sets, their windows shuttered and doors chained shut.
The scenes of calm mask a quiet frenzy. Beijing's residents learned last week that contrary to previous government denials, the city is harboring hundreds of SARS patients. In response, millions have gone into self-imposed seclusion, withdrawing into their homes in an attempt to protect themselves against a disease that has officially claimed about 48 lives in the capital and may have killed untold numbers more. Many of those who venture outside wear protective masks and head straight to the supermarket, to stock up on necessities such as salt, oil and instant noodles, as if preparing for a siege. Police officers man checkpoints around the city, spraying down buses with disinfectant solution. Elementary and middle schools are closed for two weeks; some universities have refused to allow students to leave campus. The most bustling places in town are the railway stations, where frantic citizens jostle for a ticket out of town. "I'm very worried about getting on a train with so many people," says a university student, waiting for a train back to his hometown of Changzhou. "But I'll do anything to get out of Beijing. It's simply become too dangerous."
In the six months since SARS first emerged in China in the southern province of Guangdong, the virus has sickened an infinitesimal percentage of the population. But nearly everyone, it seems, is afflicted with fear. What began as a mysterious, remote illness has become a national crisis of confidence that is threatening to cripple the Chinese economy and shake the ruling Communist Party to its foundations. The central government attempted last week to blunt mounting outrage over reports--first detailed in TIME and TIME's Asian edition--that health authorities had systematically underreported the number of SARS cases in China and willfully deceived representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) on their visits to Beijing hospitals. On April 20, the national Health Minister was fired in the most public sacking of a government minister on account of malfeasance since the Communists seized power in 1949. The mayor of Beijing was fired on the same day, and the government revised its count of suspected SARS patients in Beijing from 37 to 339. By the end of the week, that number had doubled.
On Wednesday, in the most aggressive attempt yet to contain the epidemic, Beijing officials ordered the quarantine of all offices, hotels, restaurants and residential buildings that may have been visited by infected individuals. At Peking University's People's Hospital, the quarantine orders left some 2,000 healthworkers and patients isolated and at the mercy of the rampaging virus. At least 70 doctors and nurses and 20 patients at the hospital were already carrying the disease. In an effort to prevent the disease from spreading, Beijing has begun touting a soon-to-be-finished facility dedicated to SARS victims; wards are being constructed out of the same makeshift material usually used to house migrant workers.