Rhetoric of a Global Epidemic: Transcultural Communication about SARS

Introduction: Transcultural Flows, Communication, and Rhetorics during a Global Epidemic

1 Introduction: Transcultural Flows, Communication, and Rhetorics during a Global Epidemic Somewhere in the world the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat. —A memorable line from Contagion Imagine that you go to bed early after a long day at work. After midnight, you are awakened by a phone call from a friend who lives far away. He sounds frantic: “People are dying. The epidemic is spreading. There are no masks left here, and online orders won’t arrive for at least two weeks.” You’re tired and immediately think he must be overreacting. Rumors have been flying on the Internet. But for the sake of politeness, you promise to buy him some masks the next morning. Calmer now, he warns you to stay away from crowds. His suggestions seem trivial: washing your hands often, taking herbal medicines to boost immunity, and avoiding travel. You head to the drugstore the next day after a few early-morning meetings . Panicked early-bird shoppers have cleared the shelves of masks. Soon you find out from various cashiers that local TV stations have reported more suspected and confirmed cases. You try to order online, but masks are out of stock. Realizing the severity of the situation, you call friends in other parts of the country to warn them. You urge them to buy masks, to send you some, and to get prepared for the quickly spreading epidemic. Then you send text messages or mass e-mails to alert other contacts to the situation. You may or may not receive any masks during the entire outbreak. Sound familiar? If you happened to be in or near the epicenters in the first two global epidemics of the new millennium, you may, like me, have been both the panic shopper and the friend who tries but fails to find masks. During the global epidemics of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, I frantically sought masks in a small college town in Illinois after China officially admitted to having underreported the spread of disease. Like hundreds of other Asian students, I wanted to send much-wanted supplies to 2 Introduction friends and relatives back in China. During the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, I went through the same experience again, now in another college town in South Carolina. The only difference is that with a spouse working at a medical institution and a newborn child at home, I was now worried about my own household. Friends around the country reported the same experience: they drove to the local CVS or Walgreens but failed to find any masks. Widespread panic buying accompanied both emerging epidemics, but fatality rates and treatment differed widely: unlike SARS, H1N1 was soon found to be curable with Tamiflu.1 So whereas mass panic continued for months in SARS-affected countries and regions, the panic that H1N1 inspired was short-lived; by the end of 2009, it received no more media coverage than other types of seasonal flu. After the first human case of H1N1 flu was diagnosed on April 13, 2009, the epidemic quickly spread across North America and Europe along heavily treaded routes of international travel. Reports of a possible pandemic flooded the global media within a couple of weeks. Many discussed global emergencyresponse systems, travel advice, public health preparedness, and global risk management. Comparisons with SARS were frequently made in the hopes that lessons learned from one epidemic would help to manage the risks associated with another. Reports were often highly emotional, using terms such as “anxiety,” “disruption,” “havoc,” “scare,” “scar,” “panic,” “shame,” “haunting ghosts,” “looming biological nightmare,” and “deadly killer.” Journalists used military metaphors, that is, “combat,” “battle,” “contain,” “quarantine,” and “closure,” to stress the need for an immediate, calculated response. Global media also paid attention to the viral nature not only of both epidemics but also of the discourses surrounding them. A Toronto Star editorial claims media coverage of swine flu [. . .]‍ went viral quicker than the flu itself. As one US pundit put it: “if as many people had swine flu as those that ‍[were]‍ covering it, then it would be a pandemic to reckon with.” (“When Coverage Goes Viral” IN06) Contagion, a 2011 Steven Soderbergh thriller, dramatizes the horrors of emerging global epidemics at a scale rivaling that of the 1918 Spanish flu. Many of its scenes bear disturbing resemblance to the first two epidemics of the twenty-first century: a mysterious start in the world’s largest metropolis ; rapid spread through familiar routines, such as...