Hong Kong's coronavirus panic reminds me of the dark days of Sars

A day after Hong Kong confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus, the city’s leader Carrie Lam served dim sum at Davos.

It was part of a charm offensive to show the world’s elite that Hong Kong – despite months of pro-democracy protests and violent clashes – was still open for business.

But just as the political unrest showed signs of easing, Lam must confront a burgeoning public health crisis. The city has diagnosed eight positive cases as of January 27, and experts warn of a possible community outbreak.

The biggest fear is that the coronavirus would return the city to its darkest days: the 2003 Sars epidemic which killed nearly 300 of its residents.

Even after 17 years, the scars remain fresh. In the week leading up to Lunar New Year on January 25, each day saw more and more people wearing surgical face masks: on public transports, in crowded areas, at family gatherings.

Experts dispute whether masks can prevent the spread of viruses, but for the people of Hong Kong, it was muscle memory.

As a primary school student during Sars, I remember my face chafing under the N95 mask my parents ordered me to wear to school – that is, before classes were cancelled at the height of the epidemic.

The name of Amoy Gardens, a residential estate that became the site of a major outbreak, conjured up images of a haunted house in my childhood imagination.

From February to June 2003, the people of Hong Kong despaired as the economy and housing market crashed, while unemployment reached a record high.

No one could have prepared for Sars, but Hong Kong was especially unprepared: no one had experience dealing with a contagion of such scale, so no one knew how long we would stay in freefall. Will the new coronavirus bring a similar ordeal?

The mood in Hong Kong is apprehensive, and people are determined not to repeat their Sars-era mistakes – the question is whether the government can say the same.

After the 2019 protests, which were sparked by an extradition bill and later became a citywide democracy movement, Lam has backed herself into a tight corner.

Her predecessor in 2003 was widely mocked as a bumbler, but that is nothing compared to the hostility she faces today. Lam has few allies in the local legislature and her ministers have record-low approval ratings.

This means that every step she takes to respond to the public health emergency will court backlash, like clockwork. On January 26, an angry crowd in the Fanling district opposed the government’s decision to turn a newly built and uninhabited housing estate into a quarantine facility.

The crowd – which, miraculously, included warring political factions that would normally be at each other’s throats – barricaded the roads to stop government vehicles moving in. Two of the buildings had their lobbies set on fire.

Meanwhile, some frontline medical staff at public hospitals have said they are considering a strike. “We must close our borders to safeguard public health, and to achieve this, medical professionals must use any means at our disposal, including going on strike,” one representative wrote in a statement.

These tactics would be unimaginable in 2003. To a casual observer, they may seem combative and even unhelpful towards managing the coronavirus outbreak.

But they reflect a sincere belief that grew out of the protest movement last year: when the government does not have your best interests at heart, you must take charge of keeping yourself and your loved ones safe. And it worked.

Hours after the Fanling protests, the government suspended its plans for the quarantine facility, and imposed entry restrictions on people coming from Hubei province in mainland China.

Lam’s administration also took other steps: she declared a public emergency, implemented health declarations at entry points, closed the city’s amusement parks, cancelled the annual marathon, and extended the Lunar New Year school holidays.

In retrospect, the chief failing of the Hong Kong government during Sars was its slow response time and lack of awareness.

This time Lam has promised to make the right moves, but her biggest problem is not inaction – rather, it is that her public health mission may be overridden by political priorities from Beijing. The needs of Hong Kong may be outweighed by the needs of the Chinese government.

This concern is by no means hypothetical. For example: most of the confirmed coronavirus patients in Hong Kong, including patient zero, arrived via high-speed trains from mainland China.

But the government has refused to shut down the rail terminus, leading critics to wonder if Lam was trying to avoid symbolically “cutting ties” with the mainland, a move that would make her superiors lose face.

In a similar vein, Lam told the public to take health precautions but conspicuously refrained from telling people to wear face masks.

The reason was as simple as it was ironic: just last October, amid escalating violence at protests, Lam passed an emergency law restricting the use of masks.

The constitutionality of the law is now being litigated, and if Lam were to publicly advise people to wear masks as a protective measure, she would have undercut her own case in court.

That is ultimately what separates the 2019 novel coronavirus in Hong Kong from Sars. Not the physical properties of the virus itself, but the vastly altered political landscape that makes the city more difficult to guard. In Hong Kong, the trauma of SARS lingers, and every mention of a possible “new SARS” hints at dread and sorrow.

Among the most respected people in the city’s history is Joanna Tse Yuen-man, a respiratory medicine specialist who fell ill after taking care of Sars patients. We call her “Hong Kong’s daughter” and she left us at 35.

• Holmes Chan is a freelance journalist covering politics, culture and law in Hong Kong. He tweets at @holmeschan_

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