“
By the time that paper appeared, the SARS epidemic of 2003 had been stopped, with the final toll at 8,098 people infected, of whom 774 died. The last case was detected and isolated in Taiwan on June 15. Hong Kong had been declared “SARS-free.” Singapore and Canada had been declared “SARS-free.” The whole world was supposedly “SARS-free.” What those declarations meant, more precisely, was that no SARS infections were currently raging in humans. But the virus hadn’t been eradicated. This was a zoonosis, and no disease scientist could doubt that its causal agent still lurked within one or more reservoir hosts—the palm civet, the raccoon dog, or whatever—in Guangdong and maybe elsewhere too. People celebrated the end of the outbreak, but those best informed celebrated most guardedly. SARS-CoV wasn’t gone, it was only hiding. It could return. In late December, it did. Like an aftershock to a quake, a new case broke in Guangdong. Soon afterward, three more. One patient was a waitress who had been exposed to a civet. On January 5, 2004, the day the first case was confirmed, Guangdong authorities reversed policy again, ordering the death and disposal of every masked palm civet held at a farm or a market in the province. Wild civets were another question, left unanswered.
”
”