An Early Warning: The Story of SARS in 2003
The world was taken by surprise when COVID-19 erupted in 2019. This talk by Thomas Abraham argued that we should have expected a pandemic of this proportion. From HIV/AIDS to Ebola, we were given many warnings of the damage that previously unknown viral diseases can cause. SARS—which erupted in southern China in late 2002, and then spread to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, and Canada—was a precursor of the COVID-19. This talk looked at what happened during the SARS outbreak, as well as the lessons the world learned, and failed to learn from it.
About the Academic
Thomas Abraham is adjunct associate professor at the University of Hong Kong and a writer on health and disease. He is the author of Twenty First Century Plague: The Story of SARS and Polio: The Odyssey of Eradication. He has been an adviser to the World Health Organization.
