SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Hong Kong, 2003

I had been living in Hong Kong for three years when the SARS pandemic broke out. Hong Kong was in a state of dire emergency. Whole buildings -- Hong Kong's famous high-rises -- were locked down.

Social distancing was not something that one could easily practice when 97 percent of the population lived in a crowded high-rise building. Still, there was not a supermarket where you could not obtain a box of face masks when you ran out. And, I do not remember having missed a day of work.