Fatal Repetitions: SARS and Disasters to Come

Abstract

What can past epidemics teach us about disease outbreaks to come? Writing in the Preface to the seminal volume Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States (1992), the editors Joshua Lederberg and Robert Shope noted that in the wake of HIV/AIDS it was their hope that “lessons from the past will illuminate possible approaches to prevention and control of these diseases in the future.” This paper re-evaluates such claims of a cumulative disaster-mitigating knowhow and explores the role of analogy in the construction of a serviceable history. Focusing on other epidemics in East Asia after the appearance of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the paper shows how such outbreak episodes have invariably been framed through analogies with SARS. At the same time, in the discourse of epidemic preparedness, the value of the past is defined primarily through its relevance to the future. The paper argues that this functionalist deployment of history and the construal of past epidemics as latent analogies for disasters-to-come have constrained our understanding of the complex variables that are producing and driving infectious diseases across the region.