When the SARS virus began its spread from southern China around the world in spring 2003, it caught regional and international health officials by surprise. The SARS epidemic itself lasted for only a few months, whereas its treatment, in communicative terms, keeps providing us with important lessons that can prepare us all for the much larger pandemic that many are predicting will eventually occur. While the medical aspects of SARS are now relatively well understood, the discursive rhetorical dimensions are much less so. As an international epidemic, SARS arrived in a number of distinctive societies with the result that different communities handled the crisis in different ways, some far more effectively than others. Accordingly, the 12 chapters in The Social Construction of SARS are studies of how a major health-related crisis was understood and dealt with from a communicative perspective in such diverse places as Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Canada and the United States during the SARS outbreak.

When the SARS virus began its spread from southern China around the world in spring 2003, it caught regional and international health officials by surprise. The SARS epidemic itself lasted for only a few months, whereas its treatment, in communicative terms, keeps providing us with important lessons that can prepare us all for the much larger pandemic that many are predicting will eventually occur. While the medical aspects of SARS are now relatively well understood, the discursive rhetorical dimensions are much less so. As an international epidemic, SARS arrived in a number of distinctive societies with the result that different communities handled the crisis in different ways, some far more effectively than others. Accordingly, the 12 chapters in The Social Construction of SARS are studies of how a major health-related crisis was understood and dealt with from a communicative perspective in such diverse places as Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Canada and the United States during the SARS outbreak.

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.

This book examines the structure and impact of the SARS epidemic, and its short- and medium-range implications for an interconnected, globalized world. In so doing, it poses a question of the greatest possible significance: Can we learn from SARS before the next pandemic?

Viral Language considers a range of different types of public communication and their discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic as a way to investigate health communication. The authors introduce and apply a range of approaches informed by linguistic theory to investigate experiences of the pandemic across a variety of public contexts. In doing so, they demonstrate how experiences of health and illness can be shaped by political messaging, scientific research, news articles and advertising. Through a series of case studies of Covid-related texts, the authors consider aspects of language instruction, information and innovation, showcasing the breadth of topics that can be studied as part of health communication. Furthermore, each case study provides practical guidance on how to carry out investigations using social media texts, how to analyse metaphor, how to track language innovation and how to work with text and images. Viral Language is critical reading for postgraduate and upper undergraduate students of applied linguistics and health communication.

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, nation states found new ways to assert power under the guise of public health, from closing or tightening borders to expanding the boundaries of acceptable citizen surveillance. As these controls increased in intensity, citizens’ passions to cross borders seemed to grow in proportion. Pandemic Crossings explores how these processes of boundary making and crossing, often mediated by digital technology despite inequity of access, had profound and often contradictory consequences on individual lives, national politics, and U.S.–China relations. This rich and geographically diverse collection of studies informed by everyday, individual experiences contribute new insights to the interplay between digital technologies and state governance during the covid-19 pandemic. It opens up new avenues of research not only on the covid-19 pandemic but also on global health crises more broadly.

Singapore has faced many pandemics over the centuries, from plague, smallpox and cholera to influenza and novel coronaviruses. By examining how different governments responded, this book considers what we can learn from their experiences. Public health strategies in the city-state were often affected by issues of ethnicity and class, as well as failure to take heed of key learnings from previous outbreaks. Pandemics are a recurrent and normal feature of the human experience. Alongside medical innovation and evidence-based policymaking, the study of history is also crucial in preparing for future pandemics.