April 17, 2003
Inner Mongolia, China
4,087 Infected, 389 Dead
SUSAN JAKES AND KAISER KUO, A FREELANCER WHO OFTEN WORKED with us, had flown to Hohhot in the windswept Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia and were now riding in a beat-up Jinbei taxi through the Mongolian steppe, on their way to a remote snowbound village that, as far as they could discern, was named Shuiqu. The huts there were made of a combination of cinder block, stone, and mud. Back in Hohhot, they had had to remove their sweaters because of the arid heat, but here in the snowbound steppe, they found the shepherds wrapped in thick knitted wool coats and seated on kohngs—charcoal-heated beds—and smoking brown cigarettes. When Jakes and Kuo were seated in the hut and had managed to make clear the purpose of their visit, the shepherds all started yammering at once in thickly accented Mandarin, which frequently gave way to their local Mongolian dialect. To Jakes’s surprise, even these villagers seemed to understand what SARS was and that if anyone had the symptoms—fever, cough, backache—they would take him to see the local barefoot doctor. When Jakes and Kuo then dropped in to see the one-eyed practitioner, they found that his entire dispensary consisted of cotton balls, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a few pairs of old shoes.
If any of these people were actually to contract SARS out here, Jakes reflected, they wouldn’t have a chance.
Jakes and Kuo already knew there was virus in Hohhot. The outbreak there had been seeded by the two China Air flight attendants who had never been informed by their bosses that among the passengers on their March 15 flight from Hong Kong to Beijing was a highly contagious SARS patient, who would infect twenty-four fellow travelers. Liu Shutao, the deputy director of the region’s health department, had told Jakes and Kuo that they already had more than thirty SARS cases in Hohhot. The virus could hop a ride out to the steppe as easily as Jakes and Kuo had hailed a taxi. What hope did a barefoot doctor with cotton swabs have against an emerging virus?
Back in Hohhot, Jakes was sitting in a hotel lobby, waiting for a meeting with another government official, when she received a call from the same “concerned citizen” who had given her the letter from Dr. Jiang. Wu Xi seemed slightly hysterical and was going on about the patients being hidden from the World Health Organization. She said that the nurses at 309 Hospital and Sino-Japan Friendship Hospital were terrified. “You have to tell the world,” the woman was saying.
Jakes had to hang up, as a senior health department official had just arrived. She was too excited to eat any of the ten courses served—Chinese officials banquet relentlessly—and was looking for a moment to excuse herself to make a phone call. As a few junior officials began drifting away from the lunch, she slipped out and called Matt Forney.
“Did you ever look into that letter?” she asked him.
“I didn’t have time,” he said.
When she left the letter with Forney, she had suggested that Huang Yong look into verifying the material in it. Forney hadn’t seemed that interested, saying, “We did the cover-up story last week.” He was focused on producing a political story about how the Chinese government was responding to SARS and the potential for a leadership shake-up.
Jakes hid her frustration. Now she asked if it was still okay to have Huang Yong look into the matter.
Huang was quarantined at the Hotel Lido. Jakes reluctantly realized that she had no choice but to speak to him over his unsecured hotel phone. She explained to him the nature of Dr. Jiang’s letter.
“That’s unbelievable,” he responded.
“Well, look into it.”
“I’ll see if I can confirm it,” he said.
Jakes didn’t see how he could.
She disconnected and went back into the hotel banquet hall. The officials were glad she had returned, and again promised they were doing everything they could to ward off SARS. Still, Jakes wondered, was there anything that could ward off a plague that was already there?
Huang returned to the TIME bureau and took a seat behind his desk, which was piled high, as it usually was, with Chinese newspapers. When he wasn’t out working a story, he would skim the local press for possible story ideas and pass these along to Forney or Jakes. Now, however, he had a real story, perhaps the biggest of his career. How could what Dr. Jiang had written really be true?