My “broadband” service was down all weekend, so no blogging. I will make up for it later today.

Trouble in paradise? Apparently there are 9 new cases of SARS in Shanghai and other assorted bad news according to Sarswatch.

Another excellent article in the NY Times on SARS, which is apparenly under control in most places. The disconcerting sentence is this:

The main caveat in the health organization’s guarded optimism is China, Dr. Heymann said, because SARS cases continue to occur in Guangdong and “we don’t know what’s going on outside of Guangdong Province, and that is our concern.”

Some more somber observations on why there’s really no way to know the state of SARS in China can be read here.

A scary article on how pro-lifers and creationists are threatening research and science in the US. Especially jarring are the Bush administration’s slick and sneaky efforts to slip creationism in under the door while intentionally perpetuating negative myths about abortion:

Some other signs: if you were contemplating an abortion and were worried about the rumour that it might increase your risk of breast cancer, you might visit the website of the government-funded National Cancer Institute to read their factsheet, which noted that most scientists doubt a link. Or, at least, you might have done so until June last year, when the page, criticised by some Republicans in Congress, simply vanished. (A replacement page was posted last month.) Or maybe you were an Aids activist, elated by the president’s unexpected (and genuinely revolutionary) announcement in the State of the Union address of $15bn (?.7bn) in funding for fighting the epidemic worldwide – and then surprised to find that only around 10% was destined for the Global Aids Fund, while the rest would be funnelled through US agencies, where it is more likely to be accessible to American abstinence-only groups campaigning against condoms.

Ominous post from InfoWorld’s Jon Udell (courtesy Scripting News) about the further (ab)use of tools like RSS feeds by those bloodsucking, unctuous, hypocritical, shameless, duplicitous, conscienceless, paid-to-lie slimeballs whom we blandly refer to as “PR professionals.”

Of course, being a PR professional myself, I can safely say that most of them really are all of the above. The good ones, like me, are kind, compassionate, sensitive, creative, well-read, articulate, open-minded, forward-thinking, slightly quirky and generally delightful people. The problem is, at last sighting there were about 19 of the good ones left walking the planet and millions of the others.

One day, when I am not working in the industry, I will write my expose.

Anyway, as I posted earlier (can’t get the link thanks to the Great Firewall), it was only a matter of time before the industry sharks descended on innocent bloggers, coming up with ways to “nudge” them into mentioning their clients’ products and services. “Hey, Andrew, as you write about the great victory in Iraq, you might want to let your readers know that those missles were built by Raytheon….” Expect to see more and more of this, ye who run the Big Blogs.

Beijing has just announced a 24-hour “SARS hotline.” I can’t post the Chinese text (gets all garbled) but can forward the notice, in Chinese, to anyone who requests it by email.

I am getting tired of posting about SARS, but as I wrote yesterday, Beijing really is SARS City. Four of my colleagues donned surgical masks today. Just now, an email started flying through my office that the Mayor of Beijing has authorized a special 2,500-man “SARS Brigade” to walk through the city streets, with the authority to detain anyone whom they believe has been afflicted and force them to pack off to isolated prevention wards.

Repeat, this is probably a hoax, but that’s what I thought about the Time story earlier this week. Meanwhile, here’s the latest from the Official SARS Photo Album, this one titled SARS Wedding.

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Due to my recent injury, I have to go to the clinic every day for physical therapy. The first few times I went, late last week, it was business as usual at the modern, Western-style facility. Then, as of Tuesday, they started the policy of mandatory surgical masks, which they hand to you as you walk in (first you have to wash your hands with some antibacterial lotion). Does this indicate there is less fear or more fear?

My doctor there is an urbane Chinese woman who has lived much of her life abroad, and for the first few days of my visits she was telling me how she felt the reaction to SARS was overblown and that the problem was being controlled. When I told her on Wednesday about the alarming news of a government cover-up in Beijing she expressed deep skepticism.

By yesterday afternoon, this skepticism had turned to fear. One of the clinic’s star doctors, an American, decided to take immediate leave and departed from Beijing back to America with his wife and kids, she told me, because he fears no Beijing hospital can be fully safe. She told me that she heard from a colleague of hers at a nearby hospital that their staff is quite concerned about a new SARS case there — it is not one of the hospitals specifically designated to deal with SARS, and she is afraid they may not be able to prevent spread.

While I cannot say for a fact that these two bits of anecdotal evidence are true, I do know my doctor is a mature person, quite well known in the city, and I could see something really turned her around.

At the moment, my logic tells me Beijing is generally safe, but I would not want to be hanging around the city’s hospitals, nor would I want to sit in a big group communally eating out of a single big bowl, which is quite the norm here. It’s definitely a time to be careful, and to ignore just about everything the central government has to say about the subject.

Thanks to BWG in HK.

CCTV is laying it on with a steam shovel. America has won the war but at a very heavy price. Iraqis are afraid they may suffer more than they did under Saddam if America chooses to “colonize” the country and take away their land. We must leave matters in the hands of the UN. There must be an international solution to administer change in Iraq. They are interviewing one anguished-looking Iraqi after another, while the translator’s voice-over, like a broken record, keeps saying basically the same thing — we are all terrified of American rule and wish the United Nations would step in now and take over. Of course, they are all speaking Arabic and could be telling the reporter they need to pick up their dry cleaning later today. (Some are obviously poor peasants, and I have to wonder, with respect, how they all know so much about the machinations of the United Nations.)

Needless to say, SARS is a dead story according to CCTV — only 22 cases in Beijing and all on the road to recovery. As the announcer reads the statistics, I can see she wants to get through the story as quickly as possible. Her face can’t hide that she knows she is lying. That’s one of the most interesting aspects of the Beijing media — all the reporters know they are lying, and they hate to do it. This is not why they chose to be journalists. But there is no choice, of course, and many of them are quite vocal (in private conversation) about their loathing of the censors who turn their stories either into syrupy “feel-good” mush or blatant and unconscionable lies.