This is being written as the World Health Organization removes the last country blacklisted by SARS. To say that SARS has affected those countries' tourism would be an understatement. Their airlines suffered unprecedented financial losses as airline workers were given unpaid leaves, reduced work hours, or many of their jobs were simply eliminated. And so SARS infected an industry and wreaked more havoc than war.
Having traveled through Toronto in mid-April enroute to Miami, I saw perhaps two face masks out of a sea of many mask-free faces. SARS had begun its killing spree in Toronto and although it was the talk of the airport, people were traveling, connecting to other flights. Toronto is not only a large city, but its international airport is a convenient connection point for travel to Europe. It is not uncommon for an international flight originating in Toronto to be comprised mostly of connecting passengers from the United States and from Canada. But in light of SARS, you didn't have to be from Toronto to be a threat, you had merely to pass through its airport to have been considered as possibly exposed to SARS.
Certainly a cough or a sneeze took on new meaning because of SARS. Hand sanitizers suddenly seemed a more essential item to bring on flights. And just having traveled through Toronto in April meant that when I arrived for my cruise I was handed a form asking about the route that brought me to the ship. After checking off that I had indeed traveled through an airport of a SARS affected region, along with a few others, we were brought to the side and asked if we were feeling okay. Have a temperature? Experiencing any flu-like symptoms? After a small chorus of no-s, we were just left there to rejoin the line we had been pulled from. Had I not spoken up about it, I am quite certain I would have been left to fill out the form again and again.
In the April days of SARS, travel operators may have had a plan, but it wasn't exactly well-coordinated.
Then came travel in the May days of SARS.
