Pandemic First Patients: Deperilizing the Anglophone SARS Archive

Chapter 4 examines global anglophone discourses on SARS and their accounts of three Chinese first patients: Pang Zuoyao, the index case of the Foshan outbreak and the world's first known case of SARS; Liu Jianlun, the index case of the Hong Kong Metropole Hotel outbreak; and Esther Mok, the index case in Singapore. The chapter analyzes anglophone news media, popular science journalism, and academic writing that propagate sinophobic or bioorientalist inaccuracies and distortions about these first SARS patients. In counterpoint, the chapter uses Chinese-language reporting, epidemiological studies, and primary sources from local medical and governmental archives to reconstruct each patient's disease experience and social world, arguing for their ordinary humanity. The chapter coda discusses the reported surge in paranormal encounters during COVID-19 and ends with Russell Lee's True Singapore Ghost Stories as an indigenous folkloric mode of inter-pandemic wisdom transmission.