My First War

Do you have any personal experience with war? By reading books, I have learned some information about war. I have also seen pictures of war as they are shown on the Internet. However, I have never experienced war "first hand". I found war to be very dangerous and frightening, but I have had a personal experience with a disease even more scary and frightening. It is SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). The first case of SARS was detected in my province, in which my family and I were living in November, 2002. SARS is (by definition) an infection of the respiratory system which could kill people in a few days. One of the first things I learned about SARS was just how easily it is passed from one person to another. Infection could take place through something as simple as a touch from an infected person to a non-infected person. For me, SARS came to be a war which caused me to feel much fear and anxiety. A scary “war’—SARS virus disturbed my family’s daily life.

SARS became a large hindrance to my ability to study. Because of SARS, everywhere was in a high security. Every student worried about it. In school, we checked our body temperature twice per day. One was in the morning, and the other was in the evening. The government officials were determined to do everything possible to make sure all of the people were safe from SARS. If any time any of the students were found to be experiencing a cough and/or a cold, they were immediately taken to a health care assistant. If the assistant was concerned that the student might be suffering from SARS, the student would immediately be sent to a hospital where a doctor could perform a more detailed examination of the student. Also, every day, the staff of the school would make a great effort to make sure that all the surfaces of the school were cleaned (such as: the floor, the top of the desks, and chairs) to attempt to make sure that no one would be infected SARS; at least while they were attending school. One of my friends told me that in the capital city Beijing, all schools were closed, nobody walked on the street, and everybody stayed at home for about two weeks. That’s bad for students and for people living there.

SARS had a terrible impact on the finances of my family. Because of the fear of infection by SARS, people were hesitant to buy and consume food the feared might be infected by SARS. Many, many stores were forced to close. The one exception was the pharmacy. People could not buy enough medicine they thought/hoped would protect them from infection. At that time, my family and I were living and working on our farm. As the reason of the fears of buying and consuming food contaminated by SARS, it was nearly impossible for us to sell the food we produced on our farm. My parents struggled to obtain enough money for us to survive. Clearly, we had to be very, very careful of how much money we could spend.

SARS also caused terrible problems with our ability to continue to enjoy the wonderful food we were used to having. In China, we said “To the people foodstuff is all-important.” We couldn’t live without food. Because of SARS, no matter whether we ate food at home or in a restaurant, we were always very cautious about whether or not the food we were eating might be contaminated by SARS. People came to believe that the less food they ate, the less likely they were to become infected with SARS.

As you can see, SARS was negatively impacted and disturbed my family’s daily life. It attracted all the people’s attention in China. With a lot of effort in the country and a lot of money that our government put it in, SARS was finally brought under control at 2003 summer. It revised our living style in China. I still have fresh memory about SARS. It happened in my life. It challenged our knowledge and technology. It made us realized what we still need to improve. It’s clear that we should learn from our experience with SARS. We must do everything possible to avoid another "war" like the one we experienced with SARS.