LOVE IN THE TIME OF SARS. This summer hasn't really seen the greatest of times. I guess it's just kind of tiring hearing one bad news after one another. Yup, s**t usually happens, but not on such a worldwide scale. My friends and I were talking about SARS the other day, and honestly, the threat of SARS over the country is really scary. What I thought at first as an isolated case that would soon fade, like some fad or something, is already rearing to be an epidemic of great proportions.

And its not just people falling sick and dying. SARS is threatening what little trust we put on people.

No matter how people try to lighten the situation by donning 'fashion masks', it is still really disconcerting to see people walking around with masks on their faces. In NAIA, movement has been restricted to a point that people are forbidden to talk or do anything that requires opening their mouths. In Hong Kong, a Filipina writes of getting glares from people (all donning masks, of course) because she wasn't wearing any mask. And in Alcala, Pampanga, the hometown of the first victim of SARS in the Philippines, the residents of the isolated barangays in this town have been ostracized by people in the surrounding areas.

Good thing the quarantine on these barangays would be lifted soon.

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I just find it sad to find this all happening. People are adding fuel to the fire because, instead of trying to understand the situation, they are making it worse by inflicting more pain on the people that the victims left behind. But one cannot really blame them. It's also human nature to defend himself from things or events that would prove to be a threat to his existence. Like for one, NAIA's precautionary measures maybe have been taken to the extreme, but it is just the government's means of trying to put up defenses against the entry of the epidemic in the country. If not, things can get pretty ugly. Riots and panic-buying have already erupted in Beijing ever since the government quarantined the entire town and imposed a martial law - a drastic measure for such a dire situation. Who wouldn't feel panicked? For one thing, their movement is already controlled by a killer virus, and another thing, their city is also trying to keep them put in a place where people are dropping like flies from something brought about by an unseen killer.

It is as if the virus causing SARS is teaching us a lesson on human relations, as well as this occurrence in nature called check and balance.

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Still, I couldn't help wonder when the SARS epidemic would slow down and when will scientists discover a cure for this malady. I for one wouldn't like to put on a face mask and look at everyone around me as if each one of them is a potential carrier of virus. Talk about being in a state of paranoia. I also wouldn't want to be reduced to talking to my friends behind mask, or not talking to them at all!

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On a hindsight, my concerns are probably not that big compared to an HK couple I've seen in the newspaper, about to kiss but couldn't because they had face masks on.