Contagious

Fear of sars prompts a Lufthansa crew to wear masks in the Hong Kong airport . . .The description locates the problem of sars less in its novelty than in its familiarity as one among many ”frightening new maladies” awaiting imminent release into the circuits of a global infrastructure.The piece offers hiv /aids as an important precedent of how ”we placed ourselves in the path of the virus, we moved it around the world, and we’re well poised to do it again” and explains that what turned a virus ”into a holocaust was not just a new infectious agent but a proliferation of roads, cities and airports, a breakdown of social traditions, and the advent of blood banking and needle sharing.”∞∫ Specific diseases blur together as emerging infections map the changing spaces, relationships, practices, and temporalities of a globalizing