Passionate 15-year-old SassyGirl

This post is a part of 20SB’s Looking Back Blog Carnival, and Ben & Jerry’s is awarding free ice cream to lucky bloggers and readers!
Below is an entry I wrote in May 2003 about the SARS outbreak. As you can tell, I was a very passionate, naive, self-righteous 15 year-old. I scare myself.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

After a heated debate about the SARS outbreak with my parents over breakfast, I realized why no one ever spoke out in the face of a great national dilemma. “You are just one little person, an insignificant speck. What can you do about it?” my mother asked me in a tone of disbelief. I told her if she was just going to sit at home complaining to us about the insufficient equipment in the hospitals, and refuse to do anything about it, then I would do something about it.

The wife of a colleague of my mother’s was in quarantine. She was a nurse and had been treated in Toronto General Hospital, but a couple days ago had been sent home. The doctors told her husband that she was recovering. However, this was a lie. Just the day before, they had asked her husband to wear numerous amounts of layers just to see his wife. How could she be recovering? They had two little children at home, as well as elders. The couple was in a dilemma. It was too much of a risk to even drive her home, as she might contaminate the family car. And taking public transit was out of the question. The wife was forced to walk home. Her husband set up a room for her, and she was kept in confinement the moment she entered their apartment. Though she was no longer in critical condition, she still had a very high fever, and all the symptoms of SARS. How could the doctors risk letting her go? The reason that the husband came up with is that the hospital did not want to close down if she died. They wanted to force her to go to a different hospital.

On Friday, four new cases had been reported. Two of them died by the evening. By Saturday morning, 20 new cases had been reported. By Saturday evening, 30. This morning, an unconfirmed 34 was reported on the radio. Just a few days ago, The City’s citizens were asked to go out for lunch, spend their money, shop in crowded malls, and resume a consumer’s life “as usual”. The media claimed that The City was SARS free. Little did the public know that it was all propaganda. The government and the media were not ignorant of the imminent threat of another outbreak of SARS. They knew that the threat was not completely over. And they knew about people like my mother’s colleague’s wife. Yet, overnight, it seemed that The City had been transformed. Some magic wand had whisked away all traces of SARS. Not a single new case for almost a week. They chose not to inform us because they cared more about the economic plight of The City than the health of its citizens. They criticized China for not being careful, and for not doing everything possible to contain SARS in Beijing. And yet they turned a blind eye to new potential cases of SARS here in The City. What’s with the double standards?

I asked my mother for the name of her colleague. “I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want our company to close. I don’t want to lose my job.” She said. Everyone has his or her own excuse. No one wants to stick out. My mother has a family to support. She’s growing old. She might not be able to find another job. Fine. But is that an excuse to decide the fates of hundreds of other families? If her colleague’s wife dies, how would she be able to forgive herself? She admitted that her colleague was in a difficult situation, too. They were young and ambitious, and had bought a brand new house that would put them heavily in debt to the bank. They had two young children, who had an entire future that needed to be supported. They had their parents, who were also dependent on their income. What would happen to them if his wife died? My mother would resort to the excuse that the disease itself had nothing to do with her actions. She would pretend that there was nothing that she could’ve done to help them anyway. But that’s not true.

“You’re too young to understand the way this world works. It isn’t as if the radio stations haven’t received calls about specific cases. But the point is, no one wants to know about them. And even if they do, the government will make sure no one does.” My mother explained to me.
“But you were the one complaining about the conditions in the hospitals. At this rate, there’s bound to be an outbreak, you said. And now you’re going to tell me that you’re going to let that happen?” I retort.
“Are you going to pay for the equipment for the hospitals? The government is just going to say there isn’t enough money to provide for suits, and goggles for all staff members.”
“We already have paid for it. We pay our taxes.”
“There’s never enough tax money.”
“There is. We just don’t make the government fork it over.”
“By the time they do fork it over, the outbreak will already have happened.”

It seems that because I am naïve and inexperienced, I can still have hope and faith in my government. For every action that I can suggest, my mother explains why it would be a dead end. But she hasn’t even tried it. To her, all the activists of the past century must have wasted their lives in vain. The few that succeeded just got a lucky break. But I refuse to believe that. Though the mass is easily manipulated by propaganda, they still have free thought to judge for themselves what to believe when someone raises an issue. And if no one is willing to raise this issue, I will.

There is something wrong with the way our government is handling the SARS situation. Though I am only 14, though I have very low credibility in the adult world, though I do not even know the name of this colleague, and my mother’s company will probably try to hide his identity, I will do everything I can to change the fates of these unfortunate families. They are not the victims of SARS. They are the victims of political propaganda. They are the victims of a heartless society in which people are willingly blindfolded. I will not stand by while I watch those children loose their mother. I will not stand by while I watch the government toy the public around as if we were puppets on strings. I will not stand by while I watch reporters and journalists fired because they tried to tell us the truth. In a country where freedom of speech is valued in the national charter, I will dutifully act on my responsibility as a citizen to defend that charter. My father claims that we have the right to remain silent. I beg to differ. I am proud to be Canadian, but I am ashamed that the need arises for a grade 9 Civics student to point out such a blatant injustice. The moral of this story is, don’t be fooled by the Emperor’s new clothes.