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Note: This article represents the view of the author and not the University of Hong Kong.

In November last year, the first case of SARS was discovered in the Guangdong province. From then to early February this year, countless medical staff were infected in different hospitals over the province. People queued up outside stores for Radix Isatidis (a traditional Chinese herbal tea) and white vinegarm, and the craze spilled over to Hong Kong for a few days. These signals were somewhat disregarded by Hong Kong people at first, but after the disease was spread to Hong Kong in mid-February by a mainland medical professor, infecting numerous health-care workers and over 1,600 people in a community outbreak, claiming more than 200 lives, people simply turn pale when they hear the word "SARS". Exactly how worried are Hong Kong people over this epidemic?

Between April 16 and 23, the Faulty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong successfully interviewed 797 Hong Kong residents by a random telephone survey, to gauge their perceived likelihood of contracting atypical pneumonia. The findings suggested that 21% of the respondents believed that their possibility of getting infected was 50-50 or higher, 11% thought that their chance of getting sick was below one-tenth. Using the systematic computation method of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the anxiety score of the respondents was 47.8 marks. Besides, the Hong Kong Psychology Society also conducted a random telephone survey between April 24 and 25 to measure, among other things, the anxiety level of 726 respondents on a scale of 0-10. The results indicated that nearly 80% of the respondents were worried, including 28% extremely worried.

As a matter of fact, people's degree of concern about the disease could be studied from many angles. For instance, between April 16 and 23, the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong conducted a random telephone survey to measure people's anxiety level on the possibility of them and their family members contracting SARS. The survey interviewed 1,021 respondents, the overall response rate was 68.9%.

As seen in the Figure, 62% of the respondents were worried that they would catch the disease, including those who said "very worried" and "quite worried", whereas 76% were worried that their family members would be infected.

When the respondents' anxiety level was cross-tabulated with their gender, age, education and occupation, the following observations were obtained (see Table):

(1)

With respect to gender, the proportion of male and female respondents who expressed worries about catching the disease themselves were 59% and 65% respectively, significantly lower than the corresponding figures for their family members, being 74% and 78% respectively.

(2)

Regarding the different age groups, around half of the younger respondents (aged 18-29) were worried that they would fall sick, while prime-age respondents (aged 30-49) and the older ones (aged 50 or above) were relatively more worried, accounting for 66% and 63% respectively. This might be attributed to the relatively higher mortality rate for the older patients and a somewhat heavier family burden for those prime-age respondents. The proportions of respondents who were concerned about their family members were 73%, 79% and 74% correspondingly.

(3)

As for education attainment, the proportions of respondents who were worried about themselves were 62%, 64% and 59% for those with primary, secondary and tertiary education correspondingly, while the proportions for those who were concerned about their family members were 76%, 78% and 73% correspondingly. The more educated might be more knowledgeable about the disease, and they might realize that worries availed them nothing, so that their degree of concern was lower than the other groups.

(4)

Splitting respondents into working population, students, and housewives gives 65%, 43% and 72% who were worried about themselves, while those worried about their family members were 79%, 66% and 82% correspondingly. Significant differences could be seen. Students were somewhat less worried than members of the working population, while housewives expressed the greatest level of anxiety, probably due to gender and education factors. When the working population was further divided into professionals and semi-professionals, white-collars, and blue-collars, the proportions of these sub-groups who were worried about themselves were 62%, 65% and 68% correspondingly, and the proportions for family members were 75%, 79% and 82% correspondingly. These observations fit well with our previous analysis across education attainment.

By and large, more respondents were worried about their family members catching SARS than themselves. Apparently, people do care very much for their families under the current adversity. This may be particularly true for parents, who might be very concerned about the resumption of classes. Let's all join hands to face the hardship in front of us. Let's all support the front-line medical workers in fighting against the disease, so that our life could be brought back to normal again, sooner the better.