Grim reminders

Over the past few days, we have been monitoring, with growing alarm, two tragic stories happening elsewhere in our Asian neighborhood.

In South Korea, an ‘outbreak’ of the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, has all but brought the country to a standstill. MERS, which is described by United Nations health officials as “an emerging disease that remains poorly understood,” is thought to be a deadlier but less contagious cousin of the feared Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed hundreds of people when it first appeared in Asia in 2003.