“It’s amazing what this baby’s been through when he’s been incubating,” my mother said over the phone from New York. But by then she was deep into her third trimester, and it was too late to fly anywhere. The local fear was driven by memories of the SARS coronavirus epidemic of 2002-3, which had killed nearly 800 people worldwide and 299 in Hong Kong alone. It was impossible not to think about that, particularly with a baby on the way. As February dawned, Hong Kong’s schools were shuttered and most of its border crossings to the Chinese mainland had been closed.

Source: New York Times March 14, 2020 14:15 UTC