Top of the morning. Regrettably I'm not writing this from New Zealand, but from Taiwan, in the midst of the Great SARS Epidemic. The Taiwan government's reponse will become a case study in corruption, mendacity, incompetence and sheer bloody-mindedness. We have legislators profiteering on surgical masks, presidential contenders playing media tag by pointing out little princes and princesses who who ought to be slaving away heroically on military bases and in hospitals instead cruising the streets in brand new Jaguars or just chilling out at home, doctors & nurses resigning en masse rather than care for SARS patients. Nor does this reflect well on the Taiwan public at large, their absolute and bloody minded refusal to cooperate with even the most minimal and reasonable restrictions on their activity ensures that the epidemc will rage long into the summer and perhaps the autumn. When the cyclone season brings its floods, the sewers will overflow as they always do, and the virus will be off and running again. Well, at least it's an island and easily quarantined.