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The Taste With Vir: Life in the age of coronavirus
In this week’s column, Vir Sanghvi looks back on the outbreak of SARS nearly two decades ago, what is different this time around with the coronavirus epidemic and how is it affecting tourism, hospitality, food and other businesses around the world.
All of us guessed, when the first Corona cases were reported from China, that the world around us would change but only to some extent. Some of us may have expected the virus to spread more slowly and many of us imagined that the effects would largely be restricted to China.
After all, we have been here before. Over the last few decades there have been other virus attacks (I hesitate to use the words ‘pandemic’ or ‘epidemic’) within Asia. The most notorious was of course SARS, which may have originated in China. And then there was Bird Flu, which was also an Asian phenomenon.
Neither of these viruses made much difference to us in India though they had a far greater impact in East Asia. And more significantly, they did not cause much panic in the West.
But with Corona, I suspected, when the first reports from China came in, that things could well be different.
To be infected by the virus you don’t require intimate contact with a patient. It is enough to just be in his or her vicinity. People who carry the virus are not necessarily symptomatic. And they can still infect you. Even shaking somebody’s hand has become dangerous. That is the truly scary part.
What I did not realise, even then, was that the virus would lead to such a huge crisis in the convention, sports, hotel, restaurants, food and travel business. Nor did I expect so many conferences, matches, concerts, fairs and meetings to be cancelled.
I was wrong. These days, nearly every major public event is being cancelled, it has got to the stage where political commentators are speculating that the entire US Presidential election will be fought on TV. It will be deemed too risky to hold rallies. And inevitably, that could influence the campaign. Donald Trump, for instance, is at his best when he is in front of an adoring crowd. How will he fare without election rallies?
Already, most sporting events are in peril. There is no word yet on the Olympics but athletes are concerned that they will be cancelled. Football matches in Europe are turning into TV-only spectacles, with no live crowds. How will players react to the absence of cheering fans? Nobody knows.
The energy of crowds is something that those of us who appear on TV have always recognised. Everything is different when it happens in front of an audience. In the West, all the late night talk shows have live audiences because the energy in the room changes so much. And guests are much more animated and more willing to give of themselves when they are talking to live audiences. In India, alas, too few shows have real audiences and often it is school children or old folks from a resident’s welfare association who have been bussed in. As much as anchors want live audiences, we hardly ever get them.
This is as true of fictional shows on TV. One reason why Friends always seemed so real was because it was recorded before a live audience. Canned laughter never has the same effect.
As the panic spreads, live audiences will be difficult to round up and global TV will suffer.
Just as rock stars are cancelling concert tours, I imagine that the theatre will also take a hit. Film producers are already worried that as the scare grows, fewer and fewer people will go to the cinema for fear of sitting next to an infected person. Streaming services will benefit. But movie theatres will lose out.
The new James Bond movie, titled, ironically enough, No Time To Die, was due to be released next month. Now, the dates have been pushed back to November. The same will happen to other big movies.
But the industries that will suffer the most will be travel and tourism/food. Already, I hate the thought of getting into an aeroplane full of infected people. And even if the passengers are fine, I am put off by the idea of going through long and badly organised health checks at airports and (if someone on the plane is found to be infected), of spending 14 days in governmental quarantine.
Hotels will suffer as much as airlines. Nearly everyone I know has cancelled their foreign vacations in the months ahead. You just don’t know where the next Corona outbreak will be and whether you will end up in quarantine – or worse, get infected.
In the case of restaurants, a strange kind of racism seems to be at work. All over the world, people are avoiding going to Chinese restaurants. This makes no sense because the people who work in these restaurants have not been to Wuhan lately and are no more likely to carry the infection than you and I. Nor has anyone found any products in their kitchens that could spread the Coronavirus. And yet the fear persists.
I have come to the reluctant conclusion that the prejudice against Chinese restaurants is straight-out racism. We now know that Italy is also the epicentre of the virus. But I doubt if there has been any drop in the sales of Pizza Hut or Domino’s. Nobody has stopped ordering pizza. So why won’t they eat Chinese food?
I can’t think of another explanation other than the ignorance that comes with racism.
I have made it my own mission to eat at as many East Asian restaurants as possible to fight this trend. Over the last week I have eaten Thai at Thai Naam by Ananda, and Chinese at Chi Ni and Shang Palace in Delhi and at San Qi in Mumbai. The only way to fight food prejudice is with your mouth.
The restaurant business in Italy has collapsed. You can walk into Massimo Bottura’s restaurant and find a table. And Thailand is only a little better --- there is still a fair amount of local business which keeps such places as Gaggan going. (Though even there, you can probably get a table on the day if you call and check about cancellations.)
All the great hotel chains say that their Asian properties are running at low occupancies. (Hotels in China, Hong Kong and Italy are totally empty.) Once again, the Chinese have been here before. Nearly two decades ago, I was a part of the press party that accompanied Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee to China. We arrived right after the SARS (or was it Bird Flu?) crisis had ended but hotels were still struggling. At our hotel in Shanghai they were so excited to see us that the staff lined it up in the lobby to welcome us with applause and to thank us for coming.
China bounced back from those scares but I think even the Chinese recognise that it is going to be different and more difficult this time. And as new cases are discovered in America and the UK, the global hospitality industry is set for a huge jolt and some airlines may, I suspect, even close down.
What does it mean for us in India? American companies are encouraging people to work from home and perhaps it will come to that here too. But even if it doesn’t, the message is clear: love your home. You are going to have to spend a lot more time there in the weeks ahead!
And many decent, hard working people are going to lose their businesses and even their jobs through no fault of their own.
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