My mother in law called yesterday to warn us about the SARS epidemic…..because she knows we eat out at Chinese restaurants often.
She warns us to stay away!!! Russians gossip is that SARS is carried by food, and by coming in contact with anything brought in from China…
In Moscow everyone is boycotting Chinese and Korean establishments she tells us.
We explained to her that no one has died in USA due to SARS, here in California there are but just a few people diagnosed….no one within 100 miles of us…..and yes, we eat at Chinese restaurants all the time…and they are always full of people!
My wife “finally” understands how Russian gossip gets so distorted and out of hand…it has taken her almost 2 years to acknowledge the serious propaganda twist Russian news and internet has on all news heard in her home country. During the Iraq war my mother in law would call to see if we were all right….the news media told of Iraqi suicide bombers in America blowing themselves up in shopping malls. I think it was a misquote on Moscow news that a Chinese cruise missile landed in a Kuwaiti shopping mall….and that the U.S. military found many suicide vests in Iraq…..so it appears they just added the two together to make it more interesting!
