So the health secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong has finally resigned. Simon seems to be happy about it, whereas Fumier is less impressed, writing (to paraphrase slightly) that "The mob marches; a head rolls, the baying crowd has been appeased" and that perhaps Dr Yeoh was correct that SARS was less of a crisis than many seemed to believe.

Since I wrote only a couple of days about the perils of finding scapegoats, I have to agree with Fumier on this one, though politically I think there was no alternative. My feeling is that Yeoh Eng-kiong's downfall is partially the result of his rather aloof and imperious style. Yesterday's TV news showed his confident (some might say arrogant) assertion that Hong Kong was free of SARS at a time when there were already cases here.

He wasn't helped by the fact that the three main political parties (the Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the DAB) had all called for his resignation. It's hard to survive that type of pressure, especially when there is no governing party to support him. As you can see, Hong Kong's political system is quite strange - as well as only having opposition parties, most of our 'politicians' are former civil servants (Anthony Leung was something of an exception here). This creates more problems - there are no obvious replacements, since we don't have junior ministers who could be promoted, and why would a senior official want to take on a role that could suddenly make him more accountable and hence reduce his job security.

On the subject of the SARS crisis being overblown, I think this article by Nury Vittachi is worth reading. It's a year old, and the hysteria he is writing about is thankfully long gone, but I think he makes his point very well. At least in part, the media hysteria about SARS is one of the reasons why Dr Yeoh has been forced to resign. It is sad that 299 people died as a result of SARS, but how many people die each year from ordinary pneumonia, or smoking-related diseases, or on the roads of Hong Kong? No-one is forced to resign because of those deaths.