While it may have taken the Laci Peterson murder case to push the Iraq takeover temporarily to the bottom of front pages in the U.S., north of the border the SARS crisis has dominated headlines for weeks now.

Worldwide, SARS has killed more than 300 people and sickened more than 4,600. In the U.S., there have been 41 cases but no deaths. The government has said it was safe to go to Toronto, though while we were there the World Health Organization issued a travel warning to avoid the city, where SARS has killed 21 people.

That travel warning was lifted Tuesday, and it's a good thing because the virus has devastated Toronto tourism.

But many Canadians and others were avoiding the city long before the warning was made. I thought something was weird on the way there when we got those looks from Canadian border guards after saying we were going to Toronto. And then I noticed the lack of traffic going in — and the big line of bumper-to-bumper vehicles trying to escape into the U.S.

And it was the same on the QEW. Very few cars were going toward Toronto on a mid-afternoon Friday; all the traffic was heading toward the border.

"When half of Oneonta is heading to South Carolina for spring vacation, why are we going north into a SARS epidemic," I asked Susan, though I knew the answer.

Susan's niece in Toronto had a baby on April 13. A week or so before that they were told it would be better if they had a home birth so they and the baby wouldn't have to be in the hospital.

They didn't believe they were ready to deal with a home birth on such short notice, so they did use the hospital, but mom and newborn girl were back home within three hours after delivery.

It seems the city's large Asian population is taking the brunt of SARS fear. And despite the assurances of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who ate lunch in Chinatown recently, the crowds were avoiding it. Some Chinese restaurants using the word "China" had changed their names, such as China Buffet to Emperor Buffet, for example.

Overall, however, I found many in the Toronto area were not taking the virus any more seriously than people around here. Many would joke about it, and some obviously were more worried about the Maple Leafs losing in the playoffs. Iraq seemed to be far down on the list.

Of course, there are always the conspiracy theorists. Someone suggested that China and Canada were victims of divine retribution, being punished with SARS because they didn't help with the Iraq takeover. Another thought it was a Western attempt to trim the world's Asian population.

As evidence, such twisted minds point to the fact that the United States largely has been able to avoid the SARS problem.

Then last week when the virus apparently started making front-page news here, I started worrying what would happen at the border. Would they let us back into the States?

Usually I am more concerned about a border guard producing a few of my anti-war columns (forwarded, of course, by the guy at River Valley) and declaring me an undesirable. The questions were routine, though the manner was more military than I've experienced in the past. You felt like you ought to be shouting "yes, sir" in answer to the loud drill-sergeant-like grilling from the border guard.

But even though we admitted to being in Toronto, there wasn't even a flinch. We thought we might at least have to get our temperatures checked.

Surely Sen. Charles Schumer was overreacting last week when he called for the government to immediately dispatch an emergency response team to New York's northern border to ensure that border patrol and uniformed federal agents were trained to deal with the SARS epidemic.

No surprise, then, that we did get a flinch on the way to Oneonta when we stopped at a greenhouse near Ithaca for an orchid. The owner nonchalantly asked where we'd been and heard Susan say Toronto.

"Toronto," he repeated, quickly stepping back and looking us over. I thought we were going to be asked to leave before infecting his tropical plants with the virus.

We assured him that the SARS problem wasn't as bad as the media were portraying it, he let us stay and didn't even put on a mask and cover the plants.

Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at cary@thedailystar or (607) 441-7217.