Going Viral in Hong Kong Society for Medical Anthropology Justin Haruyama, Laura Meek, and Ria Sinha March 3, 2020 Disease is but the most obvious part of an epidemic. As coronavirus spreads, it fuels many other kinds of contagious forces. AN editor’s note: How can anthropology help us to understand the current coronavirus? How do anthropologists respond to news coverage of and data about the spread of Covid-19? We invite anthropologists with expertise on infectious disease, anthropological approaches to epidemic and pandemic threats and “contagion,” zoonotic diseases, and government and health care infrastructure and responses, to add their comments and recommended reading. No one touches anything on the Hong Kong metro these days. We do not hold the handrails. Instead, we jostle for locations along the wall where we practice a collective core exercise, balancing ourselves on nimble feet and engaged thighs. When an unmasked middle-aged man with a cough boards the train, bodies grow tense. This a�ect is transmitted between bodies (Brennan 2014), materializing as tense back muscles, uneasy glances, labored breathing beneath sticky masks. We turn our attention to our phones, noticing that emails once again end in appeals to “stay safe”—much as they did during protests last November—though now with the additional words “and healthy.” As we exit the station, a woman’s voice on the loudspeaker cautions us to wash our hands frequently and not to leave home if we have a fever. Some o�ce buildings and restaurants now conduct temperature checks at the door—a cool body the prerequisite for entrance.