People are worried.

It appears that you can get SARS from immediate contact with an infected person. I don't know the specifics of how "intimate" the contact has to be, and I doubt the mechanics know, either. But it is an airborne condition, yes?

I'd probably be as wary as them. Would I ask you to leave? Who knows.

It's a new disease, and the media has pumped the scare factor up huge.

Paramedics didn't face this same kind of fear during the opening years of the AIDS scare, back in the 80s?