SARS is a serious illness caused by a virus. It attacks the lungs, so breathing becomes hard, and it can kill people if they do not get help fast. The letters stand for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome: a sudden, bad lung sickness. It spread around the world in 2002–2003, and Taiwan remembers that year well. In everyday English, people say the letters S-A-R-S, not the long doctor name. It is news-and-hospital language, not a word for an ordinary cold. Later illnesses were compared to it; though actually, COVID-19 is not the same disease, even if both can make it hard to breathe. When English speakers say “a SARS outbreak,” they mean this named illness.