In the screenplay I’m now crafting, (the working title is SARS: Denial is a River in Egypt), Nova Scotia Health Minister Jane Purves is going to be played by Sigourney Weaver. Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman will be played by Dustin Hoffman. It will be an edgier, sexier version of recent events.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that people who are planning to travel to Beijing, China’s Shanxi Province and Toronto should consider postponing all but essential travel to these places. It was an extension of travel advice previously issued for only Guangdong Province and Hong Kong.

Jane Purves then advised Nova Scotians not to travel to Toronto. Later that same day, after a conference phone call with other provincial health ministers, she backed off her warning.

I, for one, am glad that someone in government listened, even briefly, to the WHO. The WHO is not some rag-tag cult of panic-button pushers. It is the specialized health agency of the 192 member states of the United Nations. It has 3,500 experts and support staff on fixed-term appointments who work at its headquarters, their six regional offices and in various member countries. The current Director-General is the amazing Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, a physician and former Prime Minister of Norway. I’ve cast Judi Dench in her role.

For Canadians, it was all well and dandy when the WHO advised against travel in places far from us — Beijing and Guangdong, Shanxi Province and Hong Kong. But, as soon as the warning took into the account the situation in tee dot oh dot, the howling, stomping and gnashing began.

Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman said, “They don’t know what they’re talking about. Who did they talk to? They’ve never even been to Toronto. They’re located somewhere in Geneva.” Ontario Premier Ernie Eves (Donald Sutherland?) said WHO’s step was “totally unwarranted.” Colin D’Cunha, (Halifax actor John Dunsworth is interested) Ontario’s chief medical officer, said WHO officials “should be ashamed.”

Maybe so. Maybe the WHO did make a mistake, but it doesn’t matter if the WHO’s advisory against travel to Toronto was made because of political pressure from China, or due to incomplete information — that’s another investigation and argument. What matters is that an international body, part of the UN, did issue a warning, and advice from an important organization like the WHO should be heeded.

We just saw the U.S. go to war because it refused to listen to the UN.

And so Jane Purves (Sigourney Weaver, dressed in Prada, with lots of shoes by Manolo Blahnik) seems to have been the only Canadian heeding the advice of WHO. We should applaud her ability to rustle up objectivity when all others are shrieking their heads off.

SARS: Denial is a River in Egypt will be shot on location in Halifax, Toronto and Hong Kong. My people are talking to Chow Yun-Fat’s people; he’ll play a Chinese doctor who succumbs to SARS in the first half of the film, with that same baby kingfisher bad bed-head haircut that he had in Anna and the King.

I don’t yet know exactly what will happen, but there will be lots of high drama moments set in Toronto hospitals and at airports. Low ominous music will be in the soundtrack. A Toronto city councillor will contract SARS. There’ll be scenes of medical personnel in high-tech anti-biological agent suits, like in Outbreak. I’m going to write in a scene for myself (played by Stockard Channing) as a columnist writing about SARS and the WHO. But as far as I’m concerned, Jane Purves will be the hero.