IT'S JUST ANTHRAX - Good read

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NYPost

IT'S JUST ANTHRAX

By JOHN RINGO

October 19, 2001 -- ANYTHING that you can cure with a dose of antibiotics is not bioterrorism, otherwise the Navy would have been under assault the entire time that Subic Bay was a liberty port.

This is not to make light of biowarfare. It's a very effective and efficient means to reduce your enemy's capabilities and has been used at least since Alexander the Great (whose armies catapulted the bodies of plague victims over walls).

But this is just anthrax. As a friend of mine who works in infectious-disease research said: "It's just wool-sorter's disease."

People who work in the wool industry get the cutaneous form (what the ABC producer's child contracted) on a regular basis, like an office-worker gets paper-cuts. And they don't die from it. So why are we frightened?

The news media.

Bioterrorism is about making us afraid. The media are experts in making us fear everything from cars that roll over (they don't) to asbestos that kills you by sending radiation through the walls (it doesn't) to guns being the scourge of all evil (another column, perhaps).

Faced by a situation where the best possible action is to simply state the truth and neither overblow nor underblow the reality, the media are so bamboozled it's getting funny.

Take Jane Pauley, a woman who has made a very lucrative career constructing mountains out of molehills (remember the famous "Let's put little jets on the side of the gas tank to make sure the car explodes" debacle?). Now she's faced by a real, honest-to-gosh mountain. And she has no clue how to react.

Tuesday night, in one controlled and purposeful breath she managed to state that:

Anthrax is no threat.

Anthrax is one of the deadliest substances on earth.

Everyone is frightened of it.

Come on, Jane: Pick one, and stick to it.

Pulmonary anthrax is a deadly disease with a huge caveat: unless promptly treated.

And, as any of the people that have tested positive for inhalation without contracting it will tell you, it's hard to "catch."

Anthrax tends to clump together into groups of bacteria, just as powdered sugar tends to clump into groups. When you inhale it, the "clumps" stick in your nose hairs and in the mucous in your throat. Then you sneeze it and cough it out. Result? You don't die and you didn't even need antibiotics.

The only way to contract pulmonary anthrax is to get very small clumps of bacteria spores lodged deep in your lungs. The way that the anthrax is being distributed (packed into envelopes) makes this a very low probability result.

And even if you are exposed, there's these guys called doctors who give you some pills and behold! You're cured.

A few dozen people have been exposed so far. One death. One. An older gentleman who had no idea that he might have contracted anthrax. Now we know; now we're looking. If the number goes over one in a thousand exposed, I'd be very surprised.

Oh, you thought that was going to be the last death to bioterrorism? Nope. We'll lose other people. There are better ways to distribute anthrax. And there are also "better" bioweapons - toxins that can kill thousands in drinking water and "plague" diseases that spread themselves.

If those get loose, it will get bad. But that's still OK. This is a war. There are two sides in a war, and both lose people.

But if we lose a person in the mailroom, we can mourn them, put up a memorial and move on. If we lose a Senate majority leader, we can have a testimonial at the White House, pass a bill he really liked in his honor and move on. If we lose a president, we can give Dick Cheney an artificial heart, put Colin Powell in as vice president, put Donald Rumsfeld in as secretary of state and Move On.

This is our blitz. This is our bombing. This is the terrorists' way of striking at our heartland.

In other words, this is a war. Good people die, and bad people die. What you cannot do is lose your nerve. Because if we do that as a nation, we will never move on.

Remember the British, stoic under the Blitz. Remember even the Japanese and the Germans, going about their daily lives as best they could, never knowing which bomb would have their name on it. Then get up, put on your work clothes and get out there as Americans.

Otherwise, the terrorists win.

And tell Jane Pauley to get a grip. It's just anthrax!

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2001


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