anthrax (nevermind)

Well, in October 2001 it was Saddam or France or some other foreign terrorist, who'd sent the anthrax.


This time "we're expecting anything out there, it's just out of the abundance of caution" .

Homeland Security seems to work.

This kind of attack is almost impossible to prevent, at least with defensive measures. They can mail anthrax to you, or put a bomb in a movie theater, or start a plague, or use a dirty bomb, or poison a reservoir, or tamper with medicine, etc., etc. Although defensive measures are helpful, we cannot protect every conceivable target, against every conceivable form of attack, 24 x7 for the rest of time. It will be more effective to figure out who is plotting to kill us and kill them first.

As far as I know, the sender of the 2001 anthrax letters (killed at least 5, injured more than a dozen) still isn't officially named until today.

Yes, identification of the culprit can be extremely difficult after the fact. Better to catch them when they are buying chemicals and sending messages which may be able to be intercepted.

I had anthrax once. At first I thought I was just really tired, but then my kidneys started wincing if I moved suddenly.

Didn't catch the euphoria, huh, SCoates?

Well, I kind of enjoyed the wincing...

I heard that the mail had been irradiated and would not have caused any illness. At least that is what was reported on the news.

An anthrax scare involving three postal centres serving the US Pentagon has been blamed on a mix-up of samples. The scare has led to about 900 people receiving antibiotics and caused the stock market to dip.

A senior military official told reporters late on Tuesday of "quality control problems" at a laboratory contracted by the US Department of Defense. Speaking anonymously, he said it appeared likely that a sample of anthrax used for calibration had somehow contaminated an air filter from the Pentagon Remote Delivery Facility, sent for routine testing on 10 March.

Following the positive test result, a further 70 surface swabs and air samples were taken from the facility but none have shown any presence of the bacteria, the Pentagon says. The follow-up tests were being conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and, as a precaution, hundreds of employees were put on a three-day dose of antibiotics.

William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defence for health affairs, said that not all the test results had yet come back, but "we hope that with further information we'll be able to completely rule out any threat at all'.

dys, I thought that the substance turned out to be rat poison.

letty, I think the technical term for what happened is "false postive"

No decon at the Pentagon, then.

well, I'm guessing the rats disembarked from a sinking ship. The Decon was re-routed to the White house.

speaking of rat poison, I take my coumadin every evening. (C19H16O4, used as a rodenticide and as an anticoagulant)

I was wondering about your blood thinner. Our drummer friend after he had suffered a stroke, said he couldn't drink or take aspirin because he would be one big Decon from head to toe. Funny man!

What was the original name for that stuff? Hmmmm, panwarfin or something to that effect.

warfarin?

Wow! dys, you are in rare form today. Could be warf rattin'. Hey, buddy, you must be feeling fine.

I take my meds on schedule (most of the time)