There's a big picture here, but anthrax isn't in it yet

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 17, 2001

Let's keep our eye on the big story here.

Fanatics knocked down the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon with hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11. We are at war with terrorism.

We are launching air strikes against Afghanistan. We are tending to a fragile international coalition.

That is the big story.

On a much, much smaller scale -- not deserving of the doomsday headlines it is getting -- a handful of Americans in three locations have been exposed to the treatable, livestock-related disease, anthrax.

We know that somebody mailing letters from Trenton, N.J., is responsible for at least two of those locations. We do not know the source of the disease in Boca Raton, at the headquarters of the newspaper tabloids.

There is no evidence, zero, none, that these isolated incidents are the work of international terrorists, or a followup to the Sept. 11 attacks. It seems inconsistent that they would be.

I say that this is the work of a nut in Trenton who somehow had access to the stuff, and that the Boca thing is unrelated. NBC, and maybe ABC, are obvious choices. But then, next on his list ... the Senate majority leader? Is that the first guy you would guess?

If we find out letters went to the whole Congress, and the whole Cabinet, then that would be proof of a larger enterprise, and something to worry about.

As for the tabloids, is it so unbelievable that within the tabloid newspaper universe, sooner or later somebody would try some stunt like this?

Listen:

It takes a massive exposure to catch the inhaled, or "pulmonary" version of the disease.

The skin, or "cutaneous" version, is extremely treatable. There probably are dozens, even hundreds, of undiagnosed cases a year in the U.S., people who just got a sore, a black scab, then heal.

Listen:

You aren't going to get it. I'm not going to get it. There isn't enough of it.

Sure, maybe some nut will send you white powder in the mail, which is what happened to me last week. Maybe some jokester will dump talcum powder in your workplace and they'll evacuate the building. It will be akin to a bomb threat, and it should be treated the same way.

But remember the West Nile virus.

Just a couple of months ago the West Nile virus was our new bogeyman. We were scared. We were demanding vaccines. People were going to emergency rooms and walk-in clinics and doctors' offices, convinced that they had it. The headlines kept getting bigger. The epidemic spread through Florida like the plague. There were 11 cases here, all non-fatal. Eleven.

You want something deadly? Try the flu.

Compared with West Nile virus or even anthrax, plain old influenza is a massive threat to us all. So is smoking cigarettes, even deadlier than Russian roulette. So is driving and yammering on the phone. So is tailgating at 90 miles an hour. So is not wearing a seat belt.

All of these things cause death. Every one of them is a lot more likely to affect our lives than anthrax. And we are not afraid of them in the slightest. Unfamiliarity breeds fear. Familiarity breeds complacency.

What will happen now, most likely, is that more people in the affected areas will test positive for exposure. The actual war overseas will be second fiddle.

If we get evidence that there is really something to worry about, something more than isolated incidents that prove no pattern, then sure, we should step it up. But not until then.

This will be an unpopular thing to say. When I said the same thing about West Nile in August, the fury of the response from a lot of people was surprising. People who are worried about something do not want to hear that there are better things to worry about. Nonetheless, it is the truth.

- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.

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