Walking line between blind fear, plain sense

MELONE E-mail: Click here Archive

By MARY JO MELONE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 28, 2001

What did it for me was the way the dates were written on the anthrax letters, with the month going first, then the date, then the year. The mad anthrax mailer is no foreigner who prays to Allah.

He's an American, I bet. Only Americans date documents the way they appeared in the anthrax letters.

He is a particular kind of American, poisoned within like Timothy McVeigh or the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski. And he took advantage of our national distraction after Sept. 11 to strike. He figured we could not fight on two fronts.

Whoever he is, he has a grudge as encompassing as the sky. He demands attention.

He's got it. He is on every front page, on every talk show, in post offices, emergency rooms and doctors' offices.

And now, every home.

This terrorist wants to change even the smallest, mundane ritual of our lives.

Now we're supposed to wash our hands after opening the mail.

Do the experts mean even the credit card come-ons, or the coupons that offer discounts for dry cleaning and pizza?

Yes, they say. You wash your hands to prevent the spread of germs routinely, don't you?

Yes, I say. But when I look at an envelope that contains an invitation to a child's birthday party and then tell myself I need to wash my hands to cleanse them of potential anthrax spores, my mind balks at the dissonance.

If I have to live every day looking over my shoulder, expecting disaster, well, I'll go out of my mind. I am inclined to think I have control over my environment. I don't give up the illusion easily. Most of us don't.

So I balk about washing my hands after opening the mail. Really now -- Tampa Bay is a long way from New York and Washington. It's not likely to happen here.

That's what I think now.

That's not how I thought a couple of weeks ago. I was a wreck.

I had come down with a bug and went to my doctor. I probably had a virus, he said, but he gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, just in case.

I ignored his instructions not to fill the prescription. But I never took the medication, a drug called Biaxin.

The amber vial still sits on a shelf in my bathroom. For a brief while, it took on a talisman's proportions. Like a child so afraid of the monsters he keeps his light on all night, I believed Biaxin would save me if I got anthrax.

It turns out that although a few drugs other than Cipro can be used, Biaxin is not among them.

And even if Biaxin could be used, I had enough for 10 days, not the 60 days required of people who take Cipro, a drug that can make you violently ill in the process of keeping you alive.

I learned that Biaxin would be no good from Jacqueline Cattani, the epidemiologist at USF's year-old Center for Biological Defense.

She is on her way to becoming one of those TV experts on anthrax. She has talked to NBC and ABC. Next thing you know, you'll see her on Larry King Live.

While others panic, Cattani is calm. Wonderfully calm.

She pointed out what so many of us have forgotten: that you have to put the anthrax threat in proportion. We have to remember the other, ordinary threats we face.

"Every time we're in the car, we're not in mortal fear," Cattani said. "Fear is just going to immobilize us."

-- Mary Jo Melone can be reached at (813)-226-3402 or mjmelone@sptimes.com.

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