Colorado Governor Orders Post Office Shut Down After Employee Hospitalized for Pneumonia

The Associated Press ^ | Published: Nov 10, 2001 | AP

[AZ Repub]

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) - Gov. Bill Owens ordered two post offices closed Saturday until environmental tests are conducted for anthrax. A worker whose illness prompted the action does not have the disease, tests confirmed late Saturday.

The worker, a 41-year-old man, was hospitalized Tuesday with pneumonia but is improving, said Cindy Parmenter, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention performed tests on his blood and fluid taken from his lungs, and both tests were negative. Parmenter said no additional tests were planned for him.

Owens ordered closed the Fort Collins branch post office where the man worked and a second that receives mail from that facility. The governor said he conferred with 20 doctors who unanimously recommended the closings.

Some 200 postal employees had been advised to take antibiotics. Those will be available Sunday, or until the environmental tests rule out anthrax, health officials said.

[AZ Repub]

"The governor said he conferred with 20 doctors who unanimously recommended the closings."

This doesn't make sense. Why would 20 doctors support closing these facilities when the patient is negative for Anthrax?

* They were asked before they knew the results of the lab tests?

* They think the guy has some other infection possibly transmitted in the mail?

* There is something else going on here?

[Sunshine55]

SOMETHING is mighty strange about it. When I read this earlier today, I thought maybe the Governor took matters into his own hands rather than leave it up to the same dolts that have been botching all the other situations. But TWENTY doctors?

[.30Carbine]

You are seeing nothing more threatening by the FedGov and the Docs than an attempt to cover their behinds. The first case of anthrax was misdiagnosed by both the PO and the Doc in NJ as "the flu." Two days later the man who had it was calling
9-1-1...he died of inhalation anthrax that same day. If this CO case had ended-up being anthrax, and they didn't close that PO, can you imagine the uproar?

As an aside, the total number of anthrax pranks, hoaxes and threats the USPS is receiving is now above 600 per day. That any post offices are still open is a testimony to this mail carrier that there is, thank God, some semblance of common sense still left in America.

As President Bush said, the USPS is now "America's first line of defense." The mail must go through!

[onyx]

The governor is having his "gray davis moment."