Palm Beach County FL Man has Anthrax

Fox News Channel

[NautiNurse]

Breaking news on FNC--a 63 year old man from Palm Beach County is in critical condition with anthrax

[SlickWillard]

The Florida game seasons are here:

http://wld.fwc.state.fl.us/hunting/handbook/page2.htm

Again, just bow & arrow at this time of year.

[aomagrat]

The claim is that a crop duster would not be appropriate for distributing anthrax spores, because the droplet size is orders of magnitude too large. Anthrax needs to be aerosolized.

Any mosquito fogger trucks been reported missing?

[rumrunner]

As I posted on another thread, there have only been 18 cases of inhalational anthrax reported in the United States since 1900. Also, epidemiological clues to a biological weapon attack:

Unusual geographical area of occurrence, vector-borne disease in an area without these vectors, epidemic simultaneously, more morbidity and mortality than expected, decreased rates in protected personnel

Until the second clue appears, it is only speculation.

Still, for those who say you can't spread airborne anthrax, I remind you that the spore of the bacterium is stable especially in aerosol form. The insidious nature of spread and resulting confusion is appealing to terrorists. The US Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, once raised a 5 lb bag of sugar on television to demonstrate the amount of anthrax spores that could kill 50% of Washington's population.

[antidisestablishment]

Thanks! I was going to reply to that quackery. Colloidal silver's benefits are pure BS and it is extremely cumulative.

[Reagan's_Mom]

Stand erect, quit cowering, entrust yourselves to the loving arms of the Almighty, then go about your daily business.

AMEN!!

I'll second that

[NautiNurse]

Mosquito fogger trucks

We had one come through here the other night. It was a surreal sound and sight. I was thinking the same thing.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Bin Laden has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

NO he hasn't. His goal is to turn the USA into New Afghanistan.

[SGCOS]

...This is what happens when you give up national sovereignty just so people will like you. To hell with Islam, to hell with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and all other Arabs that have the slightest reservation about whether they're with us or with the Terrorists.

We can't. We need their oil. And the whackos are against drilling in the most god-forsaken area of our country, or any drilling for that matter.

[Jacvin]

I live in Palm Beach County. I don't scare easily, but my wife and I just took some Cipro,and gave my three year old son Doxycycline. Better safe than sorry.Loaded up on the stuff last week(my sister is a nurse, and knows a lot of doctors).

Don't really or maybe don't want to believe it is an attack.Hoping for coincidence.

Victory or Death!!

[Texas dog]

He was admitted to the hospital on Oct 1

Deej, how authoritative is this? Rumor, or from somebody who knows?

If he has really been sick since 10/1/01, and it is terrorism, unlikely that we wouldn't know about other cases unless the distribution method was really poor.

On the other hand, it could have been an accident during handling of a big batch of spores, getting ready for 10/11/01...

[KSCITYBOY]

Just a thought: If animals get it from sniffing around the ground - This guy is an outdoorsman who just got back from a hunting trip he may have slept on the ground or even reclined on the ground to rest or whatever and he happened to do it in an infected area and inhaled the spores. I think freeking out over one case is exactly what those bastards want. If he is a vistims of a bio attack we should see many more cases in the next couple of days. Also someone stated above that Thompson didn't reassure them. Well all the man can do is state what he knows and I'd rather have the facts then be mislead. I know this can be a scary time but we have got to avoid running willynilly in fear everytime something happens.

[NeoCaveman]

ping for e-medicine

[blam]

"Does Palm Beach County county have much cattle industry?"

Florida is the #1 cattle exporting state. (for what it's worth...suprised me too.)

[Stefan Stackhouse]

I wouldn't put too much weight either on the patient's present FL location or on his most immediate previous out-of-state location (Durham NC). Everybody is talking about crop dusters, but I can think of a scenario for a lone terrorist to distribute Pulmonary Anthrax in a manner that is very low-tech, inexpensive, and virtually certain to escape detection. The method that I have in mind would also assure that victims were infected across a wide geographic area, and it would be extremely difficult to determine where the original point of infection was. Finally, because of the above, this method could be repeated numerous times, at the same location or at different locations.

I am not interested in giving our enemies any ideas, so I am not going to state what this method would be.

The thing to watch for is if we start to see other "isolated" cases of Anthrax crop up over the next few days and weeks, not clustered in one location but widely dispersed. If this pattern develops, look for the gov't to continue to claim that these are "isolated" cases "not related to terrorism" for as long as they can to avoid panic. My advice is that if you see such a pattern develop, you cancel all travel plans and stay home.

[japaneseghost]

Mucho thanks for that link - prices are pretty good, but they don't have my fave antibiotic, Vantin (for people allergic to penicyllin).

[lafroste]

The claim is that a crop duster would not be appropriate for distributing anthrax spores, because the droplet size is orders of magnitude too large. Anthrax needs to be aerosolized.

I don't mean to be alarmist, but it seems to me that an aerosol would not be that hard to produce. (I assume you are talking a mean hydraulic radius on the order of 10 microns).

[backhoe]

FYI--

Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Warfare- Survival Skills, Pt. II

[DJ88]

Well...I know I heard it on TV, whether it was during Tommy Thompson's news conference or something else, I don't actually remember....I will go to a more reliable source to see if I can actually confirm this...:-) Deej

[NCRepublican]

Check out the article here ----> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,35779,00.html

Apparently, it's an isolated case and health officials do not believe it is terrorism. There was an anthrax case earlier this year in Texas....

I know we're all on edge, but let's not jump to conclusions! If we live our lives being scared, we have let them win. Let us enjoy the time we have on this earth with our loved ones!

[PeterBarringer]

I think they meant to say the last human inhalation anthrax in the last 25 years.