Posted on 10/06/2001 11:52:59 AM PDT by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
LANTANA, Fla. (AP) - Relatives of a Florida man who contracted a fatal case of anthrax are being given antibiotics as a precaution and the man's co-workers have been tested and cleared, health authorities said Saturday.
Investigators are awaiting test results from soil and other specimens as they try to learn how 63-year-old Bob Stevens contracted the rare and extremely lethal inhaled form of the disease. He died Friday.
More than 50 health and law enforcement officials have fanned out across Palm Beach County to track his movements over the past two months and look for other possible cases.
"We have a long chronology of common activities we need to pursue," state epidemiologist Dr. Steven Wiersma said Saturday. "We don't have any really hot leads at this time."
No other cases of anthrax have been reported in the area. Wiersma said several of Stevens' co-workers at the supermarket tabloid The Sun have been tested, but results were negative. Also, as a precaution, close family members are being treated with antibiotics.
Officials have said there is no evidence that Stevens was the victim of terrorism. Wiersma said tests of Stevens' blood further confirmed that belief because the anthrax in the sample responded to penicillin. Anthrax developed by some countries as a biological weapon could be resistant to the antibiotic, he said.
The Sept. 11 hijackings have put many people on edge about a bioterrorism threat.
Officials believe Stevens contracted anthrax naturally in Florida. The disease can be contracted from farm animals or soil, though the bacterium is not normally found among wildlife or livestock in the state. Stevens was described as an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed fishing and gardening.
Officials are also investigating in North Carolina, where Stevens visited last month, but said the disease also is rare among animals in that state.
Investigators have cast a wide net in their search in Florida.
County medical examiners are looking over any unexplained deaths, but have not found any cases connected to anthrax. Veterinarians have been told to be on alert for animals who might have the disease, but none have turned up.
Investigators also are visiting restaurants, parks and other locations he frequented or even visited casually, Wiersma said.
Samples have been sent to labs in Miami or Jacksonville or to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Results could take days.
Only 18 inhalation cases in the United States were documented in the 20th century, the most recent in 1976 in California. The last anthrax case in Florida was in 1974, according to the state health department.
Stevens lived on the same street in this quiet West Palm Beach suburb for 23 years. He and his wife raised their four children, now adults, and British-born Stevens - who became a U.S. citizen - raised his American flag on holidays.
As word of his death spread through the community Friday evening, a worker at a nearly nursery school stopped by his home to drop off cards made by preschool children.
Stevens loved fishing, neighbors said, and would take his next-door-neighbor's 10-year-old boy fishing twice a month.
"It just seems like a horrible dream that you can't wake up from," said neighbor Mary Crandell, whose granddaughter had taken drawing lessons from Stevens for years.
"She's really outgoing and I contribute that to him," Crandell said. "He always had time for her."
AP-ES-10-06-01 1429EDT
You know, I'm getting awful damn tired of hearing, there will be more attacks, and then when they happen, we get "isolated incident, not connected to Sept. 11." Like the bomb in Saudi. Everyone's going out of their way to mention that it's not connected, because, as we all know, bombs explode outside watch shops all the time. Even if they report a story, it's modified to take the worst parts out, like with the Russian plane. Not it didn't stop in Belgium and pick somebody up after all, and the reports that did say their might be bullet holes only said it was in the cockpit wreckage. It didn't mention anything about them being in the cockpit door, or that Russian public television said that damage to the skin looked like machine gun fire, or that part of a corpse had a bullet in it.
We aren't going to get the straight story on anything from now on.
2 months ago this would have merited very little news coverge at all.
A news progarm on the radio played a statement by the hospital spokesman that claimed that the man was in respiratory distress ( already having SEVERE problems breathing) the day he was admitted. The next morning he went into renal (kidney) failure. By later that day, despite dialysis, he was terminal.
The biggest challenge in treating anthrax is that by the time people seek treatment they are already too late.
What is most fishy here is people so starved for a conspiracy that they are using the lack of evidence as evidence of conspiracy.
2. In war, the first casualty is the truth.
Why? Anthrax is NOT transmitted person-to-person. I hope that you are not thinking that someone would use anthrax in an airplane. Not a very effective use of it.
the fact that there is no evidence hasn't deterred some of you from making some wild correlations. And remember, correlations, positive and negative NEVER imply causation. Never.
Of course, since I'm not promoting anthrax conspriacies, you'll probably consider me a government shill and part of the cover up.
(Maybe that's exactly what 'they' want you to think!)
Look, I want to be assured that our Government has enough antibiotics to medicate all of us. Just simply knowing there is a swift probable cure for Anthrax or Smallpox is enough to put my mind at ease.
I don't want our Government feeding the starving refugees in Afganistan...I want them to take care of their own U.S. citizens.
We can't even get a flu shot, AGAIN...this year!
sw
As for now, I have heard that there are 50 million vaccines in the US for smallpox, but this was not a published fact.
I don't have any info on anthrax vaccine. If I do, I'll post it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3bbf3246549c.htm
(Sorry my HTML has regressed since I was last posting here during the presidential election ...will have to review my notes on posting links!)
Post is from Miami Herald article earlier today on FR ...pay particular attention to Dr Frederick Southwick's comments in bold at the end of the article (He is Chief Infectious Diseases of U of FL School of Medicine).
Has anyone considered some sort of a mass sealed promotional mailing might be a possible vehicle for anthrax spores? ...I would want to check the victims mail ...could be a test of a delivery vehicle/apparatus.
So I understand that none of us are actually protected against smallpox, even if we received the vaccination as kids. So the logical thing to focus on is to get us all vaccinated.
We need to DEMAND our government can meet the supply and demand of the entire country if we need the medication. Our doctor won't prescribe shelf-life antibiotics. Whose will! If they can airdrop food supplies to millions of Afgans, then by gosh, they can use our tax dollars to supply us with meds in case of a bio attack.
Back to the flu shot. It's available in limited quantities. Even my very fragile Uncle, age 73 is on a waiting list.
Oh, and I'm on my second slice of icecream cake...Chocolate!! Haven't indulged myself like this in a long, long time. If I'm gonna go, I'm doing it in style!
sw
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