OFFICIALS: Tests Show Presence of Anthrax in Second Florida Man

AP ^ | 10/8/01 | Amanda Riddle

[STARWISE]

Dear God ... now we have to worry about our air conditioning ducts??? I just had a gut feeling there couldn't be just one strange case. Please keep praying.

[Diogenesis]

Hey, Saddam and bin Ladin: N

[STARWISE]

I'm also shocked that this wasn't on the AP's Breaking News site .. I found it on their Florida news site!!! Can you believe it????

[World'sGoneInsane]

Can you believe it????

Yes.

[Nick Danger]

People who have just been visitors to the building, he said, should not seek antibiotic treatment.

That's irresponsible. When the consequence of making a mistake is "death" and the cost of treatment is "forty bucks," the fact that "probability of exposure" is a low number matters not one whit.

This guy goes into the box with the security guard at the WTC who told the people running down the stairs to go back to their offices because it was the other tower that got hit.

[Pete53]

It looks like there is more to this than meets the eye.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Just checked over at Traitors.com(DU), they just got this story up(3 HOURS after first appearing on FR!). Some mocking and scoffing, and a couple of suggestions that this was a Wag The Dog incident by Bush. I guess that is what psychologists would term 'projection'?

[LarryLied]

I'm also shocked that this wasn't on the AP's Breaking News site

It was on WPEC-TV as breaking news at 1AM EDT. Maybe even earlier, that is when I tuned it. Big story here. The Palm Beach Emergency Center is in full operation. No one would agree to an interview. All the reporters had was a press release. Odd that it took the wires so long to pick it up.

[Nick Danger]

It looks like there is more to this than meets the eye.

If these two guys are the early outliers in a 45-to-60 day bell curve that started ticking in early September, we've got a serious Fright Scenario here. I pray to God that this isn't what I think it is.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

I e-mailed this story to Drudge. We'll see if he makes it a headline on his home page.

[LUVYA DUBYA 2000]

Hey Larry, you scooped AP!!!!

FREEPERS ARE AWEEEEESOME! AND THE REST OF THE WORLD! YOU GET THE SUPER FREEPER OF THE DAY AWARD!

[LUVYA DUBYA 2000]

No, look again this AP story is dated Monday the 8th, This is a new story and confirmed case.

[DB]

Yep...

I wonder if the security guard survived?

If so, I can't imagine his pain.

[tbeatty]

If these two guys are the early outliers in a 45-to-60 day bell curve that started ticking in early September, we've got a serious Fright Scenario here. I pray to God that this isn't what I think it is.

If they were the outliers we would already have seen thousands of cases. 45-60 days is the LATEST incubation. Normal is 4-5 days.

THis is most likely a Poisson distrbution of exposure meaning that it isn't unusual for someone close (both spacially and temporally) to the initially infected to also be infected. Kind of like busses: the next arriving bus has the highest probability of arriving right after the previous one.

Think about how you get the disease: most likely the first victim got from livestock feces (shoes kicked it up). The same shoes wore worn to work. He has the opportunity to infect everyone he worked with.

I know everyone here wants to panic and I'm throwing cold water on it, but you need to take a step back. A terror attack of 200 pounds of Anthrax would kill 3 million people on the east coast. If this really were an attack thousands would have symptons within the first 3 days, not 2.

[Nick Danger]

I hope you're right.

[be-baw]

If it truly is a Poisson distribution, the probability of having two events in the same YEAR (using 18 cases in 100 years to calculate the mean)is about .013. I haven't calculated the probability of two in the same WEEK, but it certainly is much less than .013.

[Hugh Akston]

Looks like I chose the wrong night to go to bed early.

[francisandbeans]

according to CBS radio news...officials claim it is unrelated to terrorism.

By the way, the WTC crashes were not the result of terrorism either...it was a faulty air traffic control system which registered the towers as JFK airport.