Posted on 10/17/2001 11:45:59 AM PDT by CommiesOut
| "Anthrax axiety" shatters U.S. sense of safety | |
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By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Psychologists have already
named the latest syndrome to hit the United States -- it's
called "anthrax anxiety" and it has further battered the
nation's declining sense of safety.
Psychologists said the threat of a deadly bacteria
spreading invisibly through the air was adding substantially to
the distress already caused by the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks
on New York and Washington that killed almost 5,400 people.
"Nobody knows if or where or when it will hit and there are
no specific guidelines from the government on how to prepare or
what to do," said Julia Turovsky, associate director of the
Anxiety Disorders Clinic at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
She said the fear was expressed in the large number of
people reporting any white substance as possible anthrax, which
she termed "a kind of mass hysteria that can build."
On Wednesday, 31 congressional staff members were reported
to have been exposed to anthrax after an envelope arrived in
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office on Monday
containing a dose of the often deadly bacteria.
Probable traces of the potential germ warfare agent were
also found in the Manhattan offices of New York Gov. George
Pataki. Thirteen other people around the United States have
contracted anthrax or tested positive for the bacteria,
including a photo editor for the tabloid newspaper group
American Media Inc, who died Oct. 5 in Florida.
Before Sept. 11, the United States had not experienced a
major attack on its mainland by an outside enemy for almost 200
years, during which time Americans had gradually come to view
war and terrorism as things that happened in other places,
thousands of miles away.
That idea has gone for good, said Duke University
psychologist Tim Strauman.
"We have to put behind us this illusion of invulnerability
and teach ourselves and our kids new ways to behave. We have to
tell our children they are safe but that does not mean they are
invulnerable. We have to put jingoism aside and acknowledge we
are part of the world, people like everybody else," he said.
For Alan Lipman, director of the Center for the Study of
Violence at Georgetown University, public fear is being fanned
by round-the-clock saturation coverage in the media, which has
contributed to an increased consumption of anti-depressants,
alcohol and drugs.
"The availability of information is vastly out of
proportion to the risk to the individual," he said.
"We're seeing people buying guns and gas masks which I
would term impulsive and somewhat desperate action in the face
of fear," Lipman said.
FEAR THE REAL POISON
"The real poison in the air is not going to be anthrax. It
will be fear that is causing depression, a certain degree of
rage and for some is causing paralysis, none of which is
necessary," he said.
Even before Sept. 11, as many as a quarter of all Americans
were thought likely to suffer from potentially debilitating
anxiety, panic disorders, animal phobias and post-traumatic
stress reactions at least once in the lives, according to
William Clark, a professor emeritus of biology at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
Part of the problem is that there are no clearly defined
coping mechanisms for facing this new and unknown threat.
"If an enemy who wishes to kill us finds an effective way
to do so, as they did on Sept. 11, any psychological approach
to the problem would not be reassuring. That prospect is what
we are now coping with," said Gerald Rosen, a clinical
psychologist in Seattle.
Other societies, like Israel and Ireland, have lived with
the constant fear of attack for years and still managed to
function and even at times to flourish.
"The fact is, objectively we are no safer or less safe
today than we were on Sept. 10. The fact is, we were all
wearing rose-colored glasses. We had a false sense of safety
and control," said Turovsky. "We have lost our naivete and now
we need to adjust to a new psychological perspective."
((Washington newsroom 202 898-8300, fax 202 898 8383, email
Washington.bureau.newsroom@reuters.com))
17 OCT 2001 18:40:15
"Anthrax axiety" shatters U.S. sense of safety
I'm the Gingerbread Man!!!
ROTFLMAO!! You mean that warm, fuzzy feeling we've all had since Sept. 11th?
. Sounds to me like we have a huge problem.
1. We don't know whether we have been exposed e.g. Pataki's office. What is being done to detect it.
2. We don't know if we have it unless we go to the doctor for a test. If we don't know if we have been exposed, how do we do that in time? 3. We have to go to a doctor to get the prescription for the antibiotics needed to counter it.
Tommie Thompson looks to me to be a good ole boy way out of his league.
Anthrax_Scare_List
Go here:
and then click the Anthrax_Scare_List topic to initiate the search! !
What we have so far IMO is warnings and scare-mongering. We have yet to see a major attack since 9/11. But if reports of this being high-grade anthrax are true (and even if they aren't), we do well to prepare ourselves for bigger things. And it probably won't be just biological stuff, either.
The "business of life" from now on includes plugging our numerous security holes.
We all owe it to ourselves to educate ourselves about the strengths, drawbacks, and countermeasures to each class of weapons, and to pass this information on to others:
Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Warfare- Survival Skills, Pt. II
You are still more likely to be killed or maimed by your own car than from a terrorist.....
Because we'd be dead?
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