[ScholarWarrior]

Not yet, anyway.
These postal workers would have had the largest concentrations next to the delivery area.
The next shoe has yet to drop, methinks.

[Dog Gone]

Apparently, a spore or two won't do it. Something like 12,000 are required.

[Diogenesis]

Wake up. This was here before, and now we are now alert.

Things are therefore safer. Also, penicillin widely available works.

The terrorists are being killed and rounded up daily.

Therefore there is no reason to panic.

[michaelje]

"The next shoe has yet to drop, methinks. "

I concur.

[Moridin]

I agree with you. I am surprised that our govt hasn't pursued the handling of mail as a possible source of contamination. Heck, if you have a letter containing anthrax and throw it in a bin and throw a few over it, it will compress some of the antrax out onto the other letters. Since when is a letter sealed air tight?....

[Steven W.]

use common sense to figure out what happened - the envelopes were not sealed, just taped, and, thus, the processing machines squeeze the envelopes and blow materials around to dislodge stuck particles. It's already been suggested that they change the machines to have powerful vacuums instead of blowers, which obviously compounded the problem.

[WyldKard]

I've heard that this letter was apparently PACKED to the gills with finely-milled anthrax goodness. If that's true, that means you'd get a lot of "pullballing" and mushrooming from the letter whenever it got squeezed.

Just to put some things in perspective, more people probably died from car accidents in the time it took me to type this than people have died from anthrax, let alone have confirmed exposure.

[DWSUWF]

I'm guessing those high speed sorting machines occasionally swallow a piece of mail. And I'm assuming that a letter with a wad of loose powder in it would be a prime candidate to get shredded.

They clean the machines with compressed air, to blow out the accumulated debris, and Bingo! millions of anthrax spores in the air in a relatively confined space.

It's going to get worse.

[eFudd]

More people will die today from slipping in their bathtub than will die of Anthrax.

More people will win the lotto today than will die from Anthrax.

Worrying about Anthrax is a waste of time.

Hillory will do, and has done more damage to this country than Anthrax.

If you must worry, then worry about Hillary.

[2nd Amendment Enforcer]

You're right, newsie. We're dealing with the unknown here. We must guard against overreation, to be sure, but it equally important that we must not be naive. Just take the necessary and rational precautions, and then get on with our lives with as much dignity as we can muster. We are at (total) war, and this point can't be emphasized enough. There will be casualties on our side, and possibly lots of them.

[ambrose]

No need to be alarmed. The government will take care of you and keep you safe. Move along.

[teletech]

[Texaggie79]

I wonder, if you were to lace a letter with airborne type anthrax spores, how long do they last? Perhaps they would be most deadly at first, which would be at the post office, then slowly deteriorate being significantly harmless after several days in the mail.

Any doctors, or biologists out there know?

[djf]

coupla hundred thousand people dead last year from heart disease... 40,000 dead on the roads... average year lightning deaths in United States: 93

[gopgirl]

I see your point, this has been woundering in the back of my mind. It is starting to get dangerous, maybe we have only seen the beginning of this stuff. They said it can stay in a person for a long time without any symptoms. When you hear the experts talk about anthrax on tv, you kinda feel better, but then I think to myself, did these experts actually use this stuff on people way back when? Did they get it to the best quality? Who knows, only time will tell... BUT... WE HAVE TO STAND TALL!

[gopgirl]

I see your point, this has been woundering in the back of my mind. It is starting to get dangerous, maybe we have only seen the beginning of this stuff. They said it can stay in a person for a long time without any symptoms.

When you hear the experts talk about anthrax on tv, you kinda feel better, but then I think to myself, did these experts actually use this stuff on people way back when? Did they get it to the best quality? Who knows, only time will tell... BUT... WE HAVE TO STAND TALL!

[shezza]

Well, I'll tell ya. I'm normally a level-headed, calm-cool-and-collected kind of gal. Rarely do the feathers get ruffled. But this is getting a little too close to home. You're right in that these postal workers didn't OPEN the anthrax-laced envelope(s)--they just carried and sorted. So apparently an envelope was leaking big time, crammed full of the "finely grounded" spores a la' the Daschle letter. (And the postal rep said investigation showed the Daschle letter was well-sealed with tape so it was probably another letter.) If these guys got enough of a whiff just touching an envelope in passing, maybe 1-2 seconds, how is MY mail affected? Could it have laid on top of one of those anthrax letters in a mail tray? Was anthrax spilling out of a tear and infecting all the mail in the vicinity? This is serious business.

Despite the whines showing up on other threads ("Lighten up! 50,000 people die in car accidents! 80,000 will die from heart disease this year alone!"), this is not an act of nature or an accident. This is like a sniper taking aim at whoever happens to walk innocently past. That's like saying we shouldn't have been concerned about Columbine, because ten times as many kids die of drug overdoses every day. Or that we ought not to have been shocked when Kennedy was shot--it was just one man. "Let's put this into perspective, people," is their idiotic cry.

This is a malicious act of violence against innocent people, and not to be equated with mortality rates for cancer or car accidents. And to compare them as such is asinine and ignorant.

[Lou L]

While I'm not to the point of worrying, I've yet to hear anyone speak of "containment," that is, how can we contain the anthrax that is out there--can it be detected (other than by accidentally infecting oneself? If so, can it be destroyed and effectively vanquished?

By the way, has anyone read Vector, by Robin Cook? His scenario is almost verbatim with what's taking place in our country today. Scary.

[shempy]

I am having a difficult time stressing over anthrax. Chances are that around 800 people will die this week in automobile accidents. Where is the panic over that?

I wonder how these hysteria-prone people can even make it through a day. How do they ever get enough nerve to climb stairs? It is a dangerous world, but on the list of things to be afraid of, anthrax has got to be pretty low. I'd place it on the list somewhere between ballpoint pens and paper clips.

[alisasny]

Calm down....300 people have died in USA past month due to herione from that Afghan area....