Posted on 10/17/2001 8:56:23 AM PDT by freeper12
anthrax found at ny governers office - breaking
The reality is, there are jars of weaponized anthrax, sufficient to kill every person in the USA, sitting on some terrorist's kitchen self right now. As long as there are planes in the air, trucks on the road, subways, skyscrapers with centralized A/C, shopping malls, indoor sports events, etc., the potential exists for someone to take that anthrax and kill, at minimum, thousands of people. At maximum, in a coordinated attack, the death-toll could easily exceed the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Antibiotics are needed for flu season not because antibiotics help against the flu virus, but because the flu and other viral infections open the door for opportunistic bacterial infections. For example, it's common for the flu (viral) to transition into bacterial pneumonia. See: http://www.medinfo.ufl.edu/cme/flu/viral.html
2. are you a doctor? At a press conference yesterday it came out that doctors are cleaning out cipro from pharmacies -- for themselves and their families. Your advice would seem to counter the advice doctors are giving themselves, and their families. What are your medical qualifications to give out this type of advice?
His point was that if people start stocking up on antibiotics "just in case", supplies will be depleted and there won't be enough for the people who *really* need them. He's absolutely right, and the fact that some doctors are selfishly helping to contribute to the problem doesn't change that.
My thoughts exactly. Time to show our resolve. They have escalated this, so we should do the same. They cannot keep up. There is a time and a place for nukes--now is the time, we just need to hit a few places.
What I'm gathering is there's a breakdown in communication between medical/lab types and law enforcement types. Not surprising, they speak entirely different languages, and we haven't been testing everything in sight for Anthrax before.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/643295.asp
"ANTHRAX is a member of the large Bacillus family of bacteria. So are germs that cause mild food poisoning and others that are harmless to people. Emergency workers checking suspicious letters like the one Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle got Monday can do quick tests to determine if signs of the large Bacillus family exist to give reason to worry about anthrax. But this rapid first test is very often wrong because it cannot tell if B. anthracis, the specific anthrax germ, is the culprit or if less harmful Bacillus bugs are present, say biologists."
Au contraire, my friend. I'd love to think otherwise -- no one on this forum has been more enthusiastic about nuking Saddam's bunker, right from Day 1. Let's face it, we screwed up (actually, Clinton screwed up). I do not envy the people who have to take those decisions now. It is a very, very disturbing situation.
To a certain extent, we are in unchartered waters here. This is something of a trial balloon for the terrorists and for us coping with it. In the future, this will be written up in medical and scientific journals as an epidemiological case study on the utility of anthrax for mass infection.
If I were a terrorist at this moment, I would be roundly pleased with the panic and hysteria caused by my actions, but rather disappointed with the biomedical consequences.
Yeah, you got that right hellin! Not to mention that Bush has been very accountable for where he is and what he's been doing, somuchso that a "person" would have to be blind to not see where he is and has been. Guess it's hard for Octavia living with that kind of disability. (no offense to any actual blind people....I suspect they can see much clearer than this whiner.)
The thing with GWB is HE IS THE PRESIDENT and has president's duties to carry out which include handling all this mess rather than sitting down and holding whiners hands. He is THE PRESIDENT, not a nursemaid for the timid. Our President is a tender and compassionate man when called for, towards those who really are suffering, not towards those crying wolf!
The reality is, there are jars of weaponized anthrax, sufficient to kill every person in the USA, sitting on some terrorist's kitchen self right now. As long as there are planes in the air, trucks on the road, subways, skyscrapers with centralized A/C, shopping malls, indoor sports events, etc., the potential exists for someone to take that anthrax and kill, at minimum, thousands of people. At maximum, in a coordinated attack, the death-toll could easily exceed the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nonsense. We do not have evidence that Iraq has the technology to make anthrax small enough to be useful as a weapon or the ability to transform the naturally sticky condition into a dry powder necessary for effective disbursement.
In fact, Iraqi attempts to use anthrax against the Kurds in their own country has repeatedly met with failure, because of their inability to deliver the spores effectively.
Secondly, Iraq does not possess the highly specialized equipment necessary to disperse anthrax effectively. Even if they did, they’d have to deliver these specially outfitted planes to America (how would they accomplish that? stick them up their ass like a bag of heroin?), and deploy them unnoticed over a large city without getting shot down.
In addition, anthrax is not fatal in small doses. Around 10,000 spores are needed to cause a lung infection, which is quite treatable with anti-biotics.
Even in the highly unlikely event that they were able to overcome all these obstacles, they’d need absolutely perfectly conducive weather, with just the right concentrations of temperature, humidity, and wind conditions to succeed with this plot.
My point is merely that fear of anthrax is not a sufficient reason to hold back on an attack on Iraq.
Unless you're actually in a place that has a high likelihood of being a "preferred target", that would actually be a very selfish thing to do, since it would deplete our stocks of antibiotics and take them away from those who really need them.
What was the terrible infraction? Were they lableing the vaccine "fat free" instead of "mostly fat free"?
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