- The number of "cases of anthrax" (people who got the disease) associated with "anthrax letters" is 2 : the guy who died in Florida, and the NBC woman who got cutaneous anthrax in NY.
- The number of "anthrax letter" incidents is 3: the AMI incident in Florida, the NBC letter (from Trenton), and the porno pictures sent to Microsoft in Nevada (from Malaysia).
- There are 10 people who have been shown (from recovery of spores or antibody tests) to have been *exposed* to anthrax in these 3 incidents but who did NOT develop an anthrax infection. To refer to them as "cases of anthrax" is deliberate alarmism. It's likely that they wouldn't have actually developed the disease, because anthrax is not very contagious and human resistance to anthrax is pretty efficient.
- The number and expense of scare incidents is huge, as every threatening letter, every appearance of powder or any finely divided substance, and every rumor of the same brings about a massive response, with evacuations, biohazard teams, etc.
- The level of public anxiety about all this is quite high especially in New York. A comrade of mine who works in a hospital and who knows about this stuff told me about how an X-ray technician, normally quite intelligent, came in wearing rubber gloves "to protect himself from the anthrax." "I watched him and he was touching everything in the office, then touching his face, his forehead... 'I hope you're changing gloves between patients,' I said. 'Uh, yeah, sure..' "
By the way I think there are normally 80 cases of cutaneous or enteral anthrax per year in the U.S., as it is endemic?
- Number of doses of anthrax vaccine on hand: 2 million (or 3 million?). Number they want to bring it up to: 12 million.
Lou Paulsen