Yes, very sad for those those postal employees. Amazingly, the CDC had been camped out at Trentwood since Thursday, observing...watching..What were they waiting for?
A reporter asked Ridge or Thompson at a press conference this evening why hundreds of senators, their aids and other employees who worked in the Senate building were tested the day the anthrax was discovered, and then put on CIPRO. Yet the Postal employees were not tested till SIX days later.
The CDC representative answered that they don't like to put people on antibiotics needlessly....you know.... they worry about antibiotic resistance, side effects....and all that....
The postal employees were being tested and given medicine yesterday and today; after the postal employee diagnosed on Friday became gravely ill on sunday.
Apparently one postal employee who died went to the emergency room Sunday at 3:00 AM with nausea and stomach pains. He was sent home and told to take Pepto Bismol. One man died 9 hours after arriving at the hospital, the other died 15 hours after arriving at the hospital.
Misinformation continues. I heard them say the flu-like symptoms last a few days. Actually they can last for just a few hours to a few days. The initial flu symptoms - can include fever, shortness of breath, cough, headache, vomiting, chills, weakness, abdominal pain and chest pain. This is when it is treatable. In some cases the symptoms disappear, giving the false appearance of recovery (anthrax honeymoon). Unfortunately the next stage is rarely treatable and often fatal- Death can occur 3 days or sooner after the onset of symptom. The second stage can include shock, hemorrhagic meningitis, hemorrhagic lympadenopathy, severe breathing problems. .
So it is not a disease to play around with, waiting for it to develop. Once a case of anthrax is confirmed, all exposed are supposed to receive treatment. It is surprising that the CDC could have been so uninformed or complacent. I hope they were not worried about alarming the public? Those exposed are correct to be concerned.
What good do gloves do in preventing inhalational anthrax? Gloves won't keep the spores out of the nose. special respiratory masks might do that. Cutaneous anthrax usually happens when there is a cut or scratch on the skin. But the same spores cause the different diseases, including gastrointestinal anthrax.
The CEO of NBC was on TV recently, ecstatic that NBC employees were told they were out of the woods; after 3 weeks had lapsed. But the incubation period is up to 60 days.
I don't know if they meant to cripple the postal system. Maybe their attack on the media (except CNN) and the government was more successful than they thought. Some think 911 was the work of a world wide terrorist network, trying to shut the american economy down. Al Queda and Bin Laden are given too much credit, imo. There are other groups and masterminds probably more directly involved, like the Egyptian doctor, Al Zawarhi. Plus there are front organizations operating in the US; fund raising, organizing, recruiting; for violent terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Gama Islamiya, Islamic Jihad, Al-Fuqra, GIA., they operate here under names like legal entities like CAIR, ICP, IAP, Holy Land foundation, WISE, UASR...Until the US really cleans house,,,unless those arrested included them. I think we would have heard from their lawyers already.
see "Jihad in America" a link for the 1 hr PBS documentary, made in 1995 after the World Trade Center #1 terrorist attack ou.org |
