With respect to the mail being contaminated with anthrax spores, notice that so far, at least, the disease has not spread to people who were not working in a place where there was a concentration of spores, e.g., a mail room or a post office. Ordinary people are not getting anthrax from a letter than came in contact with a contaminated letter.
This despite the fact that every contaminated letter came in contact with countless pieces of mail and countless pieces of equipment, which in turn came in contact with countless other pieces of mail and equipment, on and on.
I think that supports my theory that the spores are being diluted to the point that they don't represent much danger.
Also, we don't know anything about the immune system of the people who have become ill with the disease, but remember that there are a lot of people with compromised immune systems out there, people with AIDs, the elderly, etc.
As I said before, if I worked for the postal service I'd be wearing latex gloves and a soft cloth mask with an N100 filter. You can get the gloves at Costco and the mask at Home Depot or Sherwin Williams.
If they close down mail faciities then the mail will be re-routed through another facility. The volume of mail is probably low right now due to recession - nothing like it ordinarily is at Christmas time, for example.
You seem to assume that there are pounds of this stuff out there - you may be right. We'll see, unfortunately. |
