Wonder where/when one can buy this stuff? Here is a candid interview with Tommy Thompson and Dr. Jeffrey Koplan. Excerpts:
About the Daschle letter confusion:
SECRETARY THOMPSON: I think there's something you're getting at and let me just try to clarify it. What took place is that the Daschle letter was sent up to Fort Dietrich for an analysis and I think that the information was going on prior to us receiving the report from Fort Dietrich and was on last Tuesday was that there was the same type as the anthrax in Florida and in New York. And I called because I had got win of something on Monday afternoon from Fort Dietrich that bothered me, that it was not the same, it was much more potent, it was much finer and could be easily aerosolized. And so I called Fort Dietrich and asked them for an up-to-date report. And they came down to see me and Dr. Tony Fauchi and some other people in my office on Tuesday morning. And I was quite concerned about it when I saw it because that was the previous weekend two individuals from the Postal Department had passed away.
And I was concerned because I think we would have treated more aggressively those individuals if we would have had that information. And some people I thought that the FBI had had that information and had not shared that with us the prior week. And we found out later that that was not the case, in fact, they got the report pretty much at the same time that I did on Tuesday of last week. And therefore there was no evidence, no reports that were withheld, in fact, every time we have any question at all I just call Bob Mueller and it's made -- the information is made -- is given to us immediately. In fact, Jeff had a concern at one time he called me and I called Bob Mueller and it was taken care of within the hour, if I remember correctly, Doctor.
About the mortality rate:
DR. KOPLAN: The previous experience with inhalation anthrax was a 90 percent mortality rate as you see. We are currently, and we don't have all the numbers yet but we're seeing a much lower mortality rate so far from this, more like 30 percent at the moment or it may be 40 percent but even if it's 50 percent it's a huge difference from a near certain lethal sentence from before. And there are two possible explanations. One our infectious disease docs with the folks that have been taking care of these patients have worked out a different approach to treatment which involves a triple therapy of antibiotics each used for the different effects of each of those antibiotics. And that was published a week ago in the MMWR and as it changed in the way of management based on observation of cases we've seen already. So three weeks into an outbreak we've been able to modify what we do clinically in a very real way with I think a different outcome. Now, before we all pat ourselves on the back too much there's another explanation which is that possibly that we are seeing cases that would not have been detected and called anthrax before the milder ones possibly so that we're seeing a larger amount of the total and thus diluting out the mortality that one would have seen before. And so either of those are reasonable explanations, we'd like to think we're doing a better job but by the same token if we're getting better case ascertainment, that's still good for public health as well.
About the source:
DR. KOPLAN: It could have come from any one of a number of places. No, there's no signature on it that says it's American or any more other nationality.
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