The "Canadian Connection" I referred to was the the way people and the government have responded to the health matter. After Walkerton people began to be less trusting of the government to keep them physically healthy. To see the way the level of concern is escalating on all fronts, read the following from today's Washington Post:
Indeed, the closer scientists look at the spores that have traveled through the mail, the more impressed and concerned they have become. Alan Zelicoff, senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, said investigators need to begin to focus less on the microbiology than the physics, which is impressive.
"We didn't think that anybody could come up with the appropriate coatings for anthrax spores to make them float through the air with the greatest of ease," Zelicoff said, adding that exposing 28 people with a single opened envelope "is no mean trick."
And C.J. Peters, director of the Center for Biodefense at the University of Texas at Galveston, said that someone who has learned to produce two grams of anthrax spores milled to one to five microns -- as was true of the spores mailed to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) -- could just as easily produce two kilograms of the stuff.
He sees the potential for a grander terror.
"With two grams of finely milled anthrax," Peters said, "if you can disseminate it in a closed system like a subway or building, you could infect hundreds of thousands of people."
The anthrax crisis has forced scientists and health officials to reconsider other verities as well, including the number of spores it takes to cause inhalation anthrax. Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), the Senate's only physician, who has steeped himself in bioterrorism, said no case has so alarmed him as the death of Nguyen. And he suggested that scientists discard the existing assumption that it takes 8,000 to 10,000 spores to infect someone.
"I'd throw it out the window," Frist said.
Scientists and public health officials have said in recent days that they believe that age, health and even how deeply a person breathes could affect whether they become infected. A 1993 study by the Office of Technology Assessment concluded that "1,000 spores or less can produce fatal pulmonary anthrax in some" people.
More important than the number of spores may be the bacteria's ability to travel through the air and into the lungs.
"If you're far away or the wind has dispersed it significantly, it gives you a considerable advantage," said Stephen S. Morse, director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness at Columbia University.
For now, officials find themselves less certain about a disease that, although treatable, has the potential to cause many more deaths.
"In hindsight, this has been an escalating event," said Mohammad Akhter, executive director of the American Public Health Association. "We will continue to see new cases of anthrax disease. We do not have a complete handle on who was exposed."
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The great ships are safe in the harbour, but that's not what they were built for.
