The NBC Today Show sub, Ann Curry certainly wasn’t alone in sounding the alarm about “No guarantees from Postmaster General John Potter about mail safety”, But JEEZ! She totally got a bee up her butt in her interview this morning.
First of all, what sort of idiot believes that ANYONE from the Postmaster General to the President to God himself can control what goes through the mail system. If you want guarantees of your safety, have the local PO hold your mail then have it picked up and sanitized by your own personally funded hazmat crew.
I give Potter credit for not losing it in response to Curry’s inappropriately accusitory bitchy tone, as if HE’S the one sending out the tainted letters.
Look Ann, we know your limited air time doesn’t let you stretch your journalistic muscles, but try to reign in the dragon woman mentality.
Safety guarantees. It is to laugh. Ha.
It reminds me of a scene from Atlas Shrugged. Dagny is hosting a news conference, fielding questions about the new tracks made from Reardon’s new steel. Someone notes how this steel is still untested for actual railroad use. “Can you guarantee our safety?”, the reporter asks. “Of course not,” Dagny replies. The reporter presses on, “Then how can we make certain we don’t get hurt riding your train?” She answers instantly, “Don’t get on it.”
GAAAHHHH!!! NOOOOO!!!
I’m ALMOST done with that hateful waste of a tree. Please, no more-I can’t wait to be finished…
Last night I dreamt I was punching John Galt.
We’re going to irridaite all of the mail!!!
(everyone)
YAY WE"LL LIVE! NO ANTHRAX FOR US.
(Me)
[Raises hand.]
Excuse me, but don’t you use the same sort of radiation to create mutations in bacteria? And don’t we use these mutatnt bacteria to understand how various odd things work. Like trying to make a bacteria strain resistant to bleach?
Umm, isn’t Anthrax a bacteria?
So isn’t there a chance that we would make a strain of Anthrax that could potential LEARN TO DRIVE A CAR?
But seriously, they said this is the same stuff they use to irridiate food so its safe for human consumption. So I’m assuming that I’m the only one who ever had food poisoning.
Most food is not irradiated, because there is always a hue and a cry about mutant tomatoes attacking our city (this was a BIG issue in Hawaii when I was still living there).
So instead, they eat the creepy crawlies that were already on the food.
I doubt you’ve ever eaten food that was irradiated. In the US, it has to be marked, so if you’d eaten it, you’d know.
Theoretically, irradiation could mutate bacterial DNA. However, the levels and types of radiation used are more of the Blast-it-Apart-into-Teeny-Tiny-Smithereens type.
Anyway, if it did mutate, the most likely mutation would be resistance to irradiation, not, say, driving.
I am upset by the anthax news. How am I supposed to follow the advice I get? Wash your hands thoughly after handling mail. Everything in my apartment is mail. The magazines, catalogs, and bills. I get car parts in the mail, clothing, and food. If it didn’t come in the mail, it’s sitting on something that did, or next to something that did. Yikes. Unfollowable advice, and if I do get sick, suddenly it’s MY fault because I didn’t follow their sensible advice.
Ap
Really? I thought everything that came in a can was irradiated… Then again, I was 8 last time I ate something out of a can. (Choice between cooking school or Biology… Should have known they were the same thing.)
Umm I’d like to point out that mutating a resistance to radiation would be more unlikely than the bacteria learning how to drive a stick shift.
(Flashback to Organic Chem I)
[Raises hand]
You mean the only thing keeping each set of basepairs bound together is 2 or 3 hydrogen bonds?!?!?
[Hydrogen bonding is one step away from using the POWER OF LOVE to fly, IMHO]
Mr. Gamma Ray would be like using a shotgun to cut open a cardboard box.
I think the whole anthrax problem can be summed up by one thing:
ARE YOU IMPORTANT?
Be honest, that bowling trophy doesn’t make you important.
For the 250 or so million of us in the USA that aren’t important the chances that some letter sent to you had 10,000 + spores fall onto the outside of it from a contaminated package to infect you. Anyway, if that did happen, the spores would have to CLING TO IT FOR DEAR LIFE as it survived being tossed all over the place as it goes from post office, to post office then into the mail truck and then from mail truck to mail box.
Then again, I’ve had to worry about dying from Anthrax, HIV, SIV, “B” Virus (hepatitus, REALLY nasty), HTLV, Herpes, Ebola, random chimera viruses that everyone is making at work for a few months now. So getting it in the mail making me all that much more nervous.
Apricot, what I’d do is simply becareful and if you start to feel sick go to your doctor and explain about your mail situation.
signature still underconstruction
Indeed?
Three people have died from anthrax. Name them.
At least eleven others are infected - possibly more. Name them.
Does the fact that you can’t mean they were important - or not?
- Rick
Sure thing, but all of the names haven’t been released:
Robert Stevens, a photo editor. Died, had an important job in a major published tabloid.
A coworker, Mr. (something) Blanco was also infected, he processed mail for the building where the letter was sent.
While you may not think that a job such as that is important, I feel it is. How many people in that office building depend on the mail getting sent to them in a timely and orderly fashion so they can do their jobs properly? Also, and in this context mail handlers are directly in line from terrorist to target.
Two assistants to Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw (one for each) both tested positive. Yet again, they handled mail going to their bosses, and yes they also have important jobs in this context.
Senator Deschle’s staff has been reported positive. Yet again, they have important jobs in the context of terrorist attacks.
ect, I could go on.
What I need to clarify since I wasn’t very specific was by what I meant by important.
Anyone who lives in the public eye is a target for a terrorism attack with the goal to freighten a population and reduce their willing to wage war. Included in this are any people who have jobs which deal with the materials, or methods by which the terrorist attacks may be carried out.
What I was getting at was a member of survey team is not important in this context. An owner of a fast food restraunt isn’t important, WHAT PURPOSE WOULD TERRORISTS HAVE TO TARGET HIM SPECIFICALLY?
I apologize for how the incompleted statement came out.
Btw: Rick:
[Quote]
Does the fact that you can’t mean they were important - or not?
[Quote]
I’d say that postal employees are very important, I’d like you to image out nation without a mail service. Like Emergancy Services employees our country would not exist without them, like any people employed in the support/running of the government.
What I was trying to express, however poorly, was that an 18 year old working part time doing yard work should freak out at every strange looking piece of mail. Think about what you do and how you work in the world before you assume that the white stuff from the envelope from the Tide company is Anthrax.
anyhoo, my bad
EDITING PROBLEM!
What I was trying to express, however poorly, was that an 18 year old working part time doing yard work should[[[[N’T]]]] freak out at every strange looking piece of mail. Think about what
you do and how you work in the world before you assume that the white stuff from the envelope from the Tide company is Anthrax.
Just destroyed my whole arguement by forgetting 2 letters 
CRorex-
I take objection to your statement that developing driving skills is more likely than developing a resistance to radiation.
While just about anything would require fewer changes to the anthrax DNA than resisting irradiation, the ONLY thing being selected for in this case is “resistance to radiation.”
When the only organisms to survive must have some resistance to irradiation, you’re going to find resistance to irradiation, or nothing.
What happens after that is subject to the environment the cells find themselves reproducing in.
Ap
However the irradiation suggested is not creating a living enviroment for the bacteria.
They are irridiating spores BRIEFLY.
This will cause random genomic damage. Since this damage is not ongoing there is not negative selection. There will be only one population of spores which sufferend little enough damage to emerge as bacteria.
Of that population there will be random mutations, some will by antibiotic resistances. Some will be mutations making them harmless, other could be colour changing mutations.
The chance of a patch of spores will develop an alternate or improved genomic structure to prevent genomic damage from radiation is probably about the same as them learning how to drive a stick shift.
If it was a culture of bacteria under a constant, or at least periodic pulse of high energy particles where the bacteria in questions could undergo rounds of damage, repair (mutation), replication, damage, ad nausium… then we could have a strain of radiation resistant bacteria. Most likely there would be a required series of mutations that would result in the a resistance to radiation (repair homolouges DNA packaging Wall/membrane structure ect). The chances that all happen at the same time, while retaining enough of the origional genome to ensure viability of the spore is next to nothing. What could happen would be a gradual change selecting for mutants that survived the best after each round of radiation. However these are not the experimental conditions.
What the post master is suggesting is the equivelent of taking a bacterial culture (suspension) spinning it down then resuspending it in media with an antibiotic that the culture has never been exposed to. (Which incidently will act as a mutagen to some bacteria [severly challenged bacteria can undergo hypermutation in an attempt to survive]) Then maybe 30 seconds later spinning down the bacteria again and removing the antibiotic. This is not a good example as the comparitive power of the radiation wouldn’t compare to most commonly used antiobiotics for this experiment.
We are dealing with a single pulse of radiation that is to cause enough genomic damage to prevent the spores from being viable. In this case, (I don’t know enough about bacterial spore propagation) there is no saying what mutations may become apparent.
Personally, I want my own bacteria driver. Easy to feed, loyal, would scare the crap out of car-jackers and most importantly of all would make for a really cool PhD topic.
Anyhoo, my point is this is a manufactured bioweapon. Its debatable if it is a top of the line manufactured one with all of the antibiotic resistances. Until controlled experiments have been performed on a sample we don’t know exactly what the reaction the Anthrax will have to radiation.
Dunno about you, but I tend not to believe the government when it says it has a oneshot cureall.
Best way to deal with it IMHO is to require anthrax vaccines for all citizens. That removes the possibility of anthrax as a weapon against us, and takes care of the mail problems. Unfortunatly it would have had to start probably 20 years ago.