I received an essay over the weekend from a mailing list I subscribe to. Not knowing the person who wrote it or the person who sent it, I don’t know if it’s accurate or not (it’s too long to post here). I’d like to know what the experts here think about it.
What the paper is basically saying is that the risks of biological and/or chemical attacks have been greatly overstated by the media. Obviously it goes into a lot more detail than that, and gives some advice as to what to do if you are attacked.
The article is essentially correct. It also tangentially mentions one point which has been widely overlooked: I’d be far more concerned if our enemy was composed of millions of well-educated people bent on doing us harm. While reading the Koran may provide a deep philosophical and religious background, by all accounts the tome does not contain anything about moern physics, chemistry, hygeine or medecine. The Taliban schools which have been the focus of mainstream media teach relatively little besides the Koran, and I think the Taliban has considerable difficulty in deriving a real picture of our country. We are a huge land, populous and wealthy, with substantial redundancy in almost every aspect of our infrastructure. Isolated damage will not cause lasting harm, and our medical system will be able to halt all but the most severe biowarfare. Should an engineered bug be released and spread beyod the point of release, we will shut down travel and transport for a couple of weeks to let the bug burn itself out. So your best precaution against this worst-case scenario is having a couple of weeks’ worth of food and necessaries so that you can hunker down for a short time.
From other things I’ve read, the essay is right on track. When the first anthrax cases were reported, I said that I didn’t think it would be due to Islamic terrorists, but would be some home-brewed nut group, because the terrorists were smart enough to know how ineffective these weapons were.
But now that I see how our news media are reacting to it, I’ve changed my mind. The terrorists are trying to create fear, not necessarily cause the maximum death and destruction. These scattered anthrax cases have not been effective in killing people on a large scale, but have been very effective in making people go nuts.
Because of this, I think the news media are aiding the terrorists in their mission. They need to step back from their normal patterns of reporting what people want to see, and apply some judgment as to what is important. The coverage of the anthrax has been way out of line with its importance.