You’re going to have to trust me on this, but, really, it is possible to talk about something other than anthrax.
Every morning we come in to your latest interminable report on what we all just read in our own newspapers and heard on our own car radios. Honestly, the woman across from you doesn’t want to listen to your recap of the news and your latest neurotic theories about all this. She doesn’t. She’s just being nice. See that closed door? She’s never closed her door in all the time I’ve worked here. Get a clue. And you know, everyone within a three office radius can tell when you’ve opened abcnews.com again from the gasps and groans of misery.
You are in about as much danger of being struck by anthrax as you are of being struck by lightning. If you want something to worry about, worry about the killer pneumonia all the idiots who are chowing down on Cipro will be breeding. If anything’s going to get us, it will be that.
So just shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up and continue fucking* shutting up indefinitely, please.
*OPF
I’m very impressed you called security when you saw white powder on the buttons in our elevator. I know we’re an unlikely target, but this is New York, and it’s better to be safe.
But did you have to go into hysterics? I mean, there was sheet rock wrapping paper all over the elevator, and the powder was on the button to the floor where they’re doing construction. I applaud your dilgence in making sure that what looked, on the face of it, to be a dusty construction worker, was not in fact an attack in disguise. Weeping in the middle of the hallway, however, may have been an excessive reaction. And attacking me because I took the phone call from security rather than interrupt your vapors was innappropriate.
Fer chrissake, woman, YOU ARE A BIOLOGIST. You work with infectious materials on a regular basis. The presence of anthrax somewhere in the city adds very little to your risk level. However, your self-involved obsession with public hysterics disturbs our workplace and could, conceivably, distract someone enough that they are injured by the wide range of chemical hazards we keep around here. Get a grip. Please.
Do you think the terrorists could poison our private well, out here 5 miles from the nearest community of 1200 people in the middle of Wisconsin? :rolleyes:
Sounds like this knuckleho is in league with the people who got every media truck in existence sent out to the library my mother works at.
Fact #1: a shipment of used books from Canada arrived looking a little powdery. This is book dust, of course, entirely harmless, but since it’s a city building they made a note and quietly sent a bit out to be tested.
Fact #2: some pudmonkey pressed the Alarm button in the elevator, resulting in a hook-and-ladder and a squad of helpful firemen roaring up to the library.
And every idiot in the area with a police scanner put one and one together and got 93. Thanks, people. We care. Really.
Cipro is an antibiotic. People who take it when they don’t need it or take half a perscription and then shelve it thinking they feel better unwittingly create resistant strains of these bugs. They’re essentially vaccinating the bacteria against the antibiotics. Which makes it that much harder to treat next time around because it’s resistant to the stuff we’re used to throwing at it. Pneumonia, I guess, could be one of those diseases that becomes harder to treat if the willy-nilly pill-popping keeps up.
Yep, it’s also the antibiotic used to treat Anthrax. So people are (well, according to 20/20 last night) hording it and taking it as a precaution against getting Anthrax.
I don’t know why people are getting so upset about this Anthrax nonsense. After all… OH MY GOD! There’s Anthrax in my fridge! White powedery stuff all over! I’m a dead man! Why did this have to happen to me? Why? Why? Why?
Oh, wait. The baking powder box just got tipped over. Heh.
Anyway, the strain of Anthrax that have been found so far are treatable by any antibiotic, not just Cipro. So this means that… Holy Fuck! I just stepped in some Anthrax on my kitchen floor! There’s white granules all over the place! Any moment blackened sores will appear on my feet and I’ll keel over dead! If… if any of you can read this out there… this is my last post. Tell my family my thoughts were with them! I’m fading out now… I… I… Oh wait. The cat knocked over the sugar bag and it spilt onto the floor.
Um, so anyway the fact that the anthrax strains are treatable means that the strains are almost certainly not of military manufacture. Which leads me to conclude that… I’m gonna die! There’s white stuff all over my kitchen table! Gah! I hope it’s a swift death! What a fucking way to go! Damn those terrorist! Damn them to hell! Avenge my death! I can’t believe this crap got all over my scrambled eggs! I…
One of my neighbors is behaving exactly the same way - convinced that anthrx spores are somehow going to commandeer a taxi, get from DC to Falls Church, and infect her.
But on the other hand… she kinda had a tiny kernal of truth hidden amongst her raving. She pointed out that when the first anthrx case was discovered in Florida, people kept assuring her that this was unrelated to the terrorist attacks, and gave her facts and figures to show why she shouldn’t be worried about any others.
Then, when the NBC anthrax poisoning was discovered, people again opined that there was no reason to believe this was related to 9/11, and again told her not to worry about future attacks.
In short, I gather she’s saying that she doesn’t trust public officials to tell us the truth – that if there were a widespread anthrax problem, she doesn’t believe they’d 'fess up, based on their failure to acknowledge or predict the earlier poisonings.
After sitting in traffic a couple of weekends ago in Falls Church trying to go to the World Market store on Leesburg Pike, I can at least assure her that she’ll have plenty of time to get away if this does prove to be the case.
