posted on October 5, 2001 04:08:24 PM
It is contagious. What we mean to say is that it's not spread person to person, you have to come in contact with it from some other source.
posted on October 5, 2001 04:46:02 PM
A quick clarification, I hope. There's a difference between "infectious" and "contageous." Anthrax is infectious but if contageous, only barely so. "Infectious" more or less means it's caused by bugs or viruses from outside your body and they may or may not be released in a form you can "catch" by another human with the disease or condition.
The inhalable anthrax spores are extremely dangerous BUT aren't really produced by a human sick from them. Smallpox, however (a virus whereas anthrax is a bacteria) is highly contageous from person to person. I think everything that's contageous is necessarily infectious, but not the other way around.
Like a lot of one-word summaries, you then have to start elaborating on the situation if you really want an understanding of the details.
posted on October 5, 2001 05:49:55 PMHis home is within a mile of the Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana. That's the same airfield where Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers who slammed jetliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, rented a plane on four separate occasions in August, according to Marian Smith, owner of Palm Beach Flight Training.
The neighborhood is also less than 10 miles from the Delray Beach Racquet Club apartment at 755 Dotterel Rd. where several of the hijackers lived.
Um, there hasn't been a reported case of Antrax since 1976, at this point there is no obvious (ie. farmer, wool sheerer, etc) explanation of where this poor man contracted the disease, & it just so happens he lives a mile from the airport that Atta spent time at & 10 miles from where several hijackers lived.....I am supposed to believe there is no terrorist connection?....Well, even tho' I am a card carrying overreacter, I'm havin' a hard time accepting this information as coincidence.
posted on October 5, 2001 05:53:51 PM
Thanks for those links, Irene. The guy who was infected lived pretty close to the hijackers according to the Miami Herald.
I find it very plausible that an incident like this might well have been part of phase II of the terrorists' plans, and only an infection or two would have been effective in keeping the threat alive.
Newsweek's analysis of Bioterrorism is one of the best that I've encountered and was written before this anthrax case surfaced. Especially interesting is the information further along into the article about the very lax security at the USSR's germ warfare and biological experimentation facilities after the break up of the Soviet Union and
the fact that the whereabouts of some of the unemployed researchers can't be determined.
posted on October 5, 2001 06:05:40 PM
Isn't the title of this thread a little like yelling "Fire!" in a movie theatre?
To create a thread with a title that positively states "2nd Anthrax case found in Florida" as though it were fact when in reality it hardly even qualifies as a rumor strikes me as terribly irresponsible. My heart skipped a beat when I read this title earlier today. I hadn't watched any news yet, so naturally I clicked on the thread immediately to see what was going on.
But what did I find? An opening post that says "I heard this on TV" without a whiff of substantiation. And when the poster was confronted with on the baselessness of it all, the response was, "It's a government cover-up."
Right. 'Round these parts, that's called trolling.
Seems to me there's been this unspoken game of oneupsmanship going on for awhile now to see who can post bad news first (in fact, when somebody posted a thread called "More bad news" the other day, I felt like suggesting we rename the forum "More bad news" because that's what RT is about lately). I guess that in the race to shock, terrify or depress us, you guys have finally lost sight of the most important thing of all -- credibility.
Trolling has its time and place. It can even be fun in the right hands. But personally I don't think troll threads about occurrences of anthrax are very amusing right now.
posted on October 5, 2001 06:16:05 PM
I have no idea what the initial intention of the thread may have been, but that there wasn't a second case was quickly dispelled and I think that the subsequent discussion has been informative and intelligent. The more that one understands about germ warfare and its potential threat is, I think, healthy, and it is certainly a major topic now before the nation.
posted on October 5, 2001 06:23:24 PM
I know, spaz, and I wasn't really disagreeing with you. Just wanted to point out how often directions can change.
As for my "More Bad News" thread, it was more bad news and it was credible. Don't want to read bad news, don't open it. But do me the courtesy of not running around to other threads to knock mine. I would appreciate your affording me at least a minimum degree of courtesy. Don't like my words, say so to me not behind my back. Thank you.
Jess
[ edited by deliteful on Oct 5, 2001 07:11 PM ]
posted on October 5, 2001 07:22:06 PM
Chill, Jess. I didn't post a single negative word about you, your thread or its contents. I merely suggested borrowing the title "More bad news" as a new name for the forum.
Do me the courtesy of actually reading my words before you hammer me for them
posted on October 5, 2001 07:32:06 PM
I don't know what you're getting at, Jess. But ask anyone who knows me after years of posting here that if I was of a mind to be critical of you -- and I'm not -- I wouldn't couch it in word games.
posted on October 5, 2001 08:15:01 PM
"contagious" literally means "communicable by contact." Anthrax is contagious because you can get it if you come in contact with something that has the bacterium on it, infected hides, soil, etc. By contrast, cancer is not contagious; you can come in contact with cancer, and you won't contract the disease from the contact.
We've taken "contagious" to mean only person to person contact, and you'll hear even health officials use the word that way, but it's incorrect.
posted on October 5, 2001 10:44:19 PM
donny - Would not an infected person's "hide" carry the bacteria if an animal's would? If a human victim's body were to be deposited on the ground or in a small body of water after death, would that then not contaminate the area? Also, I believe I heard that this inhaled form was the result of spores produced by the bacteria.
I guess I am just not seeing the barrier that would prevent one human victim from passing the bacteria on to another. Perhaps it is just that it is a remote possibility due to the life/reproduction cycle of the bacteria in the host and the stage where it would be most likely to be transmitted?
posted on October 5, 2001 11:41:39 PM
This did evidentely originate from a news broadcast because I saw it on other boards where they are no common posters with AW to my knowledge.
Joy, I read about it some and I don't think so. It isn't the bacteria that acually harms you either. It is the toxic waste that the bacteria produces. I suppose if you had it on your clothes, etc. from the intitial contamination it might be possible. The speed at which it progresses is directly related to the amount of contamination and the spores have to be the perfect size to be effective.
(Effective sounds like a bad word there but you know what I mean.) It also has to be DRY I think.
It occured to me that it would be HIGHLY dangerous to be there investigators going in the apartments and hotel rooms of any terrorist.
posted on October 5, 2001 11:47:30 PM
As I understand it, yes, an infected person's hide could carry the bacteria, like an animal's hide could.
If the infected animal's caracss is opened, then the anthrax organism can form spores. It's that sporulated anthrax that causes the disease when something comes in contact with them.
The spores are resistant to different conditions, and can live a long time in soil. So, yes, merely burying an infected human or animal corpse wouldn't do, it would have to be cremated.
You will note in the discussion above between Spazmodeus and myself, I am talking about my thread "More Bad News". I went on to say that I had asked for "my thread" to be closed. Obviously you read this incorrectly to assume that I had asked for "this thread", which is not mine, to be closed.
Does this clear up your confusion?
So no, I do not make a habit of asking for threads to be closed. Happy now? Jess
