Talk Story
MAYOR Jeremy Harris caught grief about the city's over-reacting to an anthrax scare in downtown Honolulu on Tuesday. The same evening, Ted Koppel took Postmaster General Jack Potter to task on national TV for not taking the anthrax threat seriously enough. Countering anthrax scares:
Damned if you do,
damned if you don’tTwo U.S. Postal Service employees are now dead of inhalation anthrax. For those quick to point fingers here on Tuesday that fact might not have sunk in, yet. As the Postal Service prepares to spend $175 million on detection, screening and clean up, by now it should have.
Again, an enemy has attacked using a delivery system we rely on and take for granted. First, it was the airlines; now, it's the post office.
Although millions were directly affected by the loss of life at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, those disasters were somewhat remote to most of us in Hawaii. However, we all get mail. As the postmaster general said, "This is personal."
Responsible reporting about the bio-terrorism attacks has downplayed the seriousness of anthrax. The earliest cases were mostly the cutaneous form, which experts described as non-lethal and easily treated. While there was early talk about "weapons-grade anthrax," fortunately this term was used mistakenly.
In March 1998, an article by Richard Preston appeared in The New Yorker called "The Bioweaponeers." It described hi-tech biological warfare weapons developed by the USSR and painted a grim picture.
Rather than white granules that clump together and simply rub off on surfaces or targets, weaponized anthrax is a "powder, finer than bath talc, with smooth, creamy particles that tend to fly apart and vanish in the air, becoming invisible and drifting for miles," Preston wrote. Released in a breeze, weapons-grade anthrax becomes a deadly aerosol cloud floating downwind. In other words, as bad as it is, it could be worse.
We're not used to being terrorized. It takes getting used to. The Nazis dropped bombs almost daily on England from July 10 until Oct. 31, 1940 during the Battle of Britain. Those who waited out the attacks in London subway stations and other shelters got plenty of experience.
Later, from June 1944 through the war's last bitter winter, came the V1 "buzz bombs," which did considerable damage but were also weapons of terror. The "V" stood for Vergeltungswaffe, which meant "vengeance weapon."
People would hear the loud, rasping sound of a V1's low-altitude approach and then the engine would stop. Silence meant the bomb would soon explode, no one knew where. Defiantly, Londoners went about their daily business despite the V1s.
Britain's resistance is historic. Today, we're dealing with what seem to be merely unnecessary inconveniences such as waiting, occasional bullying, being denied what we've taken for granted.
Americans like getting what we want and having it right away. In the film "Postcards from the Edge" Meryl Streep's character says, "The only problem with immediate gratification is it takes too long."
Andrei Codrescu, the transplanted Russian writer, poet and newspaper columnist, describes a four-hour wait to get through airport security. He took the opportunity to bond with others in line, but he chafed at having to endure the experience:
"I have been trained to wait in lines during my commie childhood. But where did these folks, who had rarely had to wait for anything very long, get their forbearance? I am writing in praise of you, my line-mates, even as I try not to scream about the airline industry, which is making the general nightmare worse."
It's a paradox. To do business as usual and not succumb to terror, we must assume all this security -- the anthrax testing, metal detecting, strip searching, nail-clipper confiscating -- is mostly unnecessary.
On the other hand, we need to put ourselves in the position of, for example, the postmaster general. After all his reassurances that the situation was under control, that there was nothing to worry about, he now must answer to the families of two dead postal workers.
So, let's be patient.
After all, I just heard the engine stop. Did you?
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.
