[Ferretlover]

POSTED: 05:03 PM ET, 10/ 1/2008 by Derek Kravitz

The federal government said today that in the event of an anthrax attack it would use postal carriers to deliver emergency antibiotics to households across the country.
The project, announced today by Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, will begin with a $500,000 pilot training program in Minneapolis-St. Paul. If all goes well, the program would be expanded to other cities starting next year.
"This quick-strike capability is intended to buy time for local and State public health authorities to set up points of dispensing for further provision of antibiotics across the community," the Health and Human Services Department said in a statement.
Test runs in Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston over the past two years worked well, health officials said. Letter carriers, escorted by police officers, delivered empty pill bottles along with a flier explaining what was happening. In Philadelphia, 50 carriers reached roughly 53,000 households in eight hours, The Associated Press reports. ...

Washington Post

Does anyone else think this is ...well...rather odd?

[Cog]

When you consider that most of the US households have daily delivery of mail, this seems a real efficient way of going about it. Lot easier then people flooding into a central place in a city to get their antibiotics.

[Dreamtwister]

Not to mention, it makes it WAY easier to identify which trucks to hijack.

[Cashmere]

Anthrax claims the benefit of a vicious sounding name.

In reality, it's a crappy biological weapon that is not spread easily and is not particularly virulent.

[Ferretlover]

Not to mention, it makes it WAY easier to identify which trucks to hijack.

Yes, there is that. Will there really be enough LE to accompany the carriers? Knowing how creative humans can be, I suspect it would be possible for the carriers to be held up and the drugs sold on the street.
Unless, of course, the carriers are going to be trained and allowed to carry weapons.

[vilemerchant]

Isn't it usually the postal service that is used to actually carry out anthrax attacks

[RedStateGreen]

Why anthrax?

[Dreamtwister]

Why anthrax?

Because as Cashmere pointed out, it sounds really scary, but isn't particularly dangerous. Remember, the goal here is to keep everyone scared, but still capable of working.

[Cashmere]

I mean, it's just preposterous to even talk about anthrax being used as a weapon against the U.S..

The problem is, most people don't know what the fork a bacterium is.

Most people will still demand antibiotics for their virally infected kid.

So it's an easy scare tactic.

For G-d's sake, Anthrax isn't even spread directly between people.

Bottom line is, the only good biological weapon would be an engineered virus, and maybe a bacterium, that spread rapidly, killed slowly, and was extremely infectious.

Further, you'd need to have the vaccine/AB treatment regimen ready to go, because your own people would contact the contagion at some point.

Personally I think you'd need to get your head checked if you found yourself making the argument that you thought it was a good move to release an engineered virus upon your enemies - no matter how well you think you have it figured out, DNA is a bitch.

One mutation, and BAM, your entire population becomes susceptible to contagion because your treatment is no longer valid.

Of course, if you didn't mind a little culling . . .

[EnergyUnlimited]

Anthrax claims the benefit of a vicious sounding name.

In reality, it's a crappy biological weapon that is not spread easily and is not particularly virulent.

It is chosen because of lack of virulence.
Essentially it is an equivalent of extremely strong poison.
That is because infection does not spread beyond those affected by spores.

However I would not call it crappy.

Few hundreds of kg of spores dispersed over large city from crop sprayer installed on small aircraft would result in about a million of casualties.
Could be better than a nuke.

[Micki]

Nothing to see here. Just normal mis-quotes by the press.

The federal government said today that in the event of an anthrax attack it would use postal carriers to deliver emergency antibiotics to households across the country.

Should have been:

The federal government said today that in the event of an anthrax attack it would use postal carriers to deliver it across the country.

That's what they did last time, so nothing new.

[IgnoranceIsBliss]

Assuming this is even a valid threat, I guess this is the best plan using resources that are already in place, but it has big flaws.

(1) Will they just leave the pills in the mailbox if no one is home?

Hello, we already have thieves stealing outgoing checks out of our boxes, washing off the ink, and re-writing them.

(2) Do we really trust the mail carriers? My local service is pretty bad. They lose our Netflix all the time, and someone stole an $85 ride on tractor that I ordered for my son. It was tracked as far as the local USPS depot/ warehouse, but never delivered. They have also put mail in my car (???) and put our entire delivery in another person's box several houses away.

Also, why did it take 7 years, to put this in place if the threat was there after 9/11? If I get a delivery of some pills in the next few weeks, I guess I better vote for McCain to keep me safe in these dangerous times!

How about putting money where it really matters, such as training our emergency room doctors. I have a friend who's an emergency room MD in a hospital right across the river from NYC. He said they never received any training at all concerning terror attacks. What the heck are we spending those Dept of Homeland Security funds on?

[erb]

great name and Anthrax is also a killer band

[Loki]

Well, some of them are already delivering other kinds of drugs....

I'm not sure what the point of this anthrax plan is. The anthrax threat ain't exactly keeping me up at night.

[Dreamtwister]

What the heck are we spending those Dept of Homeland Security funds on?

[Cashmere]

Anthrax claims the benefit of a vicious sounding name.In reality, it's a crappy biological weapon that is not spread easily and is not particularly virulent.

It is chosen because of lack of virulence. Essentially it is an equivalent of extremely strong poison. That is because infection does not spread beyond those affected by spores. However I would not call it crappy. Few hundreds of kg of spores dispersed over large city from crop sprayer installed on small aircraft would result in about a million of casualties. Could be better than a nuke.

No way.

[lateStarter]

I suspect that the day some sort of plague/virus arrived in City X, no matter how many times the Postal Carriers had practiced delivery of the 'remedy', many of them would call in sick that day. And probably the next day too...

Seems like a good logical plan, ... at first glance...

[jbrovont]

If anything shows up in my mail box claiming to be a "cure" for anthrax, I'm going to stamp "Return to sender" on it and send it right back.

Anthrax isn't contagious. The only Anthrax threat we've ever had in this country came from the US gov't. Seems pretty straight forward to me.