and they tested me. I was given enough Cipro for a month. I took it for a week and then I got an e-mail that my test had come back negative and I could stop taking the medication. I had people calling me up and saying, ‘I heard you had to go on Cipro!’ ‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘I’m all right.’ It was just a horrible time in New York coming so soon after 9-11.”
NBC Nightly News was moved across the street to the Today set. “This is outrageous and maddening beyond my ability to express in socially acceptable terms,” an exhausted Brokaw told his viewers. Later, he choked up over his as- sistant suffering for an attack probably intended for him.
Environmental sampling revealed anthrax contamination of the NBC third-floor Rockefeller Center work site, specif- ically implicating mail and package delivery. The Virginian- Pilot later reported that “protective gear, office equipment, papers, carpets” were to be incinerated at Norfolk.
After the announcement of O’Connor’s anthrax, doctors at the NYU Medical Center attending the ABC producer’s infant son considered a possible diagnosis of cutaneous an- thrax. A skin biopsy from the hospitalized infant was hurried to the CDC for testing. The child was bleeding internally. On October 15, the sample would test positive by staining for the cell-wall antigen of anthrax. A serum specimen col- lected ten days earlier would test positive for B. anthracis. No suspicious letter was identified at his mother’s work- place; like the AMI letter, it had vanished into limbo. Mother and child, treated with Cipro, clinically improved.
B. anthracis grew from swabs (two nasal and one facial skin swab) from three other workers, suggesting exposure to anthrax. One of the exposures was in a law enforcement officer who brought the letter containing anthrax from NBC to the receiving laboratory. The other two exposures were in the technicians who had processed the letter in the lab- oratory. Environmental sampling in both workplaces was ongoing. Investigations of other exposed persons continued. Some of the adults were placed on ciprofloxacin or doxy- cycline, and the treatment was to continue until sixty days after final opportunity for exposure.
The first reports of anthrax letters to the media appeared in the press. As word of O’Connor’s infection spread, New Yorkers rushed to have themselves tested. The proper pro- cedure was a very sensitive first test, then more specific follow-up tests—such as PCR. If PCR is positive, then aggressive environmental samples, nasal swabs, sputum, and blood, as well as cerebrospinal fluid in suspected meningitis cases, should be obtained. Dr. Meryl Nass, a biological war- fare epidemiologist, thought patients should be treated prior to any signs of illness. “I would propose consideration of bronchoalveolar lavage in highly exposed patients,” she said. This is a technique in which a doctor instills salt water
through a bronchoscope. When the saline is suctioned back it carries any cells and bacteria with it.
President Bush asked all Americans to live their lives as normally as possible. “Our government is doing everything we can to make our country as safe as possible,” the Pres- ident said. Vice President Cheney said there may be links between the domestic anthrax incidents and September 11 and Osama bin Laden. “I think the only responsible thing for us to do,” Cheney told PBS’s Jim Lehrer, “is proceed on the basis it could be linked.” But Cheney knew at this point he could not prove it. An earlier Pentagon briefing had revealed that bin Laden’s global network had the ability to produce biological weapons of mass destruction.
Officials also assured the nation that anthrax spores could not leak out of a sealed envelope, and certainly not in quan- tities enough to cause the most dangerous form of the dis- ease, inhalational anthrax. Should a spore or two escape, they said, they would at worst cause a case or two of
NBC Nightly News was moved across the street to the Today set. “This is outrageous and maddening beyond my ability to express in socially acceptable terms,” an exhausted Brokaw told his viewers. Later, he choked up over his as- sistant suffering for an attack probably intended for him.
Environmental sampling revealed anthrax contamination of the NBC third-floor Rockefeller Center work site, specif- ically implicating mail and package delivery. The Virginian- Pilot later reported that “protective gear, office equipment, papers, carpets” were to be incinerated at Norfolk.
After the announcement of O’Connor’s anthrax, doctors at the NYU Medical Center attending the ABC producer’s infant son considered a possible diagnosis of cutaneous an- thrax. A skin biopsy from the hospitalized infant was hurried to the CDC for testing. The child was bleeding internally. On October 15, the sample would test positive by staining for the cell-wall antigen of anthrax. A serum specimen col- lected ten days earlier would test positive for B. anthracis. No suspicious letter was identified at his mother’s work- place; like the AMI letter, it had vanished into limbo. Mother and child, treated with Cipro, clinically improved.
B. anthracis grew from swabs (two nasal and one facial skin swab) from three other workers, suggesting exposure to anthrax. One of the exposures was in a law enforcement officer who brought the letter containing anthrax from NBC to the receiving laboratory. The other two exposures were in the technicians who had processed the letter in the lab- oratory. Environmental sampling in both workplaces was ongoing. Investigations of other exposed persons continued. Some of the adults were placed on ciprofloxacin or doxy- cycline, and the treatment was to continue until sixty days after final opportunity for exposure.
The first reports of anthrax letters to the media appeared in the press. As word of O’Connor’s infection spread, New Yorkers rushed to have themselves tested. The proper pro- cedure was a very sensitive first test, then more specific follow-up tests—such as PCR. If PCR is positive, then aggressive environmental samples, nasal swabs, sputum, and blood, as well as cerebrospinal fluid in suspected meningitis cases, should be obtained. Dr. Meryl Nass, a biological war- fare epidemiologist, thought patients should be treated prior to any signs of illness. “I would propose consideration of bronchoalveolar lavage in highly exposed patients,” she said. This is a technique in which a doctor instills salt water
through a bronchoscope. When the saline is suctioned back it carries any cells and bacteria with it.
President Bush asked all Americans to live their lives as normally as possible. “Our government is doing everything we can to make our country as safe as possible,” the Pres- ident said. Vice President Cheney said there may be links between the domestic anthrax incidents and September 11 and Osama bin Laden. “I think the only responsible thing for us to do,” Cheney told PBS’s Jim Lehrer, “is proceed on the basis it could be linked.” But Cheney knew at this point he could not prove it. An earlier Pentagon briefing had revealed that bin Laden’s global network had the ability to produce biological weapons of mass destruction.
Officials also assured the nation that anthrax spores could not leak out of a sealed envelope, and certainly not in quan- tities enough to cause the most dangerous form of the dis- ease, inhalational anthrax. Should a spore or two escape, they said, they would at worst cause a case or two of
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