DAY SEVENTY-ONE:Nov. 20:
Temperatures took a nosedive in New York today, and are expected to tip to freezing tonight.But the chill that fell over Gotham today had little to do with the weather.
Anthrax is back.
Shortly before the evening news tonight Connecticut Gov. John Rowland announced that an elderly woman, living alone on a farm in the tiny southern Connecticut town of Oxford, is fighting for her life in a local hospital. The suspected cause of her potential demise is inhalational anthrax. The woman is in her nineties, rarely travels and has no association with any other anthrax cases that have been identified since September 11.
"It's very difficult at this time for anyone to explain how the patient may have contracted anthrax," Rowland said tonight. "We have no evidence at this time that anyone sent the patient anything containing anthrax. And we have no evidence that the patient contracted the disease as a result of some criminal act."
The woman was originally diagnosed as a pneumonia case, but this week five separate tests turned up positive for anthrax. Nobody seems to know whether she had goats, sheep or cows on her farm. Regardless, it would be a bizarre coincidence if she acquired a natural case of inhalational anthrax - the first seen in the region in decades - at the same time as bioterrorist-inspired cases have surfaced.
This Connecticut case is intriguing in part because the woman's farm is so far south it may have shared a central postal distribution center with the Bronx neighborhood in which Kathy Nguyen, our other mystery inhalational anthrax case, resided.
Nobody knows how Nguyen contracted anthrax. But today, happily, the city was able to rule out one terrible possibility: "The subway is clean of anthrax," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced. "And all of the tests are now back."
Phew! That's a load off the City's collective mind.
Ah! But wait! Before Northeasterners start sighing too deeply in relief Senator Hillary Clinton has a new set of concerns. Today she said that New York City should be included in a new evacuation plan that would be implemented if there were a serious release of radiation from the Indian Point nuclear power plants, located 35 miles up the Hudson River.
"I favor a 50-mile evacuation plan," Clinton said, noting that current evacuation plans include only a 10-mile area. She also called for creation of federal stockpiles of potassium iodide, to be taken in the event of a radiation release.
This sudden focus on Indian Point comes after September 11. That's when engineers noticed that none of the safety planning for the nuclear reactor allowed for the possibility that someone might hijack a jet and fly it straight into the fully exposed reactor domes, releasing fallout and fuel over a vast area. A couple of weeks ago Jim Steets, the PR man for Entergy Corporation, which owns Indian Point, told me all concerns about radiation reaching New York City were grossly exaggerated. Today, however, he said, "Before Sept. 11, we might have resisted a plan like this, but now you have to consider everything."
The new evacuation plan would mean quietly moving 20 million people.
Meanwhile, New York's hospital executives stomped up to the state capitol today to demand, minimally, $750 million to prepare medical facilities to handle biological, chemical and nuclear attacks: "We can handle an outbreak," said Daniel Sisto, president of the Healthcare Association of New York State. "We can't handle an epidemic for a prolonged period of time, over 24 hours. We truly are the front line now. We want hospitals to be prepared to handle 1,000 casualties if it is an urban area or 200 casualties in a non-urban area for a period of 24 to 48 hours."
The hospitals have a point: last year they reported a $438 million loss statewide. And that was before September 11, anthrax and the jet crash in Queens. Albany is inclined to be sympathetic. The only problem is New York is broke. Really, really, really broke. Gov. George Pataki told the hospitals that he might manage to conjure $30 million for them, but $750 million - forgetaboutit!
If this were a novel, right about now something dreadful would happen. You know: the state is broke, the city is broke, anthrax spores are circulating, everybody is reeling from calamitous terrorism and a horrible plane crash, Thanksgiving is coming................
Enough, already.
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
