You’ve Got Mail “One Friday night my throat began to swell up. A cold, I thought. But it worsened over the weekend. My glands were soon enormous. Monday morning came and my face was barely recognizable (Chamberlain).” Anthrax is a rare bacterial disease that affects the skin and lungs. On September 18th 2001, letters containing lethal amounts of anthrax were mailed out. The deadly anthrax letters were sent out to people all over the United States. Even though the disease was not widely spread, the hysteria that festered in the American people still affects the USA today.
On October 4th 2001 Bob Stevens is the first to open a letter containing Anthrax. A day later on October 5th, Bob Stevens dies from inhalation of anthrax at age sixty three. On October 8th trace amounts of anthrax are found in the offices where Stevens worked, the offices of American Media forcing the building to be shut down. The next day more letters infected with anthrax are posted ( Cite). Shortly thereafter an NBC employee is tested for anthrax poisoning and is found positive. Tom Daschle, a former senator, reports that anthrax was found in his office. A seven month old baby tests positive for anthrax after visiting ABC News’s Manhattan office. After the baby test positive for anthrax eight more people fall ill with anthrax poisoning and four
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After some investigating it was found that the cause of the symptoms were from exposure to paint fumes. Another case of a false alarm was in a suburban town in Maryland on October 9th 2001. A group of 35 people went to the hospital after they all noticed they had symptoms such as a headaches and a sore throat. Its was found out afterwards that their symptoms were caused by a man who sprayed glass cleaner on the subway station on the morning October
The Demon in the Freezer is divided into eight sections. It begins with the upsetting details surrounding the sudden death of Robert Stevens, just three weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001. An autopsy showed Mr. Stevens died of inhalation anthrax. Subsequent anthrax illnesses among people exposed to letters laced with anthrax frightened the nation. Some thought the letters might also contain smallpox, but fortunately this was not the case. “There had been only eighteen cases of inhalation anthrax in the past hundred years in the United States, and the last reported case had been twenty-three years earlier” (5). It is no wonder that people became alarmed at the threat of a major anthrax outbreak.
Another aspect of the story is associated with Major Nancy Jaax. She is a member of USAMRIID or United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. USAMRIID does research on different w...
Shane, S. (2011, March 23). Anthrax Letters Mailed by Bruce Ivins, Psychiatrists Agree. The New York Times. Retrieved December 11, 2013, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/us/24anthrax.html?_r=1&
On September 18th and the weeks following, a multitude of letters containing the Bacillus Anthracis bacterium were mailed to various New York news stations. Individuals at 5 different stations became ill with similar symptoms that included vomiting and shortness of breath. This began the nationwide panic known as the Amerithrax Investigation. The Amerithrax investigation was said to be the worst biological attacks in all of US History. Three weeks later, on October 9th, two more letters, containing the anthrax bacterium was mailed to two Democratic senators. In all of the 7 attacks, over 22 people developed infections, over half being life-threatening. The letters themselves confused federal investigators. In the sets of letters addressed to the media, certain T’s and A’s were bolded. When added together, the groups of letters formed 3 codons that corresponded to 3 amino acids. These amino acids pointed federal investigators towards a possible culprit, Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist for the US government in Frederick, Maryland.
Jonsson, P. (2013, May 10). Unexpected twists in case of deadly blast at Texas fertilizer plant.
Louis Pasteur, in 1881, discovered the anthrax vaccine. Anthrax is an infection caused by many bacteria cells called “Bacillus”. These bacteria make “spores” which have a protective shell. This disease is most common in farm animals. They live in soil, and affect domestic a...
Knowing this, one would not believe that it has caused not one, not two, but three pandemics and is on its way to causing a fourth! The Spanish flu of 1918, the Asian flu of 1957, and the Hong Kong flu of 1968 each killed millions of people worldwide, causing mass terror. People were mad with fear, and for good reason, as friends, family, and neighbors dropped dead like flies. And yet, as soon as the deaths ceased, the forgetfulness set in. until very few knew about these pandemics.
“Smallpox and Bioterrorism” 6 June 2001. Center for Disease Control. 4 Nov. 2014. < http://www.bt.cdc.gov/Agent/Smallpox/FactSheet.pdf >
Smallpox is a disease from the variola virus. Smallpox has caused an estimated number of 300 million deaths in the 1900s alone. Smallpox is said to have been around since the ancient Egyptian times. The disease was eradicated in the late 20th century and two samples are still kept, one in U.S.A and one in Russia. Smallpox creates bumps and blisters all over the body and has been one of the most fatal epidemics the world has seen.
When humans become infected with anthrax there are a multitude of symptoms that they experience. First they will develop a fever, accompanied with general discomfort, uneasiness and headaches. Next they will undergo shortness of breath, cough, and congestion of the nose and throat, which will ultimately lead to pneumonia. They will also feel stiffness and pain in their joints.
Around 7:30 that same evening, the first of the exposure victims checks in to the Emergency Room at Sacred Heart Medical Center complaining of a general malaise. Before the hour is up, thirty more people are in the waiting room with a similar condition. By midnight, in a scene repeated at all of the Spokane area hospitals, hundreds of people line the hall...
The symptoms were blisters of the skins with puss and bleeding with high fever. The government was very aware and thought they had a vaccine but the micro-organism morphed into another pathogen that was airborn and the previous vaccine was no
Infectious diseases also called as communicable diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms (such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi), can be spread directly or indirectly from one person to another.
Chicken pox is not an Entrée that is served at one’s family holiday dinner party. Chicken pox is an extremely contagious disease caused by the Varicella zoster virus. Chicken Pox is not a disease that is known to affect other animals or insects. Unlike other diseases, where human and other animal close interaction causes the exchange of virus and disease this disease did not come from a human-chicken interaction. The name chicken pox has been stuck for generations; there are many theories behind its name. Chicken pox could sneak up on its young victims in the form of an innocent touch, or by inhaling tiny particles from a cough, or sneeze which then enters the respiratory tract. Once the virus attaches itself to it gracious, and unwilling host cells it causes a crimson rash that could be located on different parts of the body. The rash is highly irritating which makes it almost impossible not scratch. In the United States each year about 5,000 to 9,000 people are hospitalized, and around 100 people die from the microbe Varicella zoster that causes chicken pox.
Hunted by the unknown, lost and deprived of sleep, three amateur filmmakers Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams gradually break down as they undertake the task of documenting the Blair Witch in the woods in Maryland. According to The Blair Witch Project’s (BWP) opening, the “three student filmmakers disappeared” and “a year later their footage [this film] was found” (Myrick 00.31). Banash claims that the horror of the film comes from “our fears of and insecurities with (mimetic) technologies that we can neither trust nor escape” (5). Mimetic technologies like cameras are technologies used to replicate or record reality, but they are incapable of recording the