Can the post-9/11 anthrax “epidemic” be seen as a social coping mechanism?
Living in New York in the fall of 2001, I was really struck by a contrast of (reactions). On the one hand, the World Trade Center had fallen down, 2,700 fellow New Yorkers had just died, but the mood in the city was this kind of “keep on keeping on” circumspection. A month afterward there was the postal anthrax event, and the response to that was such a dramatic contrast. There were five deaths, and that’s sad and terrible for the families of the people who died – but that’s five, not 2,700. Yet in response to anthrax, people would come up to me and say “I’m ironing my mail” or “I’m not opening my mail at all.” Buildings got evacuated whenever somebody saw some white powder. I mean, it was nutty. You would have thought there would have been a nutty response to two iconic towers getting knocked down by planes, which seemed like a science fiction scenario, a horror story scenario. And yet the craziness was in response to anthrax. Why don’t you think we should bother planning a great deal
