Living with anthrax - 26 October 2001

Last Wednesday morning in every town in the United States - population two million or population two hundred - the flag went up over the post office at half mast.

It's hard to think of a routine in life more automatic, less surprising, than that of picking up and opening the morning mail.

But there are now two new oddities. First is the fact which very few of the hundred million households would deny that in simply facing the mail there is now a moment of apprehension, at least, as you begin to open it.

This may sound, probably does, preposterous to most listeners outside the United States.

But two things happened this past week which greatly amplified the fear first felt only two weeks ago by the staffs of the biggest tabloid publishing company in the country and then the headquarters staff of the three main television networks.

The new note was the bad news that when an aide to the Democrats' leader in the Senate - Senator Daschle - opened the Senator's morning mail there was, in one letter, a tiny sprinkle of anthrax.

The senator's office was quarantined, 50 of the senator's staff were tested and given the drug of choice which the German manufacturer is now working night and day to produce.

As you'll recall the House of Representatives closed down for six days while the most elaborate check was done in its offices and halls and lobbies and air conditioning system.

The Senate stayed in session but many of its members' offices were shut down on suspicion. Hundreds of workers in and around the Capitol were tested.

But the last Tuesday - all the crucial bad news seems to come on Tuesdays - two workers in the Washington postal service - the people who receive and distribute the city's mail in the first place - two had died of anthrax and two others had been sent to the hospital.

Imagine the instant response of thousands, I suppose even several million, postal workers - postmen, mailmen, what are called letter carriers - around the country: A senator's staff is tested after a hint of anthrax but how about us?

A newspaper headline: "A quick response for politicians, a slower one for mail workers".

A newspaper headline stimulated the, shall we say, resentment at least of postmen and sorters - male and female - everywhere.

Everywhere because the identified anthrax letters had passed through sorting centres in several states - there'd been probably hoax letters - but who shall say? - in Reno, Nevada and up in the remote New England state of Maine and down in a small town in Kentucky.

The result has been yet another industry working 24 hours a day - this time to meet the order that has gone out to produce, on the double, more millions of surgical gloves.

And considering that doctors' and dentists' offices and hospitals use several pairs a minute there will soon as many surgical gloves in the United States as human beings around the globe.

The mastermind of the anthrax scare must lick his lips and rub his hands continuously when he considers the brilliance of his anthrax caper.

Not just the vast inconvenience it has caused to the entire American population but the unique contribution it has made to helping the bankruptcy of the American economy.

When we read or hear, as we do every day now, that Congress is getting back to work, it's only to go on and read that both its Houses are considering an emergency bill, then another emergency bill and another and billions of dollars in gifts and loans - to the airline industry, the insurance industry, to financing the mass testing for anthrax, to speeding the research on a smallpox vaccine - not to mention holding emergency committee meetings on bills, still bigger and bigger bills, for the rescue of businesses centred in New York city that were paralysed by the September attacks.

New York city itself, although grateful for the first instalment of 15 billions for the rehabilitation of the downtown centre, still requires more.

Incidentally all these matters - whether or not they are to be the responsibility of the Congress - they land first on the doorstep of the White House. And you may be sure that even in Shanghai and on Air Force One the president was being briefed on all these things.

Then just off the plane he ran into what one official called "a domestic minefield", a public relations disaster over the anthrax business.

The trouble here was that the research about the quality of the escaped anthrax, its damage potential, its primary source, is being conducted by the Centre for Disease Control, the national health institutes, the top medical men of the armed forces, it's being done so intensely that its findings, when they're given out, seem to contradict the last public statement by a cabinet officer.

So while the daily message is mixed the one that really carried across the country was the first public statement of the postmaster general.

Unlike Mayor Giuliani, unlike President Bush, unlike Secretary Rumsfeld, the postmaster general - a hitherto unknown, unrecognisable figure - had no gift for combining bad news with credible reassurance.

All he will be remembered for was the stark single sentence: "I can give no guarantee that the mail is safe."

The mail? To the listening national audience that meant every one of the 80 million letters delivered everyday anywhere in the United States.

The mail - which carries, what with the banks statements, social security cheques, mortgage deals, insurance and business contracts, et cetera, et cetera - the mail carries the value of one tenth of the American economy.

After hearing of this clanger the president was briefed on such comparatively minor disasters as Bethlehem Steel, once the gold standard of American prosperity, had gone bankrupt.

A quarter of a million people have been laid off from famous companies. Unemployment is rising briskly.

And, oh yes, the economy of California, which has been called the eighth largest economy in the world, has gone into deep recession.

All this was the prelude to a landslide of new foreign policy problems that I doubt any former president has had to bear in one month.

First there were briefings about the Afghanistan war, of course, by the chairman of the chiefs of staff and by the British, every day, and how successful had Secretary of State Colin Powell been in persuading India to hold off from any incursion into Kashmir.

And then check on the state of the effort to build a strong enough coalition government to take over from a beaten Taleban - at the same time silently praying that the Taleban will not collapse too soon and so plunge the Afghans into the chaos of a civil war.

And what to do with the Israelis - whose response to the president's request to withdraw from the Palestinian villages was met with the movement of tanks into those villages on the claim that Israel was doing exactly what the United States was doing - advancing into enemy country to weed out the terrorists who had assassinated their cabinet minister.

But now the president has to see the Crown Prince of Bahrain and there must be some intense talk with the Saudis, whose devotion to the cause has been questioned. And, by the way, is the General holding the government in Pakistan?

The daily show of these problems did not offset but did seem to move into the background the president's notable success in Shanghai in testing the neutrality of China and guarding against any adventure into Taiwan.

Most of all he's finally getting from Mr Putin a confident pledge of loyalty to the general strategy of anti-terrorism.

And how about us - the general public?

Friends from abroad always want to know: How are people coping? - a very large, vague question but offered in goodwill.

Well, three weeks ago I cited the melancholy poll which showed that in spite of all the talk of the mayor and the president, the first poll of the national mood had 70% of Americans saying that yes they felt they might be the next victim of terrorism. An appalling percentage.

Well now there is, even after the discovery that anthrax can escape from a sealed letter, rousing news.

A national poll on Thursday evening has 77% say they're unconcerned about anthrax, in spite of the postmaster general. Ninety-two Americans in a hundred believe the mail is safe.

Sixty-five per cent feel they're now living a normal life. Of course, normal means life as it has come to be - the next terrorist attack could drastically change the sense of normality and the optimism of the polls.

But there was, in the middle of the week, after all this catalogue of woes and anxieties, there was in New York city a heroic scene, recalling the never-to-be-forgotten early days and nights of Ground Zero - the still burning, smoke-laden, still ravaged downtown.

Suddenly one evening on the city television news a line of young, upstanding men at attention, soberly dressed in dark suits, white shirts.

What were they? Young businessmen? Naval cadets at a funeral? All young, sombre, many good-looking, some blacks, a few more Hispanics.

The camera pans along to a lectern and there is Mayor Giuliani. He is swearing in 307 newly-commissioned firemen - fire fighters - and once again he strikes the exact right note.

"Lots of boys want to have once in their lives what you're going to have - the chance of saving someone's life.

"Many will feel differently after September 11th. You can give them back that hope."

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