A White Powder Panic


"It remains unclear what may have caused the soldiers to fall ill...."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15268139/Joint-Base-Andrews-white-powder-package.html

Dear God in Heaven!  What ever happened to CBR-D training?   

This is a white powder in an envelope.   The operative word is powder.

It is not an organophosphate synthesized at Porton Down in the 1950's. Certainly not a VX (venomous agent X).

It is not Georgi Markov accosted by an assassin's umbrella.

It certainly isn't one of the plagues of Egypt played out on a different stage in Sverdlosk, Russia in 1979.  Cattle died when Moses raised his rod, and cattle died when spores from Bacillus Anthracis escaped their confines to be carried along as winds of death.

This is not Novichok, on a park bench, in Salisbury, U.K.

This is a powder.  And your odds are worse regarding LD50 if the family eats grandma's canned beets which she lovingly retrieved from the cellar or if you happily consume that mushroom which your neighbor just picked in the forest.

https://whs.rocklinusd.org/documents/science/lethal_dose_table.pdf

What caused the soldiers to fall ill is stupidity.   And it is also panic - which is False Evidence Appearing Real - accompanied by irrationality.  I drilled it into my sons:  It is o.k. to have fear.  It is not o.k. to panic, except in the worst of circumstances.  Had this proven to be Anthrax - Doxycycline would have been an appropriate prophylactic. Nobody dies. Everybody goes to work the next day.

We  had a prior national crisis with the "real" white powder.  Surgeons at my hospital were stockpiling Doxy for their families.  Too bad for the nurses, of course.   And one surgeon, was opening his mail with a mask and surgical gloves.  

The current powder panic was probably caused by a self-righteous prick who will eventually be taken down in appropriate manner. I bet it is a white male who doesn't vote but thinks he should be the president because he is such a genius.

But if we want to take a moment and catch an Islamic signal - it can be found in Surah al Baqarah 59. 

The transliteration of the Arabic is Rijzan - like a plague - a punishment from heaven.

* Isotopes are also in the Qur'an.  wink

 

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