| 2001-10-22 - 11:35 a.m.
hysteria
Can I just say I'm sick of Anthrax? And I'm even sicker of stupid people getting hysterical about it. http://www.usatoday.com/life/2001-10-22-parents-worries.htm Bottom line: Parents are freaking out that their kids will be poisoned, and they're calling doctors and demanding antibiotics and smallpox vaccines. A couple of my favorite excerpts: "A lot of parents are losing perspective," says Newhall, Calif., pediatrician Loraine Stern, who has fielded many requests for antibiotics and vaccine. Typical: an e-mail from a mom with kids ages 3, 7 and 9. "I'd like Cipro for all three of them for 60 days," she wrote. The cost had Stern complied: $1,800.
Another mother wanted to bring her child in for a smallpox vaccine and, after the nurse said it wasn't available, she argued, "Oh, come on, you know it is." The stupidity of people amazes me. Maybe it shouldn't, since it's so rampant....I should be used to it. But let's use some logic, shall we? So far, who have the targets of Anthrax been? News organizations. Collaterally exposed were postal workers. Nowhere on the list of targets are Hyntur and Agshlunn and their lives in suburbia land. Even the adults who are freaking out are pissing me off. I mean, come ON, someone at IU in Bloomington reported finding a "suspicious powder" in the dorm bathroom. Um. Bathroom. Powder. Hmm....like, oh, I dunno, Gold Bond, Johnson's, Shower to Shower? This is the kind of stuff I was talking about right after 9/11---I think we as a country are so lacking in freakin' common sense, it's just frightening. Parents want preventive antibiotics for their kids, to protect them from anthrax, which they're as likely to get as they are likely to get hit by a meteorite, and they don't realize the damage we can do by taking those drugs for no reason. Maybe I'll just never "understand," because I'll never be a mother. I don't know. I like to think I have a good amount of empathy, that I'm a caring person. But geeze....it seems like for some people, when the kid comes in, common sense goes out. And it should really be the opposite.
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