Extra Feature:

Life after 9.11

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Melissa and Brittany

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NewsHour Extra:

New anti-terrorism bill signed into law

Anthrax reports in the U.S.

Anti-war protests

Vice President Cheney calls for caution and patience from Americans

Online NewsHour:

The Response

Stories from Florida

By: Anne Hugus
A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts,
West Palm Beach, Fla.

Anthrax what? When I first heard the news report, I had no idea what anthrax was...a disease, I guess? Kind of like mad cow? I was clueless.

After asking my parents, they told me the disease was found in infected farm soil. Okay...so you'd have to roll around in infected farm mud to catch the disease? No risk here!

I stopped laughing when I found out that the first anthrax case was located in Boca Raton. This wasn't some isolated infection in the prairies of Minnesota.

But wait--how did an office worker in Boca catch anthrax? We don't have too many farms in Boca.

I was a little worried knowing this world-wide news was taking place in my own backyard. I became extremely worried when I found out the first case of anthrax was reported at the American Media building, which I come within three blocks of every day.

My school is a magnet program, located in West Palm Beach, and about 150 of my classmates and I catch the commuter train every morning from the Boca station, which is very close to the "anthrax building."

The morning after I found out the location of the case, I got out of my dad's car at the train station and attempted to hold my breath...unfortunately that didn't work for more than 30 seconds. When I started breathing again, I was worried.

What if anthrax had been festering in the air for days and had made its way to the train station?

I have to admit, I was scared.

In the following days I found out more information about the disease. To my knowledge, it is a bacterial infection--those can be cured (unlike viruses). An infected person can take antibiotics and get well again. Only a handful of people have gotten sick from the disease.

I feel that everyone seems to be overreacting --especially in South Florida. It seems like if you’ve ever driven past the American Media building, you're getting tested for anthrax. If you looked at the building the wrong way, you're getting tested for anthrax.

But as usual, in a situation like this, many individuals will blow things out of proportion. I heard a story about a man who called emergency authorities because he suddenly noticed he had white powder all over his shirt, hands, and newspaper. The emergency personal soon discovered that the man had recently eaten a powdered doughnut.

Once again, Florida has turned into Flori-DUH.

My local radio station played a public service announcement about the whole situation. It said "Everyday, 250,000,000 people open their mail -- four were killed. Everyday 250,000,000 people drive their cars -- 110 were killed."

The message went on to say that the people doing this are only trying to scare us, and it's working. We should be aware and cautious, but also realistic.

I completely agreed with everything the announcement said. While it is scary to think this whole anthrax mess is going down in your home town, it's scarier to think of what will happen if our nation goes into a panic over this.

So for now, I'm going to live my life as I always do -- though I may catch myself carefully shaking out my mail before carrying it inside. But I think I'll be just fine.