America will get through this

We’ve been here before. Back then, the menace wasn’t viral, but bacterial.

A week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, anonymous letters carrying deadly anthrax spores started arriving at media companies and congressional offices. Over the next few months, five people died from inhaling anthrax and 17 others were infected after exposure, including postal workers.

With nerves already frayed by 9/11, the threat of bioterrorism presented by the anthrax letters sent panic into overdrive. The antibiotic Cipro was thought the best choice to battle anthrax exposure, and a terrified public snapped it up. The run caused shortages at pharmacies, even though the likelihood that people would need Cipro was tiny.

Rumors on how to kill the spores swept through a country now fearful of opening their mail.

One claimed that ironing letters would kill anthrax; another asserted that zapping it in the microwave would do the trick.

Washing one’s hands with soap and water was deemed effective to clean off possible anthrax spores.

The letters stopped, and federal prosecutors declared a scientist named Bruce Ivins, who worked in government biodefense labs in Maryland, was the culprit. Ivins committed suicide.

The anthrax outbreak has lessons for today: Hand-washing is good, hoarding is not, and people looking for answers should turn to experts, not rumor.

But perhaps the most pertinent takeaway is this: America made it through the anthrax scare and navigated a new normal with the recognition of bioterrorism as a plausible threat. We will make it through this.