Line forms in Washington for anthrax tests

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Oct. 19, 2001 | 4:22 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- I was tested for anthrax.

On Wednesday I joined hundreds of people from all over Capitol Hill who were taking advantage of a free screening in the Russell Senate Office Building near the U.S. Capitol.

Health officials early in the week had advised anyone who was in the Hart Senate Office Building on Monday to get a test. Hart is where moon-suit inspectors spent hours scraping for anthrax spores after an envelope in Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office tested positive for the bacteria.

I spent about two hours in Hart on Monday -- covering the anthrax scare. I was in the Hart office of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who also was screened.

After news broke Wednesday morning that more than two dozen people in and around Daschle's office tested positive for exposure, I got in line.

It was a long one. People from all over Capitol Hill had flocked to virtually the only place in town offering tests. Hospitals and doctors offices in Washington turned people away, directing them back to the Senate. Health officials wanted to centralize the screening operation, to keep all the tests and data in one place.

So the crowd swelled. It was mostly Senate staffers, but it also included other reporters and people who had merely passed through Hart. A woman in line ahead of me had only stopped by Hart to get a cup of coffee.

To pass the time, we used our cell phones, chatted with each other, and stared blankly. We sighed.

After three hours and 10 minutes I reached a bank of tables outside hearing room 325, the federal government's temporary anthrax screening clinic.

I filled out a single line on a form, below the 12 people who had signed in ahead of me. Name, phone number, Social Security number -- and where I could have been exposed.

I wrote the same information on the label of a plastic tube containing a single, six-inch swab.

A beefy Capitol Police officer stationed at the door directed people to various parts of the room for the test, apparently based on where in the Hart building they might have been exposed.

I told him I had been on the fifth floor of Hart. I work for a Las Vegas newspaper, I said. I cover the Nevada delegation and had been in Reid's office Monday afternoon.

"Yeah, yeah," the cop said impatiently. He didn't want my life story.

The officer directed me to a far corner of the room where a U.S. Navy nurse named Gwen was just finishing with someone else. She was one of four nurses seated along the back wall, neatly dressed in a white Navy uniform. Most of the medical personnel were garbed in military dress.

I took the plastic chair directly in front of Gwen so we were knee-to-knee. I handed her the swab with my label on it. She calmly explained the test.

"I'm going to insert this fairly far in each nostril and swirl it around a bit, so it may be somewhat uncomfortable but not painful," she said.

She was right. Definitely uncomfortable. My eyes watered. It was over in a few seconds.

Gwen sealed the swab in the tube. Test results would take two or three days. She sent me to a pharmacist in a khaki uniform who was standing behind a table. Behind him on the floor was a microwave-sized cardboard box full of tiny plastic ziplock bags. Each contained 12 white, 500-mg tablets stamped "Cipro."

He gave a bag to three of the newly swabbed: a Capitol Police officer, a Senate staffer and myself. He delivered well-practiced instructions. "Take one tablet every 12 hours. Begin tonight. Any of you taking medication?"

He handed us an information sheet about Cipro and waved us on our way.

As I walked out, baggie in hand, I felt silly. Had I been caught up in the kind of hype that can only be generated in the weird world of Washington?

Yes.

Only 31 people were exposed to the bacteria in the Hart building -- compared to hundreds of test results negative; and the prognosis for all of them is excellent. None have developed the disease, which is completely curable if treated early.

Only a few people in 100 years have died from respiratory anthrax, the rare means of contracting the bacteria; only one person this year has died from inhaling anthrax -- and he was from Florida. More often people contract the skin form of anthrax, which is less dangerous. That makes virtually any cause of death in America more common than anthrax -- lightning bolts, dog bites, in-line skating accidents, even shark attacks (two deaths this year).

Each year 20,000 people die from the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The alleys in my Washington neighborhood are more dangerous than the halls of the Hart building.

So why did roughly 3,000 of us get tested?

Matt Thornblad, an aide to Rep. Max Sandlin, D-Tex., summed it up: simple peace of mind.

Thornblad was right behind me in line. He had only been in the Hart building 15 minutes on Monday -- using the Senate credit union to cash a check.

Thornblad didn't think he had anthrax. But this is a new world for people in Washington, he said. Weird stuff is happening. We don't know how to react. Even Congress is confused. The House closed for five days even though the Senate stayed open. We are making this up as we go along.

"Things are a lot different now than they were five weeks ago," he said. "I just don't want to be thinking about anthrax during the five-day vacation I have now."

There were lots of reasons to not bother getting tested. And only one reason to get tested.

It was good enough for me.

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