No one wanted to say it out loud. The implications were too frightening. We were pretty confident that there wasn’t a release of anthrax spores other than when media staff opened the envelopes, but that alone wasn’t going to dissolve the city’s anxiety. As the November days passed and we had no explanation for the Kathy Nguyen inhalation case we faced the inevitable. We had to eliminate one very public place as the source, we had to test the NYC subway system.
None of us believed that the NYC subway was presenting a risk to anyone. If there had been a release underground we would’ve been dealing with many inhalation cases, not one. We had a pretty good idea though that spores could be tracked from their original location and the technology to find them was sophisticated. Staff from ABC, NBC, CBS or the NY Post could’ve tracked spores on the soles of their shoes anywhere. Despite our confidence that there weren’t legions of straphangers out there incubating inhalation anthrax we worried about positive results, even a single spore. We certainly couldn’t close the subways but it would be tough public message to craft. There are anthrax spores in the NYC Subway system, but it is safe to ride. I envisioned a TV crew taping Dan Rather and the Mayor sharing a pole on a downtown 6 train to make the point.
NYPD did the sampling with CDC and us directing them. Six train lines were tested at ten stations, over 200 samples. None were positive. While we breathed a collective sigh of relief, one final, tragic case was incubating the disease. A case as mysterious as Kathy Nguyen’s but one that would finally yield some answers.
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