I participated in a bioterrorism exercise today. I wish I could hold you spellbound for several hours with fascinating stories about it, but I cannot. Even if I were a great storyteller, which I'm not, there simply weren't any great stories to tell.
Ever since 9/11 there have been lots of these little emergency preparedness exercises. This one involved several counties in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and tested the ability to dispense medicine to deal with a bioterrorism attack. The scenario was the dispersal of pneumonic plague through the ventilation system at DFW airport. By the time the incident is detected the victims are spread all over the area and several centers are setup to
dispense the medicine (doxycycline).
I was participating as a victim at the Collin County site. The exercise lasted 5 hours and basically consisted of telling paramedics that I felt fine, filling out a form (name, address, age, drug allergies, pregnancy status, etc.) and getting a bottle of antibiotics. I did this something like 15 times because the goal was to see how fast people could be processed. Some victims naturally exercised certain parts of the system (e.g. pregnant women had to be handled differently) and others were randomly chosen to play a role where they claimed certain conditions to force special handling.
Perhaps the funniest part of the day came from watching the police. At the beginning of the day they were all decked out in storm-trooper boots, dark green camo pants, bullet proof vests, mirrored sunglasses, and camo do rags. They had pistols strapped to one leg, a big pouch of who-knows-what on the other leg, and carried M-16's (or other real assault weapons). That was when it was only 80 or 85 degrees. By noon the rifles were gone, along with the vests and do rags. A little while later all of the weapons and pouches were gone, too. I guess it was just too hot to wear and carry all that stuff. The guys who looked so macho and cocky at the beginning were sitting around, talking and laughing, long before the last victims collected their umpteenth (empty) bottle of medicine.
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yeah, I know someone who participated in one of those drills, last November. At the end of it, they gave him an apple on which to munch. The good news was that the female:male ratio of participants was about 25:1 but I didn't come away with any phone numbers other than 555-1212. Maybe it's because I was supposed to have radiation sickness? Hmmm.
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