Government Faulted for Anthrax Response

A little over a week ago, District of Columbia Health Director Ivan Walks flew to Atlanta for a series of meetings with federal officials billed as “lessons learned in the anthrax attacks.” His message was characteristically blunt: We don’t need another Brentwood--referring to the confusion, resentment and racial tensions sparked by the government’s early handling of the outbreak.

Yet Walks said he is reliving those same frustrations as he attempts to decipher the Bush administration’s plan to offer anthrax vaccines on an experimental basis to thousands on the East Coast.

“I thought everybody agreed that clear messaging across a diverse population is how you build and protect public confidence,” he said. “If people don’t have confidence in their public leadership, they may hesitate or ignore you and that may cost lives.”

Over the last week, it’s become clear that many of the people directly affected by the vaccine plan do not have confidence in federal health leaders. Once again, the government’s response to the anthrax attacks appears to local officials and postal workers to be uncertain, indecisive and, perhaps worst of all, captive to political winds.

“The one thing you can’t lose is trust,” said Beverly Sauer, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in crisis communication. “That’s the one thing you can’t recover in a crisis.”

Federal officials say the confusion and frustration is the result of scant and developing scientific understanding, not bias, and deny that Capitol Hill employees have ever gotten preferential treatment over postal workers.

Yet even the many policy analysts and local leaders who accept that defense argue that the scientific uncertainty is little excuse for a series of political and rhetorical missteps that have reopened racial wounds and may have lasting health consequences.

“I don’t fault them for the still-developing science,” said Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). “Scientists aren’t God. But I don’t see how people can make informed decisions with contradictory advice.”