Today's the day the post office delivers empty medicine bottles to 37,000 households in the metro area. Yes, today: Sunday delivery for the first time since 1912, and you're getting nothing.
It's a test to see if the post office can deliver medicine in case there were a national medical emergency. Apparently all that practice they do Monday through Friday hasn't set a sufficient precedent.
The medicine is doxycycline, an antibiotic used to treat anthrax. Remember anthrax? After 9/11, we had a national panic over white powder, which died down after we realized that it made us look silly when SWAT teams in biohazard suits were called in to gun down a sugared doughnut in a break room.
It took 10 years to get around to delivering antidotes. Ten. Did someone finally check on the guy who's in charge of the program and find a skeleton in his chair? While that explains why Bob hadn't returned an e-mail since 2003, it still seems like a long time.
But now the program's up, and today people will look out the window at the postman and think: If it's Saturday, who were all those people at church?
If you're in the target ZIP codes, you're wondering if there are any side effects to not taking doxycycline? Yes. They include not itching, not having a headache, no hives and an absolute ease of breathing. If you experience any of these after getting the shipment, go directly to the emergency room, where they will give you something that gives you a headache, produces hives and makes it hard to breathe. (The antidote for non-doxycycline is anthrax, as it happens.)
People who are not allergic to penicillin should not ask their doctor if they shouldn't take it. The medicine should be thrown away when it's expired, but since it does not exist, feel free to not take it for periods of up to a year.
I'll bet the test goes off successfully, although if they skipped the empty bottle and just drove around thinking about delivering the antidote, they could not distribute 10 times more.
Better yet: If the post office would partner up with the terrorists, they could save a lot of money, and just send the doxycycline with the anthrax. Or an empty bottle with powered sugar.
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858
