IT WAS CLEAR EVEN FROM THE POLLS that something changed during Anthrax Week. When Gallup asked Americans about the most important issues facing the nation, that perennial favorite response from prosperous times--"education!"--registered only 3 percent. AIDS, drugs, civility, and various other concerns of a polity with a lot of time on its hands registered zero. Eighty percent cited issues of security, terrorism, and war. What's more, they voted with their feet, mobbing doctors' offices for prescriptions for the anthrax antidote Cipro and, in the case of the House of Representatives, evacuating the Capitol under duress for the first time since the War of 1812.

The good news is the American people are focused. The bad news is they are panicked. And the even worse news is they're right to be. Panic is seldom a productive response, but even less productive has been the phony bucking-up of those politicians who have split hairs over whether or not to refer to the ongoing biological attack as "terrorism"--the better, one fears, to avoid altering our habits to fight it.

Most obviously out of his depth was the Health and Human Services secretary, Tommy Thompson, whose resignation had been overdue days before. "I don't know" is not in his vocabulary, and there is no politician in more desperate need of the phrase. This is a man who speculated that Florida photo editor Robert Stevens had contracted the anthrax that killed him while fishing in a trout stream. There was one policy on which Thompson was adamant throughout the week: The United States would not break the patent of the German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer AG on Cipro, the antibiotic most widely recommended for anthrax. Breaking the patent could bring American stockpiles up to desirable levels within three months; under the Thompson plan, Bayer can work triple shifts to accomplish that goal in just under two years. Now, breaking the patent may be necessary, and it may not be. But the decision ought to be made on the basis of wartime medical necessity, not the confidence of German investors.

One silly idea that should meet its demise after last week is that every changing of daily routines constitutes a "victory for the terrorists." The president had useful business to do in China and Russia, and we assume he was right to head abroad just as the anthrax panic was spreading. But the rationale his staff gave to the New York Times was preposterous: "The president, the aides said, sided with those who insisted that he must go through with the trip if he expected the country to take seriously his repeated urging to get on with life as usual." All well and good, as long as we understand that life as usual means wartime life as usual. We're not talking about metaphors any longer: The ultimate "victory for the terrorists" will come if we forget that we are fighting a war.



IF THE POLITICIANS WEREN'T WORRIED, it was partly because they were taking care of themselves in ways they were urging their public not to bother with. A reasonable question is: If we're supposed to be going about our business, why is the vice president in hiding? House minority leader Richard Gephardt explained the evacuation of the Capitol by saying, "We have got hundreds of young people up here, and we don't want them put in harm's way." What young people? His 28-year-old staffers? These are the employees of our elected representatives. Last week, in a Hillary Clinton-esque bit of opinion-manipulation, they became "The Children." (What about our children? Joe Sixpack can be forgiven for asking.) After anthrax was discovered in one of his Manhattan offices, New York governor George Pataki refused to be tested because, he said, "I don't think it's necessary." Actually, testing is useful not just diagnostically but epidemiologically, for charting the spread of the disease. It's not necessary to Pataki because he's taking some of that understocked Cipro that Americans fear will be all gone by the time they get anthrax.
Val:Y