Call it paranoia or vigilance, we are all a bit edgy

Maintain vigilance, important officials exhort us. Be watchful.

But for what?

Anything suspicious, anything unusual, they say.

With the discovery that a fourth person, an NBC employee in New York, has tested positive for anthrax, a heightened sense of alertness has gripped the Puget Sound region.

Now, more than ever, we're looking for ... Well, what, exactly?

Like art we like, we can't talk about it, but we'll know it when we see it.

Or think we do.

One vigilant observer's suspicious-behavior detector went off as he watched a man park his car in a no-parking zone, leave the car and whip out a camera to take a picture of the Space Needle. Our observer hastily scribbled down the license plate. But by the time he got to work, his vigilance seemed more like paranoia, and he scrapped the note.

Another alert citizen saw a cloud of smoke coming out of her neighbor's basement earlier this week. Her husband pounded on the neighbor's door and was embarrassed to find that the "smoke" was water vapor from a clothes-dryer vent.

Other observers have gone a step further, reporting suspicious sightings to police. One caller reported a man on a roof with a rifle; investigators found a construction worker with a shovel.

In another case, a driver reported another driver suspiciously following a gasoline tanker for several blocks, making the same turns. "As it turned out, there was no problem at all," said Officer Duane Fish, Seattle Police Department spokesman.

But the fact that "people are reading more into things than they usually do," Fish said, is just fine.

"I like the increased awareness. If it had been someone with a rifle on the roof, we certainly would want to know about it."

Even though responding to such calls will increase their workload, "We would rather err on the side of caution than have people doubt what they've seen," he said. "We want people to be observant."

Over the past week, they were just that — in spades. Thursday, several reports of "suspicious" powders and liquids kept the Seattle Fire Department hazardous-materials unit busy. Yesterday, the haz-mat team checked out a leaky piece of mail at the Fourth and Blanchard building, and later, at the same building, another "suspicious substance."

Using a state-of-the-art "sniffer," a portable bio-capture machine that can answer the anthrax question in minutes, the haz-mat team quickly calmed suspicions.

None of the powders, liquids or substances has proved to contain biological or chemical hazards, authorities said. The "suspicious substance" turned out to be cleaning powder, said Helen Fitzpatrick, information officer for the Seattle Fire Department.

"Somebody was just a little anxious."

But these days, drawing a line between "vigilance" and "paranoia" is tough, say experts in fields as disparate as "risk perception" and chemical and biological defense.

"You can certainly be smart about your environment, and that's what vigilance is about," said Dr. Barbara Seiders, manager of the chemical and biological defense program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

"Under the circumstances, I don't think it would hurt if people assumed that mail they're not expecting is contaminated, and to minimize how much their hands come in contact with it."

Seiders has specific suggestions for opening mail (see box).

In general, Seiders believes, people should communicate with others around them, think ahead to plan the steps they would take in the event of suspicious circumstances, and — most important — not withdraw from life.

"Engage in your environment," she said. "Be vigilant, be prepared; don't be paranoid."

Paranoia "is being scared and not doing anything different in your life," she said. "If you allow yourself to become paranoid," it not only "eats you up inside, it cuts you off from your community."

Vigilance, on the other hand, is "being aware there's a threat, and making choices that will minimize the likelihood that you become a victim of the threat." Communicating with one another creates a "collective defense," she said.

"People now are looking out for each other. I cannot imagine a more powerful defense."

But as we're looking around, what will happen when we observantly notice our own flu-like symptoms? Will we assume they're symptoms of the flu — or of something much more sinister?

Should we — not being paranoid, mind you, just vigilant — demand that our doctor give us a test for anthrax, or at least a truckload of antibiotics, just to be safe?

No and no, said Dr. Jeff Duchin, chief of communicable-disease control for Public Health — Seattle & King County.

The department is trying to raise health providers' awareness of the symptoms of an outbreak of infectious disease — for example, unexplained and very severe illness in previously healthy young people, or clusters of extreme illness.

But folks with just regular flu symptoms shouldn't jump to any conclusions, he cautioned, without evidence that there's something other than flu going around.

"Everyone with the flu can't have a nasal swab to rule out anthrax," he said. Doctors and other health providers, Duchin hopes, will hold the line, and a memo went out Thursday urging doctors to do just that. "Physicians should not be testing for anthrax," he said.

Still, Duchin understands the emotional reasons people would want a test. "But here in the public-health context, we need to stick with science and logic, because we have limited resources. We don't have unlimited lab capacity, unlimited reagents for testing."

These days, drawing a line between vigilance and paranoia isn't easy, said David Ropeik of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, part of the Harvard School of Public Health.

"Is it rational against a very low probability of terrorism to buy a gas mask? Is it rational against a very low probability of terrorism to buy a gun? It is rational for New Yorkers who had given up smoking to resume smoking because they're so stressed?" he asks.

Yes and no, Ropeik said. As a species, we're programmed to respond to risk nearly instantaneously, and those patterns, which have nothing to do with "the facts," are hardwired into our brains from long ago. "That's why people who live in cities are still afraid of snakes."

We're more afraid of a risk that has a dreadful end (shark bite vs. driving without a seat belt, say), Ropeik said. We're more afraid of risks that are catastrophic than chronic (a plane crash or nuclear meltdown vs. heart disease, for example). Risks that are uncertain (where will the next attack be?) scare us more than skiing or driving, because we have less "control."

We're less afraid of risks we choose to take (smoking) than those imposed on us.

We're more afraid of new risks than old, familiar ones.

And we're more afraid of risks that "dominate the radar screen of our daily attention," Ropeik said.

The real risk, he said, may lie in doing things in response to our fears that actually increase risk. Even riskier, he believes, is the possibility that the government will respond to our emotion-driven fears instead of to actual risk: if it funds gas masks instead of securing airports, for example.

For now, though, the assessment of risk is very individual.

Jeff Gingold, a Seattle lawyer, found himself going full circle over the last couple of weeks. Since Sept. 11th, he has immersed himself in research on terrorism and biological weapons.

What he found both scared and angered him. "How did we get into a position where we're unable to protect ourselves against this?" he wanted to know. Why didn't the U.S. heed early warnings? And why can't we find a solution, not only to the "global-political deal," but to the risk to U.S. citizens?

At the same time, as he read about bubonic plague, suitcase-sized nuclear weapons, crop-dusting capabilities, infiltration of manufacturing plants and the possibility that a terrorist could simply infect himself with smallpox and wander around infecting others, he realized that every time he reached for a can of spray deodorant, he could be risking his life.

"By the time I realized that, I decided there's almost no point in deciding you're not going to go about your business, because as a matter of fact, there are tens of thousands of opportunities every day for someone crazy enough to do something. ... It was actually liberating."

So when someone offered him tickets to Tuesday's Mariners game, he accepted.

He watched carefully, as did others in the stadium, as planes flew nearby. He scanned the faces of people around him. He thought about terrorists.

"There's nothing I think I'm likely to do for the foreseeable future that isn't going to carry with it in the back of my mind worry or concern about what these people are up to," Gingold said.

Sensitive to the "icon" power of the World Series, he said he'd worry more about attending a game. "But if I got a ticket, hell, I'll go."

Information from Times staff reporter Craig Welch was included in this report.