The tragedy in Japan has caused some worries in the United States. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Anbex is mentioned. It’s a supplier of iodine pills used to minimize radiation damage. As a result of minimal radiation having gotten into the atmosphere on the far side of the Pacific Ocean, Anbex is getting three calls a minute from people who are desperate to buy Anbex’s iodine products.
Some of the purchasers are weeping on the phone. They’re literally overwhelmed by anxiety as they seek to to protect themselves and their families from an Imaginary Problem.
A mailing list that would allow purveyors of calming products to contact these, the most susceptible to safety-cons of all people, would generate huge sales at very high margins. These pitifully frightened people could be sold props, to hold up a falling sky. They’d buy filters or space helmets to wear so that no particulate matter could penetrate their pulmonary systems. They’s spend huge amounts for hyper-organic food guaranteed to be pure. Large bubbles in which they could spend time in safety would become a necessary, and expensive, part of their daily lives.
One wonders if they would buy emitters that killed deadly bacteria and viruses on the skin with low level radiation even as they took their iodine pills?
P.S. Today, March 16, 2011, it was reported that pills containing iodine had been sold for five hundred dollars! Five Hundred Dollars for a few pills worth, maybe, a quarter. Great profits can be made by selling to the fearful! Is it a respectable way to make a living? It’s at least as respectable as shooting fish in a barrel.
