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[alt_molly]

Poppy, I need your advice. Arthur sent me off to stay with Bill as soon as he got home from Surrey--I'm there now. Have you managed to find out anything from St Mungo's about how long Frank and the baby would need to be quarantined? What about Arthur? I can't imagine any excuse that he can give to avoid going into work. I don't think he's so worried for himself or his coworkers, but he says he doesn't want to endanger me.

Comments

[alt_poppy]

I confess that I have difficulty distinguishing one Ministry department from another sometimes, Arthur. From the outside it all seems rather Byzantine.

Does Griderson have a reason for expecting the disease to affect no one beyond the Muggles who are current ill with it? The flea theory in no way ensures this. And does your colleague Brownmiller have a special reason for expecting it will spread beyond the camps?

I myself would expect that any disease afflicting Muggles could equally infect any person, magical or otherwise. From a medical point of view, that ought to be a baseline assumption. Unless there is some special reason to believe that magic makes a difference in the specific way that the disease attacks the body. There are, of course, magical ailments that seem not to affect Muggles, and there are infections we are able to protect against with magic, but in almost all respects the human body is the same whether a person possesses magic or does not.

And so I wonder: does someone know something beyond what we've heard?

[alt_arthur]

Tom Griderson's 'reasoning' is nothing more than anti-Muggle prejudice, pure and simple. Anti-Muggle spite. He thinks they're nothing but animals, and so he's classified this in his mind as nothing-to-do-with-us-real-people. It's criminal that he's a supervisor in that department, although given this regime, not surprising.

Norma Brownmiller, on the other hand, deals more with facts and figures. She has a background in statistics--quite the whiz in Arithmancy--with a strong interest in public health. She actually studied at St Mungo's for awhile, but ended up not getting her Healer's certificate, and ended up in the Ministry instead. I'd listen to her instead.