Word: breuer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...confirmed O157 infection. Because E. coli can be passed by touch from one person to another before it's unknowingly ingested, it was possible that he had picked up the bug from one of his friends in Alpine. But the water-bacteria link was too promising to ignore. Breuer also contacted LaFonda Scott, the woman who had organized the family reunion in Alpine. Scott reported that she and several of her relatives had tested positive for O157. Over the next few days, Breuer interviewed 41 of the 43 Scotts who had visited Alpine and came up with some sobering numbers...
...findings into their laptop computers and see what conclusions they could draw. Their early observations and calculations all pointed to Alpine's water, but they had not yet run any final statistical analyses, and they knew not to draw conclusions before all the tallies were in. Says Breuer: "I'm always worried before we look at the numbers...
...late into the night, bending over their computers as a neon light buzzed overhead and their forgotten dinner--a pineapple-and-bacon pizza--grew rubbery and congealed. Over the course of hours, graphs and tables flashed on the screen and streamed from the printer in a growing pile. Finally, Breuer was ready to ask the computer his final questions...
...didn't. Someone who was in town during that weekend in June was 14 times as likely. Testing the reliability of the numbers, the computer concluded that if the same study were conducted 10,000 times, those results would appear by chance only nine times. "Which is nice," Breuer said. "Which is very nice...
...wander in, any feces it left behind could have been washed into the water supply by spring rains. Bacteria in the feces would have moved through the Alpine pipes in a single foul rush and then drained away. "Once the E. coli hit town it was at once everywhere," Breuer says. And then, just as quickly, it was gone...