[BookaT]

5 people dead seems pretty deadly to me.

Considering their exposure I would say it is more deadly than most anything we have seen, i.e. bird flu, mad cow etc..

[justa-hairyape]

5 people dead seems pretty deadly to me.

Died after hospitalization. Potentially this was an Anthrax for which we had no antidote/antibiotic. Only the Russians have such a beast.

[Battle Axe]

Not so.

There were nearly a thousand people in one of those postal facilities. If anthrax was really that deadly, many more would have contracted it and died.

Four of the five deaths delayed seeking help or were misdiagnosed, preventing them getting help. Bob Stevens was on a vacation, the woman at the hospital kept putting off going to the Dr. and the two postal employees were told to go home and take Tylenol.

Cutaneous anthrax has been misdiagnosed as insect or spider bites. Not many physicians have ever seen it.

The mailed anthrax was a particular kind with a mutant version mixed in with the normal kind. All the mailed anthrax was the same genotype, just different refinement.

[Shermy]

After reading the Washington Post article I believe the position is this -

It wasn't "weaponized" in the sense of additives mixed in, but it is still sophisticated in some sense due to its purity. How to picture what this sophistication entails is still murky. Does this include the process called "milling?" Some of the comments might mean they are pursuing DNA tests to match the germs to other stocks national and international. Alibek had said he didn't think the anthrax was special but for him, a former USSR bioweapons worker, perhaps it wasn't relatively special.