The media is NOT doing a good job of clarifying what Anthrax is, hence the confusion. It is a bacteria. When it is exposed to air (oxygenated environment, like the one we live in) it becomes a spore - kinda like the shell of a pecan. You breathe in the spores and if they get past the nose hairs, past the cilia in your trachea which act like little Fulller brushes to push the crud up outta your trachea, they settle down in the lungs and the "pecan shell" goes away and the "pecan meat" or vegetative form takes "root" and grows. It causes tremendous cell death where it grows, along with edema - fluid accumulation. It does other gross things and you find yourself 6 feet under.
I know, you'll never look at a "pecan" the same way again! (Sorry)
Remember, it is a bacteria NOT A VIRUS, ok?
Well ya see, the only way to get a bacteria to behave as a virus is to engineer it to do so. The variant terminology is the tip-off to something, because everyone knows the difference between a virus and bacteria, and they aren't telling us something. IMHO.