[LadyDoc]

The joke out here is we don't need the mail to get anthrax. You just have to go to the local barnyard.

I also suspect that rural people with an overwhelming pneumonia might not get identified if they had anthrax. I remember early in the HIV crisis, that we were told that probably some of the young men dying of "viral pneumonia" were probably suffering from this disease (this is before the blood test) and had PCP pneumonia. At that time, PCP pneumonia was usually only seen in cancer pateints and in vietnam orphans. I remember my only case was a lymphoma patient with "viral pneumonia". We couldn't do the culture, so treated him and he got better.

Ditto for anthrax

[meenie]

From talking to old-timers that had experience with anthrax, two fallacies come to mind. Anthrax is not contagious and tests for anthrax cannot be falsified by other clostridium organisms.

[Grampa Dave]

Was anthrax ever on any of the automated C&S sensitivity tests during the 1990's that most Americans would have had if they had an infection? Would it have just shown up as an unknown gram positive infection, if it was cultured out at all?

I suspect that there have been Anthrax infections for years, and the good docs like you cured it with the antibiotics you prescribed for infections. The older and more fragile patients died of pneumonia from the agent, and as we know, autopsies are seldom if ever performed on elderly patients who die of pneumonia!