” The key is the strain. “
That was the concern I was trying to express — that there might be an antibiotic-resistant strain loose in the country..
(Obviously I’m not a physician or a biologist — the information I’m speaking from - ‘easily treated with antibiotics’ - is that which was publically disseminated during the ‘01 attack...)
Now I know that I was wrong.
We do have the ability to gear up to a biological threat as we can create antibiotics for most bacterial pathogens though the same process that the bacteria mutated to be a resistant organism.
The virus category is more complex and the fungi are very strange....(personal opinion of an entomologist)
The strange mixture that was in the mailed anthrax was actually more susceptible to antibiotics than the regular genotype 62 as it was originally tested. The first tests on “Ames” (I hate common names) was 6 guinea pigs and all six died.
The mailed anthrax is a mixture of genotype 62 and it’s mutant with the 929 base pair inversion on a plasmid. It is a wet lesion where almost all others produce a dry lesion.
For more information read the CDC’s account of the cases from the mailed anthrax, then read Judith Miller’s GERMS. The baby at ABC, Judith Miller’s Margano (a postal worker she interviewed) and another worker (personal email) had lesions that dripped and dripped profusely.
Anthrax doesn't really work that way. It's NOT a contageous disease. You can't easily pass it from person to person. So, it can't really "get loose."
It's evidently just another case of someone using infected hides to make drums. It's the third case I know about. There was a case in Brooklyn last year, and another case in Seattle some years ago.
I wouldn't make anything more of it than what it is -- a case of people working with dangerous materials without taking proper precautions.