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Determining the nature of the micro-organism is only part of the battle. Vaccinating people before they can come into contact with the pathogen is one way to protect the public. The US military has already begun vaccinating US soldiers and they have launched a program to develop vaccines against potential agents for which none exist.As wonderful as developing vaccines sound, they are no panacea. A wily terrorist need only perhaps develop a slightly altered protein coat to render that vaccine ineffective. To solve this problem, what researchers need to do is to find ways to develop vaccines quick enough for them to be synthesized and distributed within 24 hours of an attack. One solution would be to speed up DNA sequencing and unravel the DNA code of the pathogen and the resulting sequence can be used as the basis for developing an instant vaccine.
Even then, it will be difficult to persuade the public to voluntarily take shots and furthermore, it will be terribly expensive to immunize entire populations. Moreover, many of these vaccines require booster shots to ensure the effectiveness of the vaccine. An attack might persuade them to cooperate, but by then, there might be a shortage and it would be too late.
Perhaps, instead of hedging their bets on vaccines, the government should instead focus on developing drugs that work on a broad spectrum of infections even before the disease has been properly diagnosed. These non-specific drugs will take advantage of the similarities in the way many agents operate. For example, Ebola, Anthrax and Plague all work by inducing an inflammatory reaction similar to toxic shock syndrome and a drug that can reduce this inflammatory response just might do the trick.
Another class of pathogens, bacteria such as plague, salmonella and shigella rely on very similar proteins that attach themselves to human cells and inject their deadly toxins. Drugs designed to interfere with this process could, in theory, stop the bacteria.
In conclusion, as hopeful as all these solutions sound, many fear that these counter measures will not be available in time to protect people from a biological attack. At the moment, the US is one of the few countries, along with Sweden, France and Israel that are taking the threat of a biological attack seriously. The problem is that many governments have more immediate concerns to worry about and so are not devoting the resources needed to handle an attack.