[ajsnigrutin]

I was always under the impressions, that they keep the samples frozen in some big "freezer", and that they don't poke them around and "play" with them... so opening an unknown vial of an unknown sample of possibly smallpox, having the sample analyzed, and all the procedures needed for that, seem (to me) more risky than just keeping the freezer running.

[phendrenad2]

People make mistakes under pressure. So it's a good idea to induce limited pressure from time to time. Having to go through the proper preparations to analyze these samples was probably a valuable and rare training opportunity.

[WastingMyTime89]

Analysing unknown samples is part of the mission of these facilities, think about studying a new pathogen from human or animal samples for example. It’s fairly routine for them. They have the equipments and know how to do it safely.

In this case, I think it was done to assess the risk of this kind of discovery in the future. If these samples had failed to be viable that would have been a huge relief for everyone.