Wikipedia says: "in the United States, infections occasionally occur in rural areas, where the bacteria are believed to circulate among rodents." A few years ago a boy in Russia contracted the plague after interacting with a wild marmot, he was treated successfully without any problems. I think this news is overblown, because everyone immediately pictures 14th century Europe
In a similar vein, I highly recommend Annie Jacobsen's recent book, Biological War: A scenario. It dives into the Soviet/Russian biological weapons programs and discusses facilities such as the Vector Institute (State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology) located in Koltsovo, Siberia. Interestingly enough, the scenario follows a lab leak of weaponized plague at this research facility... having read the book it was rather shocking to see this headline.
I saw a post about this on Reddit this morning. Haven't looked into it further, but people were claiming that there are versions of this plague that have been modified to release other toxins. It's effectively a bioweapon: they cure you for the plague, which kills you with the poison it contained.
People just dramatically updated their priors since Covid. We went from pandemics are a problem of previous centuries to any new outbreak might be a pandemic.
The world is far more connected logistically before. Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it. So, the priors-updating was probably both overdue, but maybe also overblown.
Tbf Covid was unique in that it was a virus capable of airborne transmission while being asymptomatic and also it can be fatal without killing too quickly. That's extremely unusual. Even more rare, some people never showed symptoms or the symptoms were so mild so it was unclear if it was Covid at all.
Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola), for example, are incredibly deadly but that really limits their ability to spread. You still have to be diligent but there's a reason why Ebola has been contained to parts of Africa the the virus seemingly spreads from animals to humans every now and again, starting another local outbreak. But it's never spread globally and it's unlikely to.
Probably the last comparable disease to Covid was the Spanish flu in terms of its ability to spread and that was over 100 years ago. It's worth noting that the Spanish flu could also spread asymptomatically, which also explains it's impact to a large degree. Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu, which also tells you something about what tends to happen to novel diseases.
Y pestus is a bacteria, not a virus. We now have antibiotics that could likely combat it, which was obviously something that didn't exist in medieval Europe. Back then it wasn't at all clear that diseases spread by microorganisms at all. Plus, rodents were key to that spread and that's a far smaller problem now.
The nightmare scenario is probably some deadly variant of measles because measles is so incredibly contagious, probably more than any other disease I can think of. It can survive airborne for a very long time and in the modern era we've traced outbreaks of tens of thousands of cases to one single person. But the ability of measles to survive outside a host is also (luckily) incredibly rare.
> Former head of the national public health agency Rospotrebnadzor stated that the disease the researcher died of is "most likely not the plague, but even if confirmed, there will be no spread of this disease
I would think the significance being the person was a lab worker. Someone getting hantavirus while camping in Yosemite is a lot less concerning than a lab worker death from pneumonic plague after having a test tube break.
I also think it's overblown. My fear is that this is a special form of the disease, modified by Russian researchers for who knows what reasons, and may therefore be a problem.
'The “young adult male” died eight hours after he was admitted to the hospital, where doctors initially suspected he had hantavirus disease or bacterial pneumonia. Post-mortem testing confirmed Y pestis presence in his blood and lung tissue. It's Arizona’s first pneumonic plague death since 2007.'
There are three ways the plague manifests: bubonic (Black Death, highly treatable), pneumonic [1] (what this researcher died of) and septicemic (gets in your blood–super nasty, but also doesn't spread easily).
Pneumonic is the most transmissible. There are also no commercially-available vaccines for it in most countries. That's why this is worth paying attention to. Not reacting. But keeping a close eye on. Russia being Russia we'll probably only learn if containment was lost from Mongolia or China.
My fear is that this is an enhanced virus that was being subjected to gain of function research, making it potentially much more dangerous than bog standard plague.
I mostly agree, but I am more concerned about a strain from a lab than the wild. Many times we study the worst strains, which might mean this has more potential to spread, higher fatality, etc.
Similar to the cruise-ship Hantavirus situation earlier this year. People see a disease they've never encountered and assume it's a novel pandemic. Really, it's just one of the rare cases where a westerner contracts a disease that's endemic to the global poor.
Most of people who are alive can relate to a very specific period in their lives, and it’s easy to imagine now what virus can do in terms of social life.
Are you discounting rural Americans as not being part of the global poor then? Or not real “westerners”? There have been roughly 30 cases a year in western states since the disease was first found here in the 90s
Hantavirus is worth worrying about, though. If you have a mouse infestation, don't vacuum up droppings. Put on a mask, spray them with disinfectant, get them nice and wet, wipe them up 10 minutes later while they're still wet, then clean the area again.
The particular bacterium if infecting the skin is fairly treatable and mild with modern medicine, pneumonic plague is 100% lethal if not treated within 24h and utterly asymptomatic during the first 24h, it’s also airborne. Same bacterium but very different diseases..
Expect more cases of rare things, because more rain = more green plants, which means rodents will be able to breed many fold over. We saw something similar in the 90's
I think a lot of people don't realize the Black Plague is bacterial and we already have a cure for it. Most people getting anxious probably assume its like Covid and a cure would have to be developed.
I've got bad news for you. It may seem like a good thing that Y. Pestis is bacterial since we have antibiotics but remember that bacteria can become antibiotic resistant. You might say "no problem, that would only happen if there were a lot of cases and people weren't properly using antibiotics" and while this is true it is also possible to deliberately make Y. Pestis antibiotic resistant. "Who in their right mind would do a stupid thing like that?" you may ask, well it turns out the Soviets did and likely stockpiled large amounts of it with plans to deliver it in an aerosolized form over cities. Aerosolized particles are how you contract pneumonic plague which if you can't treat it with antibiotics is nearly 100% lethal in all cases. It can also be passed from human to human via coughing. So, here's hoping that this is just a rare case of wild type Y. Pestis that the lab worker somehow unfortunately inhaled and didn't get treatment for in time.
there is not information that's exactly the same bacteria and that drugs work. It might be novel one or modified in the lab. Even for flu we don't have general vaccine that works.
Prairie dogs are the main carriers in the US, and yet some people still want to give them protections because they are “cute”. They are literal vermin. Colorado is attempting to put a bag limit on hunting them, which is ridiculous given nobody is bagging their prairie dog kills. Because again, they are vermin.
Damn, I'm worried whether Russia’s response will prioritise containing the pathogen or containing the embarrassment. You can’t patch a public-health incident with a press release.
I suspect it will be similar to the current American regime's past handling of COVID: a lot of skilled people wanting to do the right thing, but having to fight an unnecessary uphill battle against the administration that was more interested in perception, economics, and politics than lives.
It’s not nearly as black and white as you lay out. Despite evidence of immunity after contracting COVID, the prior administration continued to pursue a vaccination mandate through OSHA. Additionally arbitrary rules and limitations such as the 6’ rule were routinely parroted by public health authorities and state governments. That’s in addition to what another commenter pointed out about the mask flip flopping.
I'm not sure the public health establishment didn't do more harm than good during COVID, especially with all the politically expedient flip-flopping on masking: First claiming it was unnecessary as a white lie to protect supplies for front-line workers, then promoting cloth masks despite evidence not being able to establish it statistically significantly slows spread, and then insisting on masking children in their formative years who had already been vaccinated or otherwise gained natural protection against COVID.
Remember all the theater around wearing your mask to your restaurant table and then taking it off for your entire meal in an enclosed room with dozens of other people? Or shutting down public parks and beaches but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
The Trump admin was cartoonishly inept but the public health experts did plenty to kill their own credibility as well.
...did you live through the same COVID? Do you not remember when the top researchers colluded to repeatedly bald-faced lie to their peers and the public about the likely origins of the virus?
Is your implication that COVID was intentionally created in an American bioweapons lab with the goal of creating something both highly deadly and highly transmissible for use in future conflicts?
Most likely both. Just recently Russia had already contained the embarrassment of announcing there was a foot-and-mouth disease in cattle (so they don’t have to declare even a sporadic outbreak), but they also eradicated all the cattle to both contain and cover it up. Most likely, the same thing - containing, but under a different (less unsavory-sounding) pretense.
Take a guess, will Putin prioritize the safety of humans or his own pride? He’s literally waging a war that is based on his warped divine feeling of pride for Rus
Alternatively, that's just an excuse, and he's waging a war because the existential threat to his autocratic kleptocracy by even a modestly successful, somewhat democratic neighboring state with significant inter-country exchange of people and ideas.
Worse yet, this is contained but Putin will use it to argue against foreign actors weakening him further because 'think of the consequences`. I hate how paranoid this timeline has made me.
The Plague is very much still around, yes. Around the world, we get a few cases every year, but we are not in the Dark Ages. Much of the reason it caused as many deaths as it did was due to a lack of understanding. We did not know what really caused disease, we did not know ships were carrying the disease vector, we did not have proper treatments, etc. Today for the cases we have, it is a lot more treatable. We of course monitor it, so we can be prepared (close off vectors of spread like airlines, for example), but there really is nothing to worry about. Happens all the time.
One of the popular sarcastic meme posting channels on russian Telegram today posted a picture of an ad "Wanted: lab worker, ready to break a vial right next to just the right person. Benefits: $10M payout; guaranteed care of your descendants; your name mentioned in annals of history". Nice and dark and very accurate.
This spells out a scenario that had just popped into my mind: what if this is an intentional "demonstration" of their bioweapon prowess, which they are using as leverage for backroom negotiations around Ukraine or whatever.
"sarcastic meme posting channels on russian Telegram"
That phrase.
I think these people and how they are using tech and memes are part of the current problem of this world. A large part of the problem, in my opinion. It's may be just coping, dark humor for most but it is deep psychosis for others and it's giving them ideas and power over the rest of us. I'd strive to be better than falling into such meme sharing sociopathy.
> b) COVID got significantly less deadly as it evolved, which is a known phenomenon that should also apply to this plague
No, it isn't a known phenomenon, and no, that isn't what happened.
Transmissibility and virulence are actually linked.
Delta was more transmissible and was more deadly, not less. Omicron was also highly transmissible and highly deadly.
Viral replication is also linked to both transmissibility and virulence, and that also increased with Delta and Omicron.
The headlines that Omicron was less virulent were falsified when Omicron hit Taiwan (a largely immune-naive elderly population) and was every bit as deadly as Delta was.
What happened to make later strains less deadly was the evolution of the human immune system since pretty much everyone became vaccinated or recovered and acquired T-cells that would recognize later strains.
The virus only "cares" if it becomes so virulent that it kills you before it spreads. The way that COVID kills, long after the presymptomatic shedding period, after several weeks, doesn't matter--you can dial it up and make that worse, and you won't prevent the virus from spreading.
> > COVID had a case fatality rate of 1%. Pneumonic plague, without antibiotics, has a case fatality rate of 100%.
> a) why are we comparing treated death rates with untreated death rates?
Even when treated (and treatment has to be within 24 hours) the death rate for pneumonic plague is still 17%. Better than 100%, but still nightmare fuel, especially given that the treatment has to be administered almost immediately or it will be ineffective and you're back to the 100% case fatality rate.
Isn't this easily treated with anti-biotics these days? Surprised that someone would die of plague in this day and age so long as treatment is prompt, which for a lab worker it seemingly should have been...
Another comment said treatment needs to begin 24 hours after infection or its almost always fatal. And they also said you don't have many symptoms within the 24 hour window.
I could see that still killing a lot of people even though a treatment would guarantee survival
That’s not what happened. The Trump admin repeatedly proposed substantial CDC cuts, but Congress largely rejected them: CDC budget authority went from about $6B in 2017 to $7B in 2020, before counting the enormous emergency COVID appropriations. Once COVID hit, CDC received billions more, including $2B in the first supplemental and $4B in the CARES Act.
The truth is the CDC and broader public-health apparatus were not starved of money; they performed badly despite substantial resources. The CDC botched its initial COVID test, their systems were antiquated, guidance was wildly inconsistent, and the agency later reorganized itself after acknowledging major operational failures.
the person who died , I believ lived and worked in the same area, and presumably would have recieved every availible escalation in care, and that she was likely ambulatory on admitance would have relayed her ocupational hazards, that she died implies that, she had a compromised immune system or pre existing complication or condition, or this was an exceptionaly virolent infection or less likely, incompetence and botched care, even less likely her cause of death is completly unrelated to the plauge.
that they have quarantined hundreds suggests that this is in fact an unknown virolent infectios disease.
almost certainly, cultures and dna tests are well underway and there will be clear answers within 48 hr's or sooner.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls Vladimir Putin “patient zero” of global wars spreading: “He must be denied the space to act and the space to spread this evil further.”
- Taylor Swift announces surprise new single: “Patient Zero”
"A little plague will be good for your natural immunity, by my favorite Danish team of crackpot researchers have just received $10M in express funding to test in African children whether the GCB vaccine helps, when we expose them to the bacterium"
There are as many possibilities as one could imagine. This is still hypothetical (as I said in my comment above, I know what I will assume only if it disrupts the elections, and hope it does not, which will restore some trust), but means, motives and who benefits are important to remember when evaluating unknowable situations. Granting the benefit of the doubt is not something I do for this US administration and their fellow travelers.
It's unfounded in Ukraine and it's unfounded in the context of the casus belli which had as much to do with WMDs as when the US invaded Iraq, which is to say nothing.
Since they can't waste a paragraph satisfying pedants, "unfounded" is as good as anything.
“Youhuang Xiang (“Xiang”), 32, formerly a post-doctoral researcher at Indiana University and a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, has been sentenced to more than four months in prison, a $500 fine, and one year of supervised release, after pleading guilty to smuggling biologic materials into the United States from China.”
Let me start by saying that I am not a lawyer but that being said, I don't know how I feel about this. I don't like the taste of plea bargain in my mouth. It feels a lot like the government basically tells any suspect, plead guilty or you will face the maximum fury and unlimited budget of the government. Especially after Aaron Swartz, the fiction that prosecutors and even judges are fair and balanced arbiters of justice has evaporated away.
> They may not be ignored at the whim and folly of scientific researchers and academic institutions.
I for one support scientists and researchers and trust them to follow all the necessary protocol than any pencil pusher. I don't even consider prosecutors living organisms more like a machine whose only goal is career advancement, justice be damned. Expecting grace from them is folly.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960084 (277 comments)
Wikipedia says: "in the United States, infections occasionally occur in rural areas, where the bacteria are believed to circulate among rodents." A few years ago a boy in Russia contracted the plague after interacting with a wild marmot, he was treated successfully without any problems. I think this news is overblown, because everyone immediately pictures 14th century Europe
You should read up on the long history of Russian Biological War programs. Fascinating stuff. They came up with some insane versions of plague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_prog...
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/rr/rr7003a1.htm?
In a similar vein, I highly recommend Annie Jacobsen's recent book, Biological War: A scenario. It dives into the Soviet/Russian biological weapons programs and discusses facilities such as the Vector Institute (State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology) located in Koltsovo, Siberia. Interestingly enough, the scenario follows a lab leak of weaponized plague at this research facility... having read the book it was rather shocking to see this headline.
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I saw a post about this on Reddit this morning. Haven't looked into it further, but people were claiming that there are versions of this plague that have been modified to release other toxins. It's effectively a bioweapon: they cure you for the plague, which kills you with the poison it contained.
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Yep. And this is a lab that was reportedly doing gain-of-function research.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapo...
People just dramatically updated their priors since Covid. We went from pandemics are a problem of previous centuries to any new outbreak might be a pandemic.
The world is far more connected logistically before. Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it. So, the priors-updating was probably both overdue, but maybe also overblown.
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Tbf Covid was unique in that it was a virus capable of airborne transmission while being asymptomatic and also it can be fatal without killing too quickly. That's extremely unusual. Even more rare, some people never showed symptoms or the symptoms were so mild so it was unclear if it was Covid at all.
Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola), for example, are incredibly deadly but that really limits their ability to spread. You still have to be diligent but there's a reason why Ebola has been contained to parts of Africa the the virus seemingly spreads from animals to humans every now and again, starting another local outbreak. But it's never spread globally and it's unlikely to.
Probably the last comparable disease to Covid was the Spanish flu in terms of its ability to spread and that was over 100 years ago. It's worth noting that the Spanish flu could also spread asymptomatically, which also explains it's impact to a large degree. Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu, which also tells you something about what tends to happen to novel diseases.
Y pestus is a bacteria, not a virus. We now have antibiotics that could likely combat it, which was obviously something that didn't exist in medieval Europe. Back then it wasn't at all clear that diseases spread by microorganisms at all. Plus, rodents were key to that spread and that's a far smaller problem now.
The nightmare scenario is probably some deadly variant of measles because measles is so incredibly contagious, probably more than any other disease I can think of. It can survive airborne for a very long time and in the modern era we've traced outbreaks of tens of thousands of cases to one single person. But the ability of measles to survive outside a host is also (luckily) incredibly rare.
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The disease is not the problem, people's reaction to it, is.
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Pneumonic plague seems bad enough, though its high mortality rate might limit spread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonic_plague
> Former head of the national public health agency Rospotrebnadzor stated that the disease the researcher died of is "most likely not the plague, but even if confirmed, there will be no spread of this disease
Very reassuring.
I would think the significance being the person was a lab worker. Someone getting hantavirus while camping in Yosemite is a lot less concerning than a lab worker death from pneumonic plague after having a test tube break.
I also think it's overblown. My fear is that this is a special form of the disease, modified by Russian researchers for who knows what reasons, and may therefore be a problem.
There was a recent fatality in Arizona.
'The “young adult male” died eight hours after he was admitted to the hospital, where doctors initially suspected he had hantavirus disease or bacterial pneumonia. Post-mortem testing confirmed Y pestis presence in his blood and lung tissue. It's Arizona’s first pneumonic plague death since 2007.'
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/plague/cdc-reminds-doctors-southw...
There are three ways the plague manifests: bubonic (Black Death, highly treatable), pneumonic [1] (what this researcher died of) and septicemic (gets in your blood–super nasty, but also doesn't spread easily).
Pneumonic is the most transmissible. There are also no commercially-available vaccines for it in most countries. That's why this is worth paying attention to. Not reacting. But keeping a close eye on. Russia being Russia we'll probably only learn if containment was lost from Mongolia or China.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonic_plague
Or Ukraine, because they are not above biological warfare and will send the poor sods over the border.
My fear is that this is an enhanced virus that was being subjected to gain of function research, making it potentially much more dangerous than bog standard plague.
Bacteria in this case
I mostly agree, but I am more concerned about a strain from a lab than the wild. Many times we study the worst strains, which might mean this has more potential to spread, higher fatality, etc.
Similar to the cruise-ship Hantavirus situation earlier this year. People see a disease they've never encountered and assume it's a novel pandemic. Really, it's just one of the rare cases where a westerner contracts a disease that's endemic to the global poor.
Most of people who are alive can relate to a very specific period in their lives, and it’s easy to imagine now what virus can do in terms of social life.
Are you discounting rural Americans as not being part of the global poor then? Or not real “westerners”? There have been roughly 30 cases a year in western states since the disease was first found here in the 90s
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Hantavirus is worth worrying about, though. If you have a mouse infestation, don't vacuum up droppings. Put on a mask, spray them with disinfectant, get them nice and wet, wipe them up 10 minutes later while they're still wet, then clean the area again.
Oh, was the hantavirus a product of a Russian gain-of-function biolab?
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My concern is that it is “the plague”.
The particular bacterium if infecting the skin is fairly treatable and mild with modern medicine, pneumonic plague is 100% lethal if not treated within 24h and utterly asymptomatic during the first 24h, it’s also airborne. Same bacterium but very different diseases..
> pneumonic plague is 100% lethal if not treated within 24h and utterly asymptomatic during the first 24h
But isn't the 24 hour critical window of treatment measured from the onset of symptoms?
Expect more cases of rare things, because more rain = more green plants, which means rodents will be able to breed many fold over. We saw something similar in the 90's
This was a "28-year-old employee at the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk", she didn't catch it from a rat in a rural area.
I think a lot of people don't realize the Black Plague is bacterial and we already have a cure for it. Most people getting anxious probably assume its like Covid and a cure would have to be developed.
I've got bad news for you. It may seem like a good thing that Y. Pestis is bacterial since we have antibiotics but remember that bacteria can become antibiotic resistant. You might say "no problem, that would only happen if there were a lot of cases and people weren't properly using antibiotics" and while this is true it is also possible to deliberately make Y. Pestis antibiotic resistant. "Who in their right mind would do a stupid thing like that?" you may ask, well it turns out the Soviets did and likely stockpiled large amounts of it with plans to deliver it in an aerosolized form over cities. Aerosolized particles are how you contract pneumonic plague which if you can't treat it with antibiotics is nearly 100% lethal in all cases. It can also be passed from human to human via coughing. So, here's hoping that this is just a rare case of wild type Y. Pestis that the lab worker somehow unfortunately inhaled and didn't get treatment for in time.
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Another thing is that the Black Plague symptoms are pretty horrible, enough to cause anxiety even if you know there is a cure.
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Do you have a theory for why that researcher died?
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there is not information that's exactly the same bacteria and that drugs work. It might be novel one or modified in the lab. Even for flu we don't have general vaccine that works.
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What's your point?
Yes the bubonic plague was terrifying for the pre-modern old world but in the 21st century it is easily countered with common antibiotics.
Not in a gain of function lab. Or the lab worker, knowingly working on this specific pathogen, would probably still be alive.
So why is she dead?
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Prairie dogs are the main carriers in the US, and yet some people still want to give them protections because they are “cute”. They are literal vermin. Colorado is attempting to put a bag limit on hunting them, which is ridiculous given nobody is bagging their prairie dog kills. Because again, they are vermin.
They are food for coyotes and similar predators, no? They have a place in the ecology of the area.
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> a 28-year-old employee at the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk, became ill at work...
> It remains unclear how she became unwell.
That's some fine reporting right there.
I suppose it's better than making up a reason, right?
I'm surprised this took so long to make it over to the mainstream news.
I read about this on r/PrepperIntel 2 days ago.
https://old.reddit.com/r/PrepperIntel/comments/1wwektn/irkut...
It was 1 day ago on Axios.
It isn't a concern. Just more noise to "flood the zone" while the Trump admins keeps doing illegal and scandalous things.
Damn, I'm worried whether Russia’s response will prioritise containing the pathogen or containing the embarrassment. You can’t patch a public-health incident with a press release.
I suspect it will be similar to the current American regime's past handling of COVID: a lot of skilled people wanting to do the right thing, but having to fight an unnecessary uphill battle against the administration that was more interested in perception, economics, and politics than lives.
It’s not nearly as black and white as you lay out. Despite evidence of immunity after contracting COVID, the prior administration continued to pursue a vaccination mandate through OSHA. Additionally arbitrary rules and limitations such as the 6’ rule were routinely parroted by public health authorities and state governments. That’s in addition to what another commenter pointed out about the mask flip flopping.
I'm not sure the public health establishment didn't do more harm than good during COVID, especially with all the politically expedient flip-flopping on masking: First claiming it was unnecessary as a white lie to protect supplies for front-line workers, then promoting cloth masks despite evidence not being able to establish it statistically significantly slows spread, and then insisting on masking children in their formative years who had already been vaccinated or otherwise gained natural protection against COVID.
Remember all the theater around wearing your mask to your restaurant table and then taking it off for your entire meal in an enclosed room with dozens of other people? Or shutting down public parks and beaches but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
The Trump admin was cartoonishly inept but the public health experts did plenty to kill their own credibility as well.
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I mean we are talking about the successor state to the one that botched the Chernobyl response, it's not hard to imagine a repeat
...did you live through the same COVID? Do you not remember when the top researchers colluded to repeatedly bald-faced lie to their peers and the public about the likely origins of the virus?
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scientists-behind-paper-...
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Is your implication that COVID was intentionally created in an American bioweapons lab with the goal of creating something both highly deadly and highly transmissible for use in future conflicts?
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Most likely both. Just recently Russia had already contained the embarrassment of announcing there was a foot-and-mouth disease in cattle (so they don’t have to declare even a sporadic outbreak), but they also eradicated all the cattle to both contain and cover it up. Most likely, the same thing - containing, but under a different (less unsavory-sounding) pretense.
Who will be Russia’s Li Wenliang
Take a guess, will Putin prioritize the safety of humans or his own pride? He’s literally waging a war that is based on his warped divine feeling of pride for Rus
Alternatively, that's just an excuse, and he's waging a war because the existential threat to his autocratic kleptocracy by even a modestly successful, somewhat democratic neighboring state with significant inter-country exchange of people and ideas.
Worse yet, this is contained but Putin will use it to argue against foreign actors weakening him further because 'think of the consequences`. I hate how paranoid this timeline has made me.
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Russians don't do disasters by halves, so we should prepare ourselves for the worst outcome.
The Plague is very much still around, yes. Around the world, we get a few cases every year, but we are not in the Dark Ages. Much of the reason it caused as many deaths as it did was due to a lack of understanding. We did not know what really caused disease, we did not know ships were carrying the disease vector, we did not have proper treatments, etc. Today for the cases we have, it is a lot more treatable. We of course monitor it, so we can be prepared (close off vectors of spread like airlines, for example), but there really is nothing to worry about. Happens all the time.
I believe this was pneumonic plague, which spreads via the air, not animal vectors.
Same bacteria for both.
One of the popular sarcastic meme posting channels on russian Telegram today posted a picture of an ad "Wanted: lab worker, ready to break a vial right next to just the right person. Benefits: $10M payout; guaranteed care of your descendants; your name mentioned in annals of history". Nice and dark and very accurate.
This spells out a scenario that had just popped into my mind: what if this is an intentional "demonstration" of their bioweapon prowess, which they are using as leverage for backroom negotiations around Ukraine or whatever.
This sounds interesting, name of the channel?
"sarcastic meme posting channels on russian Telegram"
That phrase. I think these people and how they are using tech and memes are part of the current problem of this world. A large part of the problem, in my opinion. It's may be just coping, dark humor for most but it is deep psychosis for others and it's giving them ideas and power over the rest of us. I'd strive to be better than falling into such meme sharing sociopathy.
I'll keep the rest of my words to myself.
I really don't like FAFO science.
“COVID was airborne. COVID had a case fatality rate of 1%. Pneumonic plague, without antibiotics, has a case fatality rate of 100%.” Annie Jacobsen Author of Biological War [00:23:00] https://www.jordanharbinger.com/annie-jacobsen-the-genes-and...
> COVID had a case fatality rate of 1%. Pneumonic plague, without antibiotics, has a case fatality rate of 100%.
a) why are we comparing treated death rates with untreated death rates?
b) COVID got significantly less deadly as it evolved, which is a known phenomenon that should also apply to this plague
c) that link hijacked my back button, I don't appreciate that >:-(
> b) COVID got significantly less deadly as it evolved, which is a known phenomenon that should also apply to this plague
No, it isn't a known phenomenon, and no, that isn't what happened.
Transmissibility and virulence are actually linked.
Delta was more transmissible and was more deadly, not less. Omicron was also highly transmissible and highly deadly.
Viral replication is also linked to both transmissibility and virulence, and that also increased with Delta and Omicron.
The headlines that Omicron was less virulent were falsified when Omicron hit Taiwan (a largely immune-naive elderly population) and was every bit as deadly as Delta was.
What happened to make later strains less deadly was the evolution of the human immune system since pretty much everyone became vaccinated or recovered and acquired T-cells that would recognize later strains.
The virus only "cares" if it becomes so virulent that it kills you before it spreads. The way that COVID kills, long after the presymptomatic shedding period, after several weeks, doesn't matter--you can dial it up and make that worse, and you won't prevent the virus from spreading.
> > COVID had a case fatality rate of 1%. Pneumonic plague, without antibiotics, has a case fatality rate of 100%.
> a) why are we comparing treated death rates with untreated death rates?
Even when treated (and treatment has to be within 24 hours) the death rate for pneumonic plague is still 17%. Better than 100%, but still nightmare fuel, especially given that the treatment has to be administered almost immediately or it will be ineffective and you're back to the 100% case fatality rate.
I guess how bad the situation is depends how quickly that 100% chance of dying pans out.
The quicker it is, the less it spreads.
Has this got a name?
presumably 100% fatality rate means the virus won't get very far, depending on incubation period
Rabies has a pretty much 100% fatality rate and it's still around.
Black death got pretty far...
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Isn't this easily treated with anti-biotics these days? Surprised that someone would die of plague in this day and age so long as treatment is prompt, which for a lab worker it seemingly should have been...
Another comment said treatment needs to begin 24 hours after infection or its almost always fatal. And they also said you don't have many symptoms within the 24 hour window.
I could see that still killing a lot of people even though a treatment would guarantee survival
Did she visit a Russian wet market ?
Will the next cases be in Ukraine?
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960084
First China and now Russia? We can't allow a pandemic gap!
Either way it's a communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
That's why I only drink pure grain alcohol and rainwater
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I guess we'll get to see how great the LLMs are at curing disease after all..
The only thing that doesn’t scare me as much about this is that it’s bacterial.
the same US that gives zero fraks about public health and gutted the CDC before and during the pandemic?
If you think we don't care, well, get ready for a level of not caring that will be hard to fathom.
This is the successor state to the country that thought it could hide a cloud of nuclear fallout.
That’s not what happened. The Trump admin repeatedly proposed substantial CDC cuts, but Congress largely rejected them: CDC budget authority went from about $6B in 2017 to $7B in 2020, before counting the enormous emergency COVID appropriations. Once COVID hit, CDC received billions more, including $2B in the first supplemental and $4B in the CARES Act.
The truth is the CDC and broader public-health apparatus were not starved of money; they performed badly despite substantial resources. The CDC botched its initial COVID test, their systems were antiquated, guidance was wildly inconsistent, and the agency later reorganized itself after acknowledging major operational failures.
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While also working as Viceroy of Venezuela.
Oh, and National Security Advisor.
the person who died , I believ lived and worked in the same area, and presumably would have recieved every availible escalation in care, and that she was likely ambulatory on admitance would have relayed her ocupational hazards, that she died implies that, she had a compromised immune system or pre existing complication or condition, or this was an exceptionaly virolent infection or less likely, incompetence and botched care, even less likely her cause of death is completly unrelated to the plauge. that they have quarantined hundreds suggests that this is in fact an unknown virolent infectios disease. almost certainly, cultures and dna tests are well underway and there will be clear answers within 48 hr's or sooner.
> cultures and dna tests are well underway and there will be clear answers within 48 hr's or sooner.
Patient zero died 4-5 days ago after being infected for about a week (likely infected Sept 25th).
There are probably already clear answers to some of these questions, but that doesn't mean the public will get them.
Imagine calling it racist to suggest this person became infected from a Russian lab.
Because that's what happened when people suggested the most obvious origin of the Covid pandemic.
Quick reminder that the last time the US had the current president, the world had a pandemic about halfway through
glad we laid off so many government workers and cdc staff, and politicized their work. very cool and certainly making things great.
The AI giants are developing their own private bio labs, so at least we can rely on them to fill the knowledge gap.
They politicized their own work.
sure sure whatever you say
September 23rd, 2026:
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls Vladimir Putin “patient zero” of global wars spreading: “He must be denied the space to act and the space to spread this evil further.”
- Taylor Swift announces surprise new single: “Patient Zero”
I thought this was weird
I bet Claude is behind it
Spoiler alert: no US department under RFK Jr is closely monitoring anything.
"A little plague will be good for your natural immunity, by my favorite Danish team of crackpot researchers have just received $10M in express funding to test in African children whether the GCB vaccine helps, when we expose them to the bacterium"
I always wanted to live through TWO pandemics! /s
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The CIA broke into the lab in Irkutsk and caused the worker to drop the vial, in order to influence elections in the US? Sounds plausible...
There are as many possibilities as one could imagine. This is still hypothetical (as I said in my comment above, I know what I will assume only if it disrupts the elections, and hope it does not, which will restore some trust), but means, motives and who benefits are important to remember when evaluating unknowable situations. Granting the benefit of the doubt is not something I do for this US administration and their fellow travelers.
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Putin was told that <whatever they named this plague> was responsible for causing problems, and therefore the vial was thrown out a window.
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It's unfounded in Ukraine and it's unfounded in the context of the casus belli which had as much to do with WMDs as when the US invaded Iraq, which is to say nothing.
Since they can't waste a paragraph satisfying pedants, "unfounded" is as good as anything.
Pretty unfounded wrt Ukraine.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdin/pr/iu-biology-researcher-p...
“Youhuang Xiang (“Xiang”), 32, formerly a post-doctoral researcher at Indiana University and a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, has been sentenced to more than four months in prison, a $500 fine, and one year of supervised release, after pleading guilty to smuggling biologic materials into the United States from China.”
> after pleading guilty
Let me start by saying that I am not a lawyer but that being said, I don't know how I feel about this. I don't like the taste of plea bargain in my mouth. It feels a lot like the government basically tells any suspect, plead guilty or you will face the maximum fury and unlimited budget of the government. Especially after Aaron Swartz, the fiction that prosecutors and even judges are fair and balanced arbiters of justice has evaporated away.
> They may not be ignored at the whim and folly of scientific researchers and academic institutions.
I for one support scientists and researchers and trust them to follow all the necessary protocol than any pencil pusher. I don't even consider prosecutors living organisms more like a machine whose only goal is career advancement, justice be damned. Expecting grace from them is folly.