Suspected Plague Outbreak in Siberia

[willrod1989]

I apologize that I haven't been keeping up with the Ebola outbreak in the DRC. However, something major is happening in Siberia that is even more urgent. A researcher at a laboratory in Irkutsk has apparently died after a lab accident involving plague. The Russian government said it was caused by pneumonia of unknown origin. What is extremely concerning to me is that the Russian government has placed 200 people in quarantine and has locked down 4 to 5 hospitals. They have also canceled public events in Irkutsk, while downplaying the significance of this event. It must be noted that Russia has long been suspected to have a biological weapons program, specifically focused on pneumonic plague. This therefore warrants close monitoring.

Researcher at Russian plague laboratory dies of ‘unknown’ infection

 

[willrod1989]

BREAKING: 5 hospitals have been closed for quarantines in Siberia due to a possible plague outbreak. The 28-year-old lab technician Darya Shipilova, died yesterday after breaking a test tube with live Yersinia pestis the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute on September 25th while handling samples. A mask mandate has now been introduced at the huge aluminum plant in Irkutsk. Some U.S. politicians are now calling for commercial air travel to and from Russia to be stopped until the situation is clarified. This first symptoms of pneumonic plague typically start about 4 to 7 days after exposure. 200 people are under observation.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2106778297484939750

 

[DEFCON Warning System]

Another lab leak in a country that probably doesn't have the best safety protocols. What a shock.

 

[willrod1989]

This one has me very concerned- perhaps more than what happened in Wuhan. Russia has long been suspected to be engaging in bioweapons research specifically targeting plague. Furthermore, the case-fatality ratio with pneumonic plague is close to 100% if left untreated. One of the big unknowns at this time is whether or not this suspected strain of plague is genetically modified to be either more transmissible, resistant to treatment, or both.

 

[alphaecho]

 

[william]

A FORMER WHITE HOUSE BIOSECURITY OFFICIAL IS NOW RAISING A MUCH MORE SERIOUS POSSIBILITY ABOUT THE IRKUTSK LAB CASE.

Dr. Ashish Jha @ashishkjha , the former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator and a physician and biosecurity expert, says he is concerned that the unexplained death of a 28-year-old employee at Russia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute could represent the kind of scenario biosecurity officials have long feared: an accidental release involving research connected to a biological-weapons program.

Jha is explicitly raising the possibility, not claiming it has been proven. His concern rests partly on the broader intelligence picture. The United States has for years assessed that Russia maintains an offensive biological-weapons program and has failed to provide sufficient transparency over activities inherited from the Soviet program.Jha also points to reports of FSB involvement in the response around Irkutsk, including security personnel accompanying ambulances transporting exposed contacts.“If accurate, that’s not the posture of a routine natural outbreak, even a normal lab accident,” he writes.

Jha argues that the principal risk posed by clandestine biological-weapons programs may therefore not be deliberate use, but an accident inside a system operating with little outside scrutiny.

His intervention comes as the White House says it is now monitoring the suspected plague case and “assessing options.” For now, the central facts remain unresolved: what pathogen, if any, killed Shipilova; whether a laboratory exposure occurred; and why the response expanded to extensive contact monitoring and hospital restrictions despite Moscow’s categorical denial of a plague-related accident.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2106962898467594354

 

[william]

The director of Russia’s Irkutsk anti-plague institute was in CHINA just weeks ago for a “cross-border infectious disease” exercise that simulated responses to imported PLAGUE and “Disease X.”

Chinese government reporting names director Sergey Balakhonov as attending and speaking at the August 24–27 exercise in Fuyuan. The Chinese exercise involved the following:

• A scenario involving plague arriving from abroad.

• A hypothetical emerging tick-borne disease.

• Chinese and Russian experts rehearsing outbreak notifications, joint risk assessments, and coordinated control measures.

• Nineteen emergency teams, more than 300 personnel, and over 40 emergency vehicles.

And the institute’s Chinese partnerships go back years.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107109271712485438

 

[Librarylady]

I'm already getting November 2019 deja vu....
I can easily see he not reporting the incident to avoid getting in trouble but i don't see her being stupid enough to skip.treatment. I'd think that she started an oral course of cipro or doxy on her own and ended up in the hospital when that didn't work. If that's what happened that means this is a man-made antibiotic-resistant strain. Which explains the FSB response.

 

[william]

Sec. Marco Rubio confirms unknown Plague pathogen death at Russian Lab. “We’re watching and monitoring it closely.”Reports say a lab technician was infected and died. Localized quarantine is already up in the region. U.S. health and security agencies are tracking the risk of a containment failure.Rubio: “I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause to just keep an eye on. And we’re doing that.”

Don't worry, be happy!

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107121172013830279

https://twitter.com/x/status/2106338623477960825

 

[Publius]

put this one on the shelf. Her confirmed cause of death is pneumonia. Origen or cause of he pneumonia is not confirmed by officials.
There are as yet are no secondary infections of plague. Just a 100+ people quarantined and under observations.

Pneumonic plague generally in the modern world has a very low R0 factor. So even though it’s a horrible way to die and high fatality rate if untreated.
In the modern western world it has a relatively low mortality rate.
So doesn’t spread easily, treatable, low mortality rate.

Of course all that’s out the window of this is some bioengineered monster.

 

[Librarylady]

put this one on the shelf. Her confirmed cause of death is pneumonia. Origen or cause of he pneumonia is not confirmed by officials.
There are as yet are no secondary infections of plague. Just a 100+ people quarantined and under observations.

Pneumonic plague generally in the modern world has a very low R0 factor. So even though it’s a horrible way to die and high fatality rate if untreated.
In the modern western world it has a relatively low mortality rate.
So doesn’t spread easily, treatable, low mortality rate.

Of course all that’s out the window of this is some bioengineered monster.

The Russian govt. is overreacting in a MAJOR way for pneumonia. The 200 people in quarantine were escorted by the FSB not by health services. The Head of Russia's Heath Dept flew in from Moscow but hasn't released any statements. Patients in the maternity hospital report being given questionaires about symptoms consistant with pneumonjc plague.

Not to mention it's odd that a 28 year old woman would die of regular pneumonia or any normal respiratory disease after receiving treatment.

I don't think it's a coincidence that she worked at a lab that specialized in playing around with plague.

 

[william]

put this one on the shelf. Her confirmed cause of death is pneumonia. Origen or cause of he pneumonia is not confirmed by officials.
There are as yet are no secondary infections of plague. Just a 100+ people quarantined and under observations.

Pneumonic plague generally in the modern world has a very low R0 factor. So even though it’s a horrible way to die and high fatality rate if untreated.
In the modern western world it has a relatively low mortality rate.
So doesn’t spread easily, treatable, low mortality rate.

Of course all that’s out the window of this is some bioengineered monster.

I think this is going to hinge on if more cases start happening. Let's hope not but would we even know if there are more cases in the city in question? I don't trust russia. That fact that is claimed to come from a lab and not the environment is what makes me nervous.

 

[Snowfall]

I think this is going to hinge on if more cases start happening. Let's hope not but would we even know if there are more cases in the city in question? I don't trust russia. That fact that is claimed to come from a lab and not the environment is what makes me nervous.

Well let’s put it this way, the disease has an incubation period of 24 hours to 4 days. She died in the hospital on the 2nd and was admitted a couple days prior. In theory, if there were more cases, one of her contacts would be showing them. This bacteria isn’t all that contagious despite it being respiratory. If it weren’t for everyone having a bit of COVID PTSD this story probably would’ve been buried on obscure news sites and we wouldn’t hear much more.

 

[Librarylady]

Well let’s put it this way, the disease has an incubation period of 24 hours to 4 days. She died in the hospital on the 2nd and was admitted a couple days prior. In theory, if there were more cases, one of her contacts would be showing them. This bacteria isn’t all that contagious despite it being respiratory. If it weren’t for everyone having a bit of COVID PTSD this story probably would’ve been buried on obscure news sites and we wouldn’t hear much more.

The problem is that this is most likely an engineered strain -- it may have a longer incubation period. Also, Now that the Russian govt has taken control of the narrative, I doubt we're going to get any real information unless cases pop up in surrounding countries.

 

[willrod1989]

The problem is that this is most likely an engineered strain -- it may have a longer incubation period. Also, Now that the Russian govt has taken control of the narrative, I doubt we're going to get any real information unless cases pop up in surrounding countries.

Exactly. I didn't put much stock into what the Chinese were saying during the beginning of COVID-19 until cases started showing up in other cities and countries. When you're dealing with a highly transmissible pathogen that is possibly genetically engineered, you have to look at what governments are doing instead of what they are saying. Every single government in the world is going to downplay the severity of what is taking place in the early stages to keep the public calm.

With that being said, quarantining 200 contacts in several hospitals is precisely what public health officials should be doing based on a single case of pneumonic plague. I know the numbers sound pretty scary, but epidemiologists work on trying to isolate people based on several generations of possible transmission. At this point, we need to start paying attention to what officials in Russia are doing on the ground. If this quarantine ends up expanding, we know that there is likely local transmission in the Irkutsk region. What would really start concerning me is seeing public health measures being implemented in other parts of Russia.

There have been reports of health checks being implemented at border crossings with neighboring countries. This does not tell us too much at this time. When there is a possible escape of a Level One pathogen, neighboring countries will move aggressively to try to prevent importation of the disease into their borders. This is precisely what Uganda has done with the Ebola outbreak (and one of the main reasons I've taken a break from reporting on it for right now).

The next few days should tell us where this outbreak is going. For now, though, if I were to place this on a scale similar to the DEFCON Warning System (but for pandemics), this easily warrants a "PANDEMICON" 4. If we start seeing cases in other cities, I would move this up to "PANDEMICON" 3.

 

[Snowfall]

The problem is that this is most likely an engineered strain -- it may have a longer incubation period.

There is legitimately zero evidence of this and it is entirely speculation, so no it is not “most likely.” The lab is in Siberia where the plague is endemic, it makes complete sense for them to be studying the bacteria which causes the plague there. Is there a possibility that this is an engineered strain? Sure, but to call it the most likely is purely speculation without factual basis.

 

[alphaecho]

CDC is aware of and closely monitoring reports of a suspected case of pneumonic plague in the Irkutsk region of Russia that resulted in a death. We are working across the U.S. government to assess developments as additional information becomes available.While the circumstances of this reported case remain unconfirmed, plague is a serious bacterial disease that is treatable with antibiotics, particularly when recognized and treated early.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107532285297951180

 

[william]

US Secretary of State presser

Sec. Marco Rubio says Russia should immediately stop hiding information from the world about the plague outbreak."We just don't have all the information yet. I think it's incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world. That's what they should do.""Maybe there's nothing there. Maybe it's bigger than we thought — we don't know. But I think it would be reckless at this moment, given the limited information we still have to speculate about what this might or might not be or what this is or what this isn't."

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107441257903493121

 

[william]

U.S. Embassy Moscow issues a Health Alert regarding the suspected pneumonic plague in Irkutsk

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107566299396088007

 

[william]

Well, this is disturbing

In the 1990s I worked with Ken Alibek, the former No. 2 in the Soviet biological weapons program, after he defected to the US. He claimed that they had engineered a strain of plague that was antibiotic-resistant & that they had worked on plague chimeras (fusing 2 or more pathogens).

He specifically called out Irkutsk for being involved in the BW program. This outbreak is deeply worrisome. This may not be just “the plague.” It may be far worse.

Marshall S. Billingslea, Frmr Presidential Envoy & Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing, NATO ASG, Navy Deputy Under, now Fellow at Hudson Inst.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107324893113069594

• Marshall Billingslea, a former US arms control official, cites his 1990s collaboration with Soviet bioweapons defector Ken Alibek, who described Soviet development of antibiotic-resistant plague strains and pathogen chimeras at facilities including Irkutsk.
• The post references a recent incident at Irkutsk's Anti-Plague Research Institute, where 28-year-old technician Darya Shipilova died from suspected pneumonic plague after reportedly breaking a vial of Yersinia pestis, triggering local quarantines, antibiotic shortages, and international calls for transparency.
• Alibek's accounts, detailed in his book Biohazard and 1999 congressional testimony, confirm the Soviet Biopreparat program engineered plague variants for virulence and resistance, stockpiling tons of agents despite official denials of ongoing offensive work. Grok