The plague in the Irkutsk region, Russia

[william]

More than 189 Russians were hospitalized after coming into contact with a woman who died of the plague in the Irkutsk region.Shelekhovsky district hospital was closed for quarantine. Woman caught the plague after breaking a test tube with bacteria in a laboratory. She was admitted to the hospital on September 29, and died two days later.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2106056798545285344

• A pro-Ukraine X account reports a lab accident in Russia's Irkutsk region where a 27-28-year-old anti-plague institute worker died from pneumonic plague after breaking a test tube with bacteria, leading to 189 people hospitalized for observation and the Shelekhov hospital under quarantine.
• The incident is confirmed by multiple Russian media outlets including Izvestia, REN TV, and The Moscow Times, with the woman hospitalized September 29 and dying two days later; local authorities have quarantined contacts and halted hospital admissions.
• The attached image shows a Russian hospital notice announcing suspended sample collection due to quarantine, sparking replies highlighting irony around biolab safety in Russia amid ongoing geopolitical tensions. Grok

 

[william]

Regarding the Biolab escape of Pneumonic plague in Russia, here is what I found, or more precisely, what I did not find. I did not find a highly secure military research site away from populated areas, with limited public access.What I found out though, that its possibly ALOT worse than expected:

Picture 1: Red hexagon: "Shelekhovskaya Tsentral'naya" Hospital, where the victim and other people were/are quarantined to. Supposedly with FSB, noticed Pink Circle: "Hammer and Sickle" Monument and Roundabout, URL https://weacom.ru/cams/view/serpmolot . It is sadly offline. The real question is: since how long, is there a coincidence, or is it just "failed state russia broken".

Picture 2 and 3: The actual research facility, notice the "extreme" security measures and how its absolutely in the middle of the city, 16km/10mi away from the Quarantine Hospital: Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East is at 78 Trilisser Street Irkutsk, 664047, Russia

Picture 4: Public Transport is very common in former soviet countries.If we assume that she was hospitalized and died in the hospital on the west bank of the river because she was a resident there, she must have traveled using one of the lines crossing Glazkovskiy most. As this is a natural chokepoint, this is not O+D traffic but traffic from all over the city which she will have encountered there.Irkutsk is a major hub between Russia and Asia. The Transsiberian Railway goes through it.The "Patient 1" certainly must have travelled through the entire city, possibly multiple times.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2106388413461024858

 

[william]

Cause of infection disputed

How she was infected. One account, from Lyudi Baikala, says she broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen at work; another, from Telegram channel Mash via EADaily, says she may have caught it on a work trip to Buryatia, where a plague outbreak spread by ground squirrels was reported near the Mongolian border. There is no official announcement of the cause of death or the plague strain. Plague is a bacterial disease that remains endemic in rodent populations in parts of Central Asia and Siberia.

The picture to hold is narrow: one confirmed death, one quarantined hospital, ~200 monitored contacts, none sick so far. The public-health risk looks contained. The open questions are accountability, a lab accident or a natural infection, and transparency, since Russian authorities have not yet said officially what she died of.

Sounds like spin to me. With the hospital on quarantine lockdown would we even know how many are actually infected.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2106372344264487268

 

[william]

Is this a novel bacterial agent weaponized in a lad similar to how the Covid virus was made? Gain of function research, AGAIN!

 

[Publius]

As I understand the plague. The common outbreak is bubonic. Which can readily be treated with antibiotics
Pneumonic is a mutation of bubonic. It can occur naturally but not incredibly common <14%.
But it’s exponentially more contagious because it’s airborne.
So this could have come through natural animal transmission, but unlikely.

At this point I’m not super excited about this being a bio weapon. There are biological labs all over the world collecting and tracking bacterial and viral samples all the time. This is just good science as long as it’s conducted properly.

More info needed to know if this is nefarious. And we will likely never know for sure if it was.