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.
The algorithm giveth, and the algorithm keepeth away.
Before I clicked that link I had never heard of Breaking Points, a political series with over 2MM subscribers. I'm a YT premium subscriber and watch a ton of political stuff, much of it damn similar to what that channel produces.
I also watched a lot of news content and never saw them until seeking them out. I suspect they are suppressed by the algorithm because they are generally willing to give voice to anti-establishment, anti-oligrachy sentiments (both from the hosts and guests). But yea they're great. The primary hosts are explicitly left and right leaning but rarely get caught up in partisan discord and instead focus on high quality, fact based journalism. (Relatedly, the one topic that does most often trigger the occasional bouts of partisan bickering between Saagar and Krystal is COVID and Dr. Fauci, make of that what you will).
Funnily enough the reason why virology therapy (something the Soviets did a lot of research in cuz they didn't have good antibiotics and biotech/pharma) hasn't seen much success at scale is precisely because the body's immune system adapts too quickly. Maybe we will see more success now with AI but it will be a cold day in hell before the powers that be let any garage biohacker have access to LLMs trained on this sort of information.
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.
There are some that had been modified to release endorphins!
>"When we first heard Soviet scientists were inserting the endorphin gene [for euphoria] into plague," says Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist, "we were appalled. That they would purposefully engineer the Y. pestis bacteria to behave this way... to make you want to go out and socialize... this was some horrifying stuff."
> . . .
> Former assistant secretary of defense Andy Weber agrees. "I grew up thinking Reagan’s phrase ‘Evil Empire’ was an exaggeration," he tells us. "Then I learned what the Russians were doing [with biological warfare]." He pauses for effect. "It was evil."
The accounts are from Annie Jacobsen's notes in "Biological War".
Endorphins make you happy as you are. Endorphins have sedative effect. Morphine is a similar substance and it is a sedative, all opioids are.
What makes one socialize is dopamine [1]: "Hypomania, manifesting with feelings of euphoria, omnipotence, or grandiosity are prone to appear in those moments when medication (dopaminergic medication - thesz) effects are at their maximum."
This dopamine dysregulation occurs naturally in people with toxoplasmosis.
This kind of mistake - mistaking dopamine and endorphine, - strongly suggests a fake. I know of one such fake from the former employee of my friend, you can read his account here [2]. My friend was a lead of the "secret" laboratory (next to Kitay Gorod metro station in the center of Moscow, in an institute that needed no documents to enter) that researched how "psychics" and "healers" achieve their results.
The laboratory researched what these "extrasensing people" do and found nothing - given very little training an ordinary men can do the same and even better. At the end of USSR, there was a string of visitors from USA there in the lab, and one of those visitors successfully persuaded US government to open similar research program, according to [2].
The fearmongering of "endorphin-producing bugs that make one socialize and spread" looks like, well, fearmongering to obtain funds for Big Pharma's government contracts, etc. It messes up two very different neurotransmitters, a mistake that real scientist would not make.
Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source. (Having said that, bacteria upregulate selected interleukins to reduce inflammation, so maybe this is a game of telephone based on some actual Soviet effort to increase virulence, just not "euphoria.")
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source.
Where was this claimed? Do we have any definitive confirmation of the Roswell incident anyway?
This sounded so ridiculous that I had to check. The book is Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. This unflattering contemporary review, retrieved from the Wayback Machine, has an excerpt:
The engineers were told that the children were rumored to have been kidnapped by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi madman who, at Auschwitz and elsewhere, was known to have performed unspeakable experimental surgical procedures mostly on children, dwarfs, and twins. The engineers learned that just before the war ended, Josef Mengele made a deal with Stalin. Stalin offered Mengele an opportunity to continue work in eugenics. . . . in secret, in the Soviet Union.
Mengele held up his side of the Faustian bargain and provided Stalin with the child-size crew. . . .
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets
(the link is a translation to Russian, I was unable to find the original text in English)
Also consider that toxoplasma changes rat's dopamine serum level to such extent that they stop fearing cats. The same happens with humans, changes in dopamine serum level are so profound that toxoplasma-infected people become more appealing than regular people.
Indeed. I wonder how much work it would be to make this antibiotic resistant. Then the Russians develop some bacteriophage that infects and kills the bacteria as their own cure.
Making it antibiotic resistant is not difficult and they already did that back when they were the USSR. Not only did they develop it, they produced large quantities of it to stockpile for a rainy day.
The phrase "gain-of-function research" has acquired almost magical properties on the Internet. You can do literally anything you want to a pathogen with it.
Purposely giving a pathogen increased infection abilities and more lethality, and expecting to be able to contain it in a lab has proven to be wishful thinking time and again.
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.
> Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it
Yea you are definitely right about that. In Africa (specific countries I can’t currently recall) attempts at vaccination programs for example are often met with hostility or suspicion or even some people believing a vaccine causes the disease.
There was also vaccine skepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like China which refused first-to-market western vaccines out of fear and suspicion. It’s tragic all around.
To be fair, in Europe, we largely rejected the russian COVID vaccine. In theory we had good reasons, the vaccine was a bit shady, but I always wondered how much geopolitics played the role and how much it was really the problem with russian manufacturing standards.
I’m sure geopolitics had some effect, like it might have in China, but I think that just begs the question how serious the virus was for governments to say nah we will wait until we get our own vaccine from our trusted sources. Russia has vaccine skepticism too entirely if their own making.
In Europe’s defense, which is a very broad thing to speak of anyway, they had a vaccine either already there or close enough so why give Putin any credence when you could wait just a little bit longer?
Sure but the point is to focus on other countries/continents/peoples and their vaccine skepticism because that’s more interesting and less talked about.
Maybe Pakistan shouldn’t have been harboring Bin Laden and whatever ill effects happened here are the fault of Pakistan. Not my problem - Pakistan’s government and people needed to do better and whatever the human cost there was it was worth it to get Bin Laden. Actions have consequences.
Also stop trying to deprive other people and governments of their agency just because it fits a convenient western superiority complex you have. They’re not stupid.
Blaming the 340 million citizens of the US for Trump’s actions is repulsive too, but plenty of people enjoy doing that on the Internet.
Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions. Vaccine denial in the US? Same thing. You can’t say Americans are responsible for anti-vax sentiments, for example, and then say other people around the world aren’t.
Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible? I’ll happily take you admitting we’re the best if you want to go that route.
You know, even being about to talk this much about your own government or foreign governments takes a certain level of privilege. At least 1/5th of Pakistan is in poverty.
I’m proud to be privileged and think more should be.
For example I think Iranians should be privileged to speak out against their repressive government without fear of being hung. Pakistanis aren’t privileged and can’t speak out against their government harboring Bin Laden? Someone should fix that so they are are able to speak out against that, right?
Regardless, being poor doesn’t make one stupid or uneducated. Many Americans who are anti-vax are also poor by American standards, but I don’t think it matters. You can’t have your cake and eat it too here.
> Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
In a democracy, yes. Pakistan however is a democracy only in distant theory, pretty much everyone sane calls it an authoritarian regime [1].
And no, in the age of guns and nuclear weapons, we can't go and blame a country's people for its government. I don't blame Gazan civilians for Hamas, I don't blame Iranian civilians for the Mullahs, I don't blame Chinese peasants for the CCP and I don't blame ordinary Russians for Putin. These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
> Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions.
Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
> Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible?
Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited. On average they are far more literate, they got actual schools, they have reasonably free elections. Yes, the US democracy is flawed (FPTP and gerrymandering basically rendering the votes of swaths of people irrelevant, billionaires manipulating media coverage, ICE and other government organisations being used for voter suppression), but the US still is miles ahead of Pakistan or virtually all "third world" countries.
> In a democracy, yes. Pakistan however is a democracy only in distant theory, pretty much everyone sane calls it an authoritarian regime [1]
No I reject this and neo-liberal views of the world. That’s the mental model that got us into the Iraq debacle. What follows is that this becomes a problem (authoritarianism) that needs to be corrected “spread democracy”.
> These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
There is always a choice. Democracies weren’t inherent in the world but had to be fought for. They need to fight for their rights. Or not. It’s their responsibility.
> Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
Same was true during the age of European colonialism. “We must christianize them and educate them”. &c &c
> Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited.
As long as you agree Americans are better and exceptional I can’t really argue against you here.
There are directives that prevent using clergy and missionary work as a cover for intelligence operations, and a longstanding prohibition for using the peace corps.
That Bin Laden operation was so insanely short-sighted in the use of a vaccine program for spying. Completely erodes trust where it should never have eroded, and rightfully contributed to antivax mentality, not just in Pakistan, but also in the US. "Trust us, we're doctors" means nothing.
Oh well. They shouldn’t have harbored bin Laden. Whatever justification about “loss of trust” you can use here anyone else gets to use too. There was a loss of trust from Dr. Fauci (not by me, I got the vaccine ASAP and wore a mask until restrictions were lifted) by some because of actions taken.
I'm talking about choices made by people doing the hunting. I don't know why you're absolving them as if all choices are good choices. It takes more than a circumstance to justify an action.
I like a win. But a clean win is worth being proud of. It would actually be really cool not to shoot yourself in the foot, I think.
I’m just saying it’s justified, not that it was or is the best choice available. Nobody really knows what choices are available. Pakistan and its people made a choice to harbor bin Laden - they certainly had choices that we don’t need to absolve them for either.
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.
> ”Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu”
Not really. While it was true for much of the last century that many “seasonal flu” viruses were direct descendents from H1N1 Spanish flu, the H1N1 that caused the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic was a distinct strain combining new genes of pig, avian, and human flu origins. Since then, derivatives of that virus have replaced earlier ones as the most common circulating H1N1 types.
And right now the most common circulating influenza is actually H3N2 from a completely different (avian) lineage with origins in the 1968 pandemic.
I'd further note that the H1N1 flu is widely believed to have gone extinct in the wild, then been reintroduced in 1977 from a laboratory source, probably through a failed vaccine trial:
> The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens.19,31
This explanation is now printed uncontroversially in major journals, though at the time the WHO rejected it:
> Laboratory contamination can be excluded because the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time.
Unfortunately, you can force evolution in bacteria, fungi and viruses. There's more than enough examples of multi-resistant pathogens in all three families, especially in hospitals but also around agriculture (because they use stuff meant as a last-resort to promote animal growth or prevent animals from falling ill to the effects of overcrowding)... honestly between these and prions, I often do wonder how long we as humanity will be able to keep both hospitals and large-scale farming in existence.
Every evolved trait has a cost. We as a civilization have certainly been careless with, say, antibiotic resistance. If we stopped using a certain antibiotic tomorrow and didn't start using it for another 50 years, we'd find that most if not all of the resistant bacteria would've lost that resistance as they'd evolved new traits.
I'm reminded of the pronghorn antelope, a herbivore that evolved fast speed to avoid a predator that no longer exists, a cat having died out 7000+ years ago. It still has that speed but it has a real cost to their metabolism and their need to constantly eat. at some point they're going to lose that if it's not reinforced by some new predator or other evolutionary advantage.
You realize life is complex enough that two things can be true, right? That everything isn't either/or?
The reason we've haven't had more outbreaks of more diseases in the last century is because we had a lot of smart vigilant well-resourced people who very much felt the disease was the problem, and took steps to mitigate.
Classic late-stage civilization blunder is taking the fruits of civilization for granted. Sorry you're not aware of those things, but that's on you.
I think you can safely agree that they are not mutually exclusive and both of them are problems. In this particular case, it was a 100% fatality disease in a gain-of-function lab. It is being handled extremely seriously by Russia.
Perhaps the Russian military is overreacting with the blanket quarantines, but the odds are more likely that they understand the nature better than anyone else.
Again, normal pneumonic plague approaches 100% fatality rates. This is potentially a weaponized form.
> 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
Infection by hantavirus is correlated with where you live, not socioeconomic status. It is endemic to parts of the high desert in the American Southwest and a background risk you accept by living there.
For example, Gene Hackman's wife, Betsy Arakawa, famously died from hantavirus. They lived in a wealthy gated community in Santa Fe.
30 in a population of 350mill is a ~1:10000000 chance of getting it. 900 or so cases in 3 decades. A cursory google search shows it's killed about 300 people since 1990, so roughly 10 a year, the equivalent of venomous snake-related deaths more or less, and that's because we have quick access to anti-venoms for most of the population otherwise the casualties would be far higher.
Treating that low number like a low number is not "discounting" rural US citizens. The US - all populations included - does not really live with the hantavirus in any real sense. It's incredibly rare. 10x as many people are struck by lightening annually in the US.
Sure. It’s still an incredibly tiny number of people annually, especially considering there is no “direct” treatment or cure for it.
It is an incredibly rare disease, so it is hardly something that would qualify as “endemic” to any population in the US. Rural populations in the US do not feel it like rural populations in many other countries. Acknowledging that is not discounting or forgetting rural populations in the US. That is not a fair accusation in the slightest.
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.
Are you seriously accusing an anti-plague institute that works on containing outbreaks of building bio weapons? Maybe try taking the propaganda with a healthy dose of salt
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.
Answered this in another comment but my major fear if a bacterial plague like this became a pandemic would be our manufacturing output keeping pace with demand, not like during covid when it was not clear if it was even possible to create a cure.
I think it's pretty apparent from the news articles about it. She died of pneumonic plague, which is a fast-moving form of Yersinia Pestis infection that is roughly 100% fatal if first treatment occurs > 24 hours after symptoms start.
Why pneumonic plague? Pneumonic plague is the form of infection that occurs when plague bacteria are inhaled in aerosolized form into the lungs, or when septicemic plague (plague in the bloodstreams) reaches the lungs. Like, for example, when a test tube breaks. Her method of infection was a pretty textbook vector for pneumonic plague. Other cases have been caused when tissue samples of infected rodents have been splayed open, for example, or when blood from an infected person splatters the respiratory tract. Plague bacteria spreads pretty poorly otherwise, which is why the main vector for bubonic plague is flea bites.
If it's the pneumonia style (i.e. the infection is in the lungs, not the lymph nodes) you have to start antibiotics very quickly or it's basically 100% fatal. So it's treatable, but only to a point. The good news is basic masks and quarantine are extremely effective, so the risk of outright spread beyond the initial patients and very early health care workers is very small.
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.
Yes, the fact that is the plague is less worrying than it is plague from a bio research lab that escaped. The only unfounded, non verified news i have read is that it can from collecting of samples, not post experimenting. But your guess is as good as mine at this point
And there might be a teapot on the other side of the sun.
It’s bacteria, antibiotics work more generally than vaccines for viruses do.
There are of course, antibiotic resistant bacteria but we still have some exotic antibiotics in our arsenal.
If anything for a widespread bacterial plague I’d be more concerned about our ability to produce enough antibiotics rather than _if_ we could develop a cure
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 also destroy farmland and dig holes that cause hoofed animals to break their legs. The population got way out of control when their predators were mostly driven off by humans. And again, they spread bubonic plague. They are about as ecologically important as mosquitos. I understand the Venn diagram of HN users and people who grew up rural is infinitesimally small, but they are well known nuisance animals.
Come on, coyotes are classified as a least endangered animal and for good reason; they breed like crazy and eat almost anything. They are also a massive nuisance to livestock, a minor danger to people and they'll eat your cat or dog given half a chance. Culling prairie dogs would just mean their population would be slightly less booming.
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.
> If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period; conversely, the estimates suggest counterfactual increases of 13% to 17% if all states had restrictions similar to those in the 10 least-restrictive states. The estimated strong vs weak state restriction difference was 271 000 to 447 000 deaths, with behavior changes associated with 49% to 79% of the overall disparity.
The paper you linked also doesn't take into account economic impacts, which aren't negligible, and lead to deaths of despair, drug abuse, unaffordable housing, etc.. They also admit the school closures were ineffective and unnecessary and we've seen the mental health and educational impacts on kids and now young adults that had those years taken from them.
Keep in mind also that the favorite phrase of the COVID era was "abundance of caution." That's itself a tacit admission that they knew their recommendations went too far and they weren't putting enough weight on the secondary effects.
> Our meta-analysis finds that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had a relatively small effect on COVID-19 mortality and is consistent with the view that voluntary changes in behavior, such as social distancing, played an important role in mitigating the pandemic
I find it strange you bemoan the public health establishment's credibility when your own source shows that people following its guidelines played a greater role in saving hundreds of thousands of lives than legal mandates.
Social distancing in an infectious disease pandemic is obvious and people would have done that regardless. My point is that the specific advice of the public health establishment was nonsensical (don't wear masks, actually do wear masks and cloth is fine, don't go to parks or beaches but political protests are fine if we're sympathetic to the cause, wear a mask when you walk to your table but not at your table, natural immunity isn't as good as a vaccine, and on and on). It was ridiculous and a big reason public trust in institutions is at an all time low.
> but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
I had forgot about that. God what a ridiculous time, my county judge Clay Jenkins in Dallas would drive around yelling at people walking their dogs to get inside. He was overjoyed with his little hobby authoritative regime. During the pandemic, I met him at a fundraiser once where, gasp, no one was wearing masks (it was very fancy). I was going to ask him about it but my wife's friend who was putting it on just asked me to leave.
...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.
Ever wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab?
That’s keeping me up. Threaten nukes and deploy the plague to show you aren’t kidding.
There was a news story yesterday about the Ukrainian government using drones to airlift medicine to occupied territories that have been cut off from pharmaceutical supply chains (the occupation forces said they would figure it out, but didn’t)
> Ever wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab?
There's a reason the US and Soviets were largely willing to get rid of the stuff - it's fairly useless geopolitically, because you mostly can't target it.
Your reassurance relies on strategic calculus of the 20th century, arrived at by a much less cynical leadership, in both cases.
It can definitely be targeted: behind enemy lines, or in the occupied territory with selective access to antibiotics. Population migration can be enforced coercively too.
This is the same regime pulling stunts like this [0] and threatening nuclear war, absolutely would not be surprised.
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"
“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.
She was interviewed on Breaking Points today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvVRnh3JVGQ&list=PLdOud06Yw7...
The algorithm giveth, and the algorithm keepeth away.
Before I clicked that link I had never heard of Breaking Points, a political series with over 2MM subscribers. I'm a YT premium subscriber and watch a ton of political stuff, much of it damn similar to what that channel produces.
I took the time to share it because I like the show and they often report on subjects that cause them to be demonetized or hidden by the algorithm.
I also watched a lot of news content and never saw them until seeking them out. I suspect they are suppressed by the algorithm because they are generally willing to give voice to anti-establishment, anti-oligrachy sentiments (both from the hosts and guests). But yea they're great. The primary hosts are explicitly left and right leaning but rarely get caught up in partisan discord and instead focus on high quality, fact based journalism. (Relatedly, the one topic that does most often trigger the occasional bouts of partisan bickering between Saagar and Krystal is COVID and Dr. Fauci, make of that what you will).
Funnily enough the reason why virology therapy (something the Soviets did a lot of research in cuz they didn't have good antibiotics and biotech/pharma) hasn't seen much success at scale is precisely because the body's immune system adapts too quickly. Maybe we will see more success now with AI but it will be a cold day in hell before the powers that be let any garage biohacker have access to LLMs trained on this sort of information.
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.
There are some that had been modified to release endorphins!
>"When we first heard Soviet scientists were inserting the endorphin gene [for euphoria] into plague," says Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist, "we were appalled. That they would purposefully engineer the Y. pestis bacteria to behave this way... to make you want to go out and socialize... this was some horrifying stuff."
> . . .
> Former assistant secretary of defense Andy Weber agrees. "I grew up thinking Reagan’s phrase ‘Evil Empire’ was an exaggeration," he tells us. "Then I learned what the Russians were doing [with biological warfare]." He pauses for effect. "It was evil."
The accounts are from Annie Jacobsen's notes in "Biological War".
Endorphins make you happy as you are. Endorphins have sedative effect. Morphine is a similar substance and it is a sedative, all opioids are.
What makes one socialize is dopamine [1]: "Hypomania, manifesting with feelings of euphoria, omnipotence, or grandiosity are prone to appear in those moments when medication (dopaminergic medication - thesz) effects are at their maximum."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_dysregulation_syndrom...
This dopamine dysregulation occurs naturally in people with toxoplasmosis.
This kind of mistake - mistaking dopamine and endorphine, - strongly suggests a fake. I know of one such fake from the former employee of my friend, you can read his account here [2]. My friend was a lead of the "secret" laboratory (next to Kitay Gorod metro station in the center of Moscow, in an institute that needed no documents to enter) that researched how "psychics" and "healers" achieve their results.
[2] https://lit.lib.ru/t/torin_a/text_0100.shtml (it is in Russian, but language is not a barrier at all nowadays)
The laboratory researched what these "extrasensing people" do and found nothing - given very little training an ordinary men can do the same and even better. At the end of USSR, there was a string of visitors from USA there in the lab, and one of those visitors successfully persuaded US government to open similar research program, according to [2].
The fearmongering of "endorphin-producing bugs that make one socialize and spread" looks like, well, fearmongering to obtain funds for Big Pharma's government contracts, etc. It messes up two very different neurotransmitters, a mistake that real scientist would not make.
Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source. (Having said that, bacteria upregulate selected interleukins to reduce inflammation, so maybe this is a game of telephone based on some actual Soviet effort to increase virulence, just not "euphoria.")
I believe the same thing is also described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biohazard_(book)
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source.
Where was this claimed? Do we have any definitive confirmation of the Roswell incident anyway?
She put it in her book on Area 51, apparently, and had one source for the claim, no other evidence.
What was the context though? Did she assert that it was factually true or was she merely quoting someone who suggested the possibility?
This sounded so ridiculous that I had to check. The book is Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. This unflattering contemporary review, retrieved from the Wayback Machine, has an excerpt:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110713153629/https://www.washi...
The engineers were told that the children were rumored to have been kidnapped by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi madman who, at Auschwitz and elsewhere, was known to have performed unspeakable experimental surgical procedures mostly on children, dwarfs, and twins. The engineers learned that just before the war ended, Josef Mengele made a deal with Stalin. Stalin offered Mengele an opportunity to continue work in eugenics. . . . in secret, in the Soviet Union.
Mengele held up his side of the Faustian bargain and provided Stalin with the child-size crew. . . .
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets
And people take her seriously?
Reminds me of a David Brin short story.
I think you will like "Our Neural Chernobyl": https://lib.ru/STERLINGB/chernobyl.txt
(the link is a translation to Russian, I was unable to find the original text in English)
Also consider that toxoplasma changes rat's dopamine serum level to such extent that they stop fearing cats. The same happens with humans, changes in dopamine serum level are so profound that toxoplasma-infected people become more appealing than regular people.
Yep. And this is a lab that was reportedly doing gain-of-function research.
Indeed. I wonder how much work it would be to make this antibiotic resistant. Then the Russians develop some bacteriophage that infects and kills the bacteria as their own cure.
Making it antibiotic resistant is not difficult and they already did that back when they were the USSR. Not only did they develop it, they produced large quantities of it to stockpile for a rainy day.
The phrase "gain-of-function research" has acquired almost magical properties on the Internet. You can do literally anything you want to a pathogen with it.
Purposely giving a pathogen increased infection abilities and more lethality, and expecting to be able to contain it in a lab has proven to be wishful thinking time and again.
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.
> Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it
Yea you are definitely right about that. In Africa (specific countries I can’t currently recall) attempts at vaccination programs for example are often met with hostility or suspicion or even some people believing a vaccine causes the disease.
There was also vaccine skepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like China which refused first-to-market western vaccines out of fear and suspicion. It’s tragic all around.
To be fair, in Europe, we largely rejected the russian COVID vaccine. In theory we had good reasons, the vaccine was a bit shady, but I always wondered how much geopolitics played the role and how much it was really the problem with russian manufacturing standards.
I’m sure geopolitics had some effect, like it might have in China, but I think that just begs the question how serious the virus was for governments to say nah we will wait until we get our own vaccine from our trusted sources. Russia has vaccine skepticism too entirely if their own making.
In Europe’s defense, which is a very broad thing to speak of anyway, they had a vaccine either already there or close enough so why give Putin any credence when you could wait just a little bit longer?
> In Africa
In the USA too. Just look at all the nonsense around the MMR vaccine in Trump's orbit and what's happened to the CDC and FDA under RFK's leadership
Sure but the point is to focus on other countries/continents/peoples and their vaccine skepticism because that’s more interesting and less talked about.
In Pakistan, antivax opposition is in no small part to blame on the CIA abusing "vaccinations" to uncover bin Laden's hideout [1].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06/1034631928/the-cias-hunt-for-...
Maybe Pakistan shouldn’t have been harboring Bin Laden and whatever ill effects happened here are the fault of Pakistan. Not my problem - Pakistan’s government and people needed to do better and whatever the human cost there was it was worth it to get Bin Laden. Actions have consequences.
Also stop trying to deprive other people and governments of their agency just because it fits a convenient western superiority complex you have. They’re not stupid.
> whatever the human cost there was it was worth it to get Bin Laden. Actions have consequences
blaming the ~260M citizens for the actions of Pakistani government is repulsive.
Blaming the 340 million citizens of the US for Trump’s actions is repulsive too, but plenty of people enjoy doing that on the Internet.
Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions. Vaccine denial in the US? Same thing. You can’t say Americans are responsible for anti-vax sentiments, for example, and then say other people around the world aren’t.
Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible? I’ll happily take you admitting we’re the best if you want to go that route.
You know, even being about to talk this much about your own government or foreign governments takes a certain level of privilege. At least 1/5th of Pakistan is in poverty.
I’m proud to be privileged and think more should be.
For example I think Iranians should be privileged to speak out against their repressive government without fear of being hung. Pakistanis aren’t privileged and can’t speak out against their government harboring Bin Laden? Someone should fix that so they are are able to speak out against that, right?
Regardless, being poor doesn’t make one stupid or uneducated. Many Americans who are anti-vax are also poor by American standards, but I don’t think it matters. You can’t have your cake and eat it too here.
Did anyone do that in this thread? You are only the person I see projecting like this
I’m not projecting so that doesn’t make sense.
Yes you are. Case closed.
Nope.jpg
> Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
In a democracy, yes. Pakistan however is a democracy only in distant theory, pretty much everyone sane calls it an authoritarian regime [1].
And no, in the age of guns and nuclear weapons, we can't go and blame a country's people for its government. I don't blame Gazan civilians for Hamas, I don't blame Iranian civilians for the Mullahs, I don't blame Chinese peasants for the CCP and I don't blame ordinary Russians for Putin. These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
> Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions.
Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
> Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible?
Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited. On average they are far more literate, they got actual schools, they have reasonably free elections. Yes, the US democracy is flawed (FPTP and gerrymandering basically rendering the votes of swaths of people irrelevant, billionaires manipulating media coverage, ICE and other government organisations being used for voter suppression), but the US still is miles ahead of Pakistan or virtually all "third world" countries.
[1] https://statbase.org/data/pak-democracy-index/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_Pakistan
> In a democracy, yes. Pakistan however is a democracy only in distant theory, pretty much everyone sane calls it an authoritarian regime [1]
No I reject this and neo-liberal views of the world. That’s the mental model that got us into the Iraq debacle. What follows is that this becomes a problem (authoritarianism) that needs to be corrected “spread democracy”.
> These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
There is always a choice. Democracies weren’t inherent in the world but had to be fought for. They need to fight for their rights. Or not. It’s their responsibility.
> Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
Same was true during the age of European colonialism. “We must christianize them and educate them”. &c &c
> Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited.
As long as you agree Americans are better and exceptional I can’t really argue against you here.
There are directives that prevent using clergy and missionary work as a cover for intelligence operations, and a longstanding prohibition for using the peace corps.
That Bin Laden operation was so insanely short-sighted in the use of a vaccine program for spying. Completely erodes trust where it should never have eroded, and rightfully contributed to antivax mentality, not just in Pakistan, but also in the US. "Trust us, we're doctors" means nothing.
Oh well. They shouldn’t have harbored bin Laden. Whatever justification about “loss of trust” you can use here anyone else gets to use too. There was a loss of trust from Dr. Fauci (not by me, I got the vaccine ASAP and wore a mask until restrictions were lifted) by some because of actions taken.
I'm talking about choices made by people doing the hunting. I don't know why you're absolving them as if all choices are good choices. It takes more than a circumstance to justify an action.
I like a win. But a clean win is worth being proud of. It would actually be really cool not to shoot yourself in the foot, I think.
I’m just saying it’s justified, not that it was or is the best choice available. Nobody really knows what choices are available. Pakistan and its people made a choice to harbor bin Laden - they certainly had choices that we don’t need to absolve them for either.
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.
> ”Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu”
Not really. While it was true for much of the last century that many “seasonal flu” viruses were direct descendents from H1N1 Spanish flu, the H1N1 that caused the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic was a distinct strain combining new genes of pig, avian, and human flu origins. Since then, derivatives of that virus have replaced earlier ones as the most common circulating H1N1 types.
And right now the most common circulating influenza is actually H3N2 from a completely different (avian) lineage with origins in the 1968 pandemic.
I'd further note that the H1N1 flu is widely believed to have gone extinct in the wild, then been reintroduced in 1977 from a laboratory source, probably through a failed vaccine trial:
> The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens.19,31
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0904322
This explanation is now printed uncontroversially in major journals, though at the time the WHO rejected it:
> Laboratory contamination can be excluded because the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2395678/pdf/bullwho...
Unfortunately, you can force evolution in bacteria, fungi and viruses. There's more than enough examples of multi-resistant pathogens in all three families, especially in hospitals but also around agriculture (because they use stuff meant as a last-resort to promote animal growth or prevent animals from falling ill to the effects of overcrowding)... honestly between these and prions, I often do wonder how long we as humanity will be able to keep both hospitals and large-scale farming in existence.
Every evolved trait has a cost. We as a civilization have certainly been careless with, say, antibiotic resistance. If we stopped using a certain antibiotic tomorrow and didn't start using it for another 50 years, we'd find that most if not all of the resistant bacteria would've lost that resistance as they'd evolved new traits.
I'm reminded of the pronghorn antelope, a herbivore that evolved fast speed to avoid a predator that no longer exists, a cat having died out 7000+ years ago. It still has that speed but it has a real cost to their metabolism and their need to constantly eat. at some point they're going to lose that if it's not reinforced by some new predator or other evolutionary advantage.
The disease is not the problem, people's reaction to it, is.
No pretty sure its the disease that kills people.
Some people react to the disease by dying.
The disease is carried by people.
Every single one of the people infected by COVID has been contaminated by someone around them.
(It wasn't true of the plague during the great pandemics, as it was also borne by rats and their poop)
You realize life is complex enough that two things can be true, right? That everything isn't either/or?
The reason we've haven't had more outbreaks of more diseases in the last century is because we had a lot of smart vigilant well-resourced people who very much felt the disease was the problem, and took steps to mitigate.
Classic late-stage civilization blunder is taking the fruits of civilization for granted. Sorry you're not aware of those things, but that's on you.
I think you can safely agree that they are not mutually exclusive and both of them are problems. In this particular case, it was a 100% fatality disease in a gain-of-function lab. It is being handled extremely seriously by Russia.
Perhaps the Russian military is overreacting with the blanket quarantines, but the odds are more likely that they understand the nature better than anyone else.
Again, normal pneumonic plague approaches 100% fatality rates. This is potentially a weaponized form.
This is an "oh, fuck" moment.
The bullet is not the problem, the squishy matter people are made of is.
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
Infection by hantavirus is correlated with where you live, not socioeconomic status. It is endemic to parts of the high desert in the American Southwest and a background risk you accept by living there.
For example, Gene Hackman's wife, Betsy Arakawa, famously died from hantavirus. They lived in a wealthy gated community in Santa Fe.
30 in a population of 350mill is a ~1:10000000 chance of getting it. 900 or so cases in 3 decades. A cursory google search shows it's killed about 300 people since 1990, so roughly 10 a year, the equivalent of venomous snake-related deaths more or less, and that's because we have quick access to anti-venoms for most of the population otherwise the casualties would be far higher.
Treating that low number like a low number is not "discounting" rural US citizens. The US - all populations included - does not really live with the hantavirus in any real sense. It's incredibly rare. 10x as many people are struck by lightening annually in the US.
It’s a low number because it’s very preventable and people in those areas know to be careful around mouse poop because of the risk of hantavirus
Sure. It’s still an incredibly tiny number of people annually, especially considering there is no “direct” treatment or cure for it.
It is an incredibly rare disease, so it is hardly something that would qualify as “endemic” to any population in the US. Rural populations in the US do not feel it like rural populations in many other countries. Acknowledging that is not discounting or forgetting rural populations in the US. That is not a fair accusation in the slightest.
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?
Are you seriously accusing an anti-plague institute that works on containing outbreaks of building bio weapons? Maybe try taking the propaganda with a healthy dose of salt
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.
Answered this in another comment but my major fear if a bacterial plague like this became a pandemic would be our manufacturing output keeping pace with demand, not like during covid when it was not clear if it was even possible to create a cure.
Another thing is that the Black Plague symptoms are pretty horrible, enough to cause anxiety even if you know there is a cure.
I guess that’s true. I’ve literally had worse but I’m in a small minority so maybe discounting the effect of that experience.
Do you have a theory for why that researcher died?
I think it's pretty apparent from the news articles about it. She died of pneumonic plague, which is a fast-moving form of Yersinia Pestis infection that is roughly 100% fatal if first treatment occurs > 24 hours after symptoms start.
Why pneumonic plague? Pneumonic plague is the form of infection that occurs when plague bacteria are inhaled in aerosolized form into the lungs, or when septicemic plague (plague in the bloodstreams) reaches the lungs. Like, for example, when a test tube breaks. Her method of infection was a pretty textbook vector for pneumonic plague. Other cases have been caused when tissue samples of infected rodents have been splayed open, for example, or when blood from an infected person splatters the respiratory tract. Plague bacteria spreads pretty poorly otherwise, which is why the main vector for bubonic plague is flea bites.
If it's the pneumonia style (i.e. the infection is in the lungs, not the lymph nodes) you have to start antibiotics very quickly or it's basically 100% fatal. So it's treatable, but only to a point. The good news is basic masks and quarantine are extremely effective, so the risk of outright spread beyond the initial patients and very early health care workers is very small.
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.
Yes, the fact that is the plague is less worrying than it is plague from a bio research lab that escaped. The only unfounded, non verified news i have read is that it can from collecting of samples, not post experimenting. But your guess is as good as mine at this point
And there might be a teapot on the other side of the sun.
It’s bacteria, antibiotics work more generally than vaccines for viruses do.
There are of course, antibiotic resistant bacteria but we still have some exotic antibiotics in our arsenal.
If anything for a widespread bacterial plague I’d be more concerned about our ability to produce enough antibiotics rather than _if_ we could develop a cure
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?
Bubonic is different than pneumonic.
Whoosh. Yes, I know.
What's your point?
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.
They also destroy farmland and dig holes that cause hoofed animals to break their legs. The population got way out of control when their predators were mostly driven off by humans. And again, they spread bubonic plague. They are about as ecologically important as mosquitos. I understand the Venn diagram of HN users and people who grew up rural is infinitesimally small, but they are well known nuisance animals.
Come on, coyotes are classified as a least endangered animal and for good reason; they breed like crazy and eat almost anything. They are also a massive nuisance to livestock, a minor danger to people and they'll eat your cat or dog given half a chance. Culling prairie dogs would just mean their population would be slightly less booming.
> 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.
States and people that listened to the public health establishment saved hundreds of thousands of lives: https://batten.virginia.edu/research/how-state-policies-impa...:
> If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period; conversely, the estimates suggest counterfactual increases of 13% to 17% if all states had restrictions similar to those in the 10 least-restrictive states. The estimated strong vs weak state restriction difference was 271 000 to 447 000 deaths, with behavior changes associated with 49% to 79% of the overall disparity.
Well then there's this meta-analysis (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7) that suggests that may not be the case. Honestly, you can find a paper to back up whatever you want to claim.
The paper you linked also doesn't take into account economic impacts, which aren't negligible, and lead to deaths of despair, drug abuse, unaffordable housing, etc.. They also admit the school closures were ineffective and unnecessary and we've seen the mental health and educational impacts on kids and now young adults that had those years taken from them.
Keep in mind also that the favorite phrase of the COVID era was "abundance of caution." That's itself a tacit admission that they knew their recommendations went too far and they weren't putting enough weight on the secondary effects.
> Our meta-analysis finds that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had a relatively small effect on COVID-19 mortality and is consistent with the view that voluntary changes in behavior, such as social distancing, played an important role in mitigating the pandemic
I find it strange you bemoan the public health establishment's credibility when your own source shows that people following its guidelines played a greater role in saving hundreds of thousands of lives than legal mandates.
Social distancing in an infectious disease pandemic is obvious and people would have done that regardless. My point is that the specific advice of the public health establishment was nonsensical (don't wear masks, actually do wear masks and cloth is fine, don't go to parks or beaches but political protests are fine if we're sympathetic to the cause, wear a mask when you walk to your table but not at your table, natural immunity isn't as good as a vaccine, and on and on). It was ridiculous and a big reason public trust in institutions is at an all time low.
> but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
I had forgot about that. God what a ridiculous time, my county judge Clay Jenkins in Dallas would drive around yelling at people walking their dogs to get inside. He was overjoyed with his little hobby authoritative regime. During the pandemic, I met him at a fundraiser once where, gasp, no one was wearing masks (it was very fancy). I was going to ask him about it but my wife's friend who was putting it on just asked me to leave.
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-...
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?
I see how this could be confusing for you. Note that we're discussing the response to a potential crisis.
Literally nothing in parent comment would suggest that, no.
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.
> I hate how paranoid this timeline has made me
Ever wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab?
That’s keeping me up. Threaten nukes and deploy the plague to show you aren’t kidding.
There was a news story yesterday about the Ukrainian government using drones to airlift medicine to occupied territories that have been cut off from pharmaceutical supply chains (the occupation forces said they would figure it out, but didn’t)
> Ever wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab?
There's a reason the US and Soviets were largely willing to get rid of the stuff - it's fairly useless geopolitically, because you mostly can't target it.
Your reassurance relies on strategic calculus of the 20th century, arrived at by a much less cynical leadership, in both cases.
It can definitely be targeted: behind enemy lines, or in the occupied territory with selective access to antibiotics. Population migration can be enforced coercively too.
This is the same regime pulling stunts like this [0] and threatening nuclear war, absolutely would not be surprised.
[0] https://www.occrp.org/en/news/putins-chef-sends-bloody-sledg...
That’s only if you care about nation states.
Viruses and bacteria don't care about nation states
you should consume less internet -- will make you feel a bit better
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...
a lot of contributing factors back then i think, hygiene etc.
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
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.
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
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.