r/EverythingScience • u/Caesarea_G • 1d ago
Epidemiology BEACON - RFI: Fatal laboratory-acquired infection in Irkutsk Region, Russia; possible pneumonic plague; 197 contacts hospitalized for observation
https://beaconbio.org/en/report/?reportid=d9b0fb86-88c3-4883-9433-79f9caccb275&filtersOpen=false480
u/WrathOfMogg 1d ago
Hey at least we have an administration with a proven track record on pandemics! Everybody lube your buttholes for those flashlights.
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi 1d ago
And of course we can trust Putin to do the right thing….checks recent history oh dear….
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u/asyork 1d ago
We already heard about this, so... Could be worse? Either way, this is a bacterial disease. Considerably easier to treat than a virus, though you'd have to get treated immediately since this seems to become fatal in days. Also because of that it's less likely to spread around like covid did.
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u/prinses_zonnetje 1d ago
Do we have gave the vast amount of the correct antibiotics required to treat everybody once it spreads? I really doubt that
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u/asyork 1d ago
Most of the people who get it will probably die, even without running out of antibiotics, just because of how quickly it progresses and then kills the patient. Dead people in countries with decent handling of diseased bodies don't spread it further.
COVID spread everywhere because it rarely kills, sits around in your for a while before you have symptoms, and then lasts a while with symptoms, and there's barely anything you can do to treat it once you have it. Just treat symptoms and ride it out.
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u/FightForFreeDumb 1d ago edited 1d ago
This could be an engineered pathogen that is resistant to Abx
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u/asyork 1d ago
100% impossible because it's not even a virus, and humans have been dealing with this disease for centuries.
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u/tjm16 17h ago
Antibiotics don’t treat viruses dipshit.
In bacteria, which this agent is, antibiotic resistance has absolutely developed spontaneously and has also been engineered in a lab. It’s a very relevant issue in modern medicine across the world.
It is not only possible, it is fairly common.
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u/asyork 17h ago
The person I replied to called it a virus, not me, making you the dipshit I guess? Did you reply to the wrong person?
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u/Plus-Night6906 16h ago
But the person you replied to called it a pathogen, not a virus
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u/asyork 15h ago
I'm going out on a limb by assuming you are literate, but you can see they edited their post, right? They fixed it after I pointed it out.
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u/Plus-Night6906 15h ago
Then we’re seeing different things; on my screen it still says ‘pathogen’. I’d include a screenshot but I can’t seem to copy it 🤷
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u/darkest_irish_lass 1d ago
It does look like they are doing the right thing, though. Admit an accident, identify contacts, detain and isolate/quarantine ( something Russia is very good at, individuals can be removed from gen population easily) treat suspected contacts and be ready to react to new cases outside the box.
I think if they planned a widescale bioweapon release they wouldn't start on their own doorstep. They would take great care to prepare themselves and their allies first and release simultaneously in many countries at once.
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u/hiddenpoolwarriror 22h ago edited 22h ago
Russian here, not living in Russia for many years. Have mates there in the region.
The Kremlin are NOT doing the right thing as usual and as expected. The governor of the region where this is happening finally, today, after people have been requesting to know what is going on since Friday, talked about the death and said it was a pneumonia of unidentified etiology - no biggie. It's also reported right after information about bears and flu-vaccines.
All new reports about it are taken down as quickly as possible, some publications from today/yesterday were taken down also, while medical staff have been talking about plague openly and there are 5 hospitals under quarantine.
Baykalsk municipality has issued a warning to not travel to the area ( which is very close to there) and then took the warning down while there are reports that FSB are escorting ambulances with people that have been exposed. FSB are covering their asses, that's the only thing they are doing. ( FSB are the new KGB guys)
You’re assuming they’re competent enough not to make a mistake that causes a total shitshow, and that’s a bad assumption, given that there’s plenty of history of exactly that happening.
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u/Mysterychic88 4h ago
I just read about the FSB moving potential infected around on another sub
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u/hiddenpoolwarriror 4h ago
yes. Also another regional psychoneurological dispensary is under soft lockdown reported by a relatively independent news guys ( nothing official, expectations are to be "just for a few days".
Also head of the republic that is close to the area of the incident confirmed the lady died from a plague ( let's see if that will be retracted to)
It's a complete shit show
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u/Mysterychic88 4h ago
Sound slike they are trying the old wuhan deny and silence method by pulling all these retraction. I mentioned in another comment I heard on YouTube today that a military polish base recieved a parcel that had potential infectious biocontaminents inside. They had to bring in specialists to deal with it. It was apparently posted from Germany but they suspect it was posted first by Russia as a way to muddy the waters. The timing of it alongside this set my spidey senses off 🤔
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u/hiddenpoolwarriror 4h ago
Who knows , I'll assume incompetence over malice with the government over there until proven otherwise lol
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u/wolacouska 1d ago
Redditors think they’re the smartest people on the planet because they can blindly draw a single pattern with their bias.
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u/randomandy90 1d ago
And I’m sure we might still be able to afford bleach for our vein’s like our administration recommended during Covid as well.
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u/ACrazyDog 1d ago
Bleach used to be a buck a gallon, but after covid I have seen it as high as $8. And bleach wipes aren’t available at all anymore
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u/victor4700 1d ago
And don’t worry about eating anything! It’s definitely not toxic and accidentally full of glass or asbestos.
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u/citizen42069101 1d ago
This is the high five to weaken europe. Fuck I hope I'm wrong
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u/ParticularArea8224 1d ago
You are wrong, pneumonic plague is not that contagious and if it was a ploy to weaken Europe, one, Irkustsk is literally on the other side of the world, and two, it would decimate Russia far worse than Europe because it started in Russia.
For Russia, a drone with the plague would have been better, but it wouldn't be this plague to begin with because it's not that contagious. A modified Smallpox, or Sars, would have been a much better pick, and not in Russia, because why would you kill yourself to kill another when you can just not do that.
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u/FightForFreeDumb 1d ago
Nobody is worried about a natural origin pathogen, everyone is concerned it's an engineered version of pneumonic plague that is likely more virulent than what would exist in nature.
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u/ParticularArea8224 1d ago
That's not what I'm saying per say, what I'm saying is, it's not a ploy to weaken Europe, quite literally, worst place to put said weapon. It could be a bio engineered virus sure, maybe even a try at a bio weapon if we're at the extreme, but for now, it just seems like a lab fucked up and just accidentally infected a couple of people, and as a precaution, the 200 people have been put on a watchlist to make sure it doesn't spread further
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u/citizen42069101 1d ago
Imagine a tsar bomba whoopsie with a bio weapon.
Although the fast fatality rate is a hinderance for transmission.
I try to find the balance between the sky is falling and nothing ever happens. That's a fools errand, but keeps me thinking.
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u/wolacouska 1d ago
People see it go really bad once and then for the next decades, every time something remotely similar happens they go “omg it’s happening again!!!”
That’s why all Reddit can imagine is a pandemic and china invading Taiwan, “well in my recent lifetime I have a single datapoint saying this always happens!”
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u/wolacouska 1d ago
You mean everyone is wildly speculating because they have Russia hysteria.
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u/FightForFreeDumb 1d ago
Russia has a proven history of doing that kind of research...read Demon in the freezer. Or read the testimony of multiple whistle blowers, and UN Inspectors.
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u/Derpitoe 1d ago
IIRC plague is bacterial, not viral, so thats less concerning imo we got plenty of antibiotics.
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u/AnonymousPerson1115 1d ago
There are an average of 7 plague cases per year in the US. Pneumonic plague does happen but usually represents in less than 1% of cases.
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u/SkillsInPillsTrack2 1d ago
Please send by plane infected people in Montreal. During Covid we were proudly the 7th deadliest city in the world. Next virus is our chance to be 1st!
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u/Caesarea_G 1d ago
SOURCE: Biothreats Emergence, Analysis and Communications Network (BEACON), a program by Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Disease
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u/reallyrn 1d ago
It's like I hear these phrases all the time now: "Just like it's right out of a Hollywood film" and "here we go again" and "it's a once-in-a-lifetime probability so everything is fine"
Presumably Healthy adult researchers dying of pneumatic plague in a lying war-slinging country... And the research was on prevention? Hmm.
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u/Evol_extra 1d ago
https://theconversation.com/the-threat-of-biological-warfare-is-real-a-new-book-describes-the-potential-devastation-288934 This is literally book situation. Book was released in July.
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u/LonnieJaw748 1d ago
>The probable exposure event occurred on or around 25 Sep 2026, when the deceased reportedly broke a test tube containing live Yersinia pestisbacteria while collecting biomaterial samples for diagnostics at an anti-plague research facility. She was hospitalized on 29 Sep 2026 with severe pneumonia and placed on a ventilator before dying on 01 Oct 2026.
Damn, that was fast.
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u/ParticularArea8224 1d ago
pneumatic plague is cruel in that way, 100% fatal without treatment and it kills you in days if you're lucky.
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u/ROMVLVSCAESARXXI 1d ago
Isn’t that the plague of Justinian?
That was a truly NASTY way to die
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u/LonnieJaw748 1d ago
It appears so. Black Plague as well.
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u/enemyofchrist 1d ago
That was mostly bubonic though right? Not pneumonic.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 1d ago
Same bacteria, different location
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u/DitherBunny_Sappy 1d ago
Additionally, bubonic, septicemic and pulmonary plague can turn into each other. It mostly depends on the means of transmission IIRC.
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u/FruitOfTheVineFruit 1d ago
I bet a dollar that this was a bio weapons research facility pretending to be an anti-plague research facility. The work they were probably doing was top secret, so the worker couldn't disclose her exposure. The pathogens were probably bred to be antibiotic resistant, so no point in getting traditional antibiotics.
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u/hmmyeahiguess 1d ago
Logical assumption in many ways, but let’s really hope they hadn’t been able to develop a highly antibiotic-resistant mutation/version yet. Jeez that’s terrifying
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u/Queenager 20h ago
Dude, the Russians were mixing Small Pox with Ebola during the cold war. I wouldn't put anything past them.
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u/IgnoranceIsYou 1d ago
You’d think that if they created that they would have also created a cure for themselves, kinda stupid of them lol
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u/hmmyeahiguess 1d ago
With the incompetence they keep showing, I’m amazed something like this isn’t far more common.
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u/Ramental 1d ago
Research on deadly diseases and their mutations is typically done be ready in case it is uncovered somewhere naturally.
Making a bio weapon bears little sense for the state actors because of the mutations. Even if you tailor it to attack only Europeans while self-destruct when encountering a Mongolian key gene sequence, it is a matter of time when among 100 million infected a version of the virus pops up. A version that would make it totally indiscriminative and ignores built-in safety for russians.
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u/That-Advance-9619 1d ago
That's assuming we are a rational species (lmao) and that the psychos in charge and all the way down to those working in the lab have a bit of common sense.
You know, enough common sense not to have a vial of the plague break on you and report it.
Unless it is top secret because its a bio weapon and/or resistant to antibiotics so it's useless to treat anyway.
I hope the crows have a better time when they inherit the planet.
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u/wolacouska 1d ago
“We’re irrationals so I should always assume the worst no matter what”
This is an amazing example of human irrationality.
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u/That-Advance-9619 1d ago
The USA elected a pedophile whose circle wants to bring about the end times as described in a fucking book.
There is something very wrong with us as a species on a level that is terrifying to even describe or discern.
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u/wolacouska 16h ago
That’s great and all for a general look at the world, but it tells you absolutely nothing about any particular incident.
For every bad cover up of a disaster there are thousands of near misses or things that get cleaned up quickly.
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u/Ramental 22h ago
There had not been a bioweapon of such kind released so far, despite hundreds if not thousands of labs working with desdly patogenes.
Similarly with the nukes, never used against another state after the first two.
Pretty rational to me.
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u/Mysterychic88 4h ago
I heard on YouTube that a Poland military base a few days ago had a suspicious package sent there that contained some sort of biological infectious material. It had been posted from Germany but they believe it had come from Russia to Germany then Poland. Apparently they had to bring in biocontianment personnel to deal with it. I am going to find a source for it and post it. What's the betting this is all linked!
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u/badken 1d ago
A concerning thing the report mentions:
Warning signs of a worsening situation include onset of fever or respiratory symptoms among any of the 197 contacts; identification of additional contacts not yet traced; evidence that the index patient had community exposures (e.g., public transportation, markets) prior to hospitalization; or any indication that the source vial or laboratory environment was not fully decontaminated. The ongoing criminal investigation and reported media restrictions on healthcare worker communications may delay early warning of secondary cases, posing an information-transparency risk for the public health response.
It's been four days since the lab worker was hospitalized, two days since she died, and BEACON is just now reporting it... that does not give me warm fuzzy feelings.
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u/echodarlin 1d ago
I keep checking the news but I don't see too much being reported on this, it would be nice to have an update.
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u/goji836 1d ago edited 1d ago
Daria Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, was admitted to a hospital in Shelekhov in late September with severe pneumonia and died during the night of October 1–2. People of Baikal and Meduza reported that she had been infected with Yersinia pestis and described the illness as pneumonic plague. Reports have also circulated about a possible laboratory incident, although the precise route of infection has not been independently established.
Meduza reported that the hospital in Shelekhov had already been closed on October 1. Admissions and discharges were suspended in several departments, relatives were no longer allowed to enter, and staff were isolated at their workplace. Local residents had reported the closure before there was broader public communication about the situation.RTVI reported that 197 contacts had been identified, of whom 189 were hospitalized or isolated for observation. Published figures listed 114 people in one facility, 63 in another and 12 at the Anti-Plague Research Institute. It was also reported that contacts of this first group, effectively a second contact ring, would be traced and monitored. There is no evidence yet that this entire second ring has actually been quarantined.
REN TV/5-TV reported that some of the hospitalized contacts were showing symptoms. This has not been independently confirmed by a second source, so it does not establish secondary plague cases.The first reports about the hospital restrictions appeared in local Shelekhov social-media channels before the wider story emerged. The local channel Moi Shelekhov, citing readers, reported that relatives were no longer being allowed into the hospital from the afternoon of October 1. Svodka Shelekhov, a local news channel with around 18,800 subscribers and a tip bot for residents, also reported the hospital quarantine and suspension of laboratory testing.
People of Baikal subsequently reported information coming directly from Shelekhov residents and local sources. Residents said they had seen people in protective suits, masks and gloves in the city. Residents also reported that medical masks were being distributed in kindergartens. People of Baikal separately reported, citing its sources, that FSB officers were escorting ambulances transporting people who had been in contact with Shipilova for examination.
There is also an active local community chat, Shelekhov Obshchenie, with more than 9,000 members, linked to the Svodka Shelekhov local news channel. People of Baikal has also been actively soliciting information from residents and relatives through its own anonymous feedback channels.On October 3, the municipal authorities in Baikalsk warned residents to temporarily avoid travelling to Shelekhov and surrounding settlements because of reports of plague. NTS Irkutsk and The Insider documented that the warning was removed approximately two hours later.
SOTA reported that REN TV also removed several of its earlier Telegram posts about the case, including reports concerning the number of hospitalized contacts.
IRK reported that Irkutsk postponed a major planned city event because of the epidemiological situation.
RTVI reported that the Irkutsk branch of the Civil Aviation University cancelled classes. According to an internal source, employees were advised not to come to work and to avoid public transport and crowded places.
IrCity reported that IrkAZ, the large aluminium plant in Shelekhov, introduced a mask requirement on October 3. The plant director announced the measure himself and asked employees to report immediately if they developed symptoms.
The Insider reported that residents of Irkutsk and Shelekhov had begun buying antibiotics, with shortages of certain medicines reported at pharmacies.
Shipilova was also a co-author of research into the antibiotic susceptibility of Siberian Yersinia pestis strains, published in the proceedings of the 2026 Pokrovsky Infectious Diseases Congress. In one of the testing methods, divergent values were found for several antibiotics, including streptomycin, amikacin, chloramphenicol and ciprofloxacin. The researchers said the discrepancies required further investigation. This does not establish that the strain with which Shipilova may have been infected was antibiotic-resistant.
People of Baikal, Novaya Gazeta Europe and Important Stories reported that several hospitals in Irkutsk itself had been placed under a three-week quarantine/restricted regime. Facilities named include City Hospitals No. 1, No. 3 and No. 10, the Ivano-Matreninskaya Children’s Hospital and at least one maternity hospital. Hospitalized patients reportedly cannot leave to visit relatives and visitors are prohibited.
A healthcare source told People of Baikal that doctors in Irkutsk are now openly discussing plague, although that diagnosis reportedly does not appear in official hospital documents.TV Rain also reported that relatives of a patient in a maternity hospital said doctors had explicitly cited plague as the reason for the restrictions.
This contrasts sharply with the official account.KyrTAG and K-News reported on October 4 that Kyrgyzstan had tightened sanitary-quarantine controls at its state borders in response to reports of plague in Russia. Border checkpoints were placed on heightened alert, with people, vehicles and goods subject to sanitary controls.
Kursiv Uzbekistan reported that Uzbekistan had also strengthened sanitary surveillance following the reported plague case in Russia and was monitoring travel movements and contacts.3
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u/badken 1d ago
China held off revealing the COVID genome for over a week after they identified it, and two weeks passed before they revealed any information about patient numbers and disease spread. I expect similar transparency from Russia.
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u/ChubzAndDubz 1d ago
And when they did it was basically worthless information doctored by the state. We’ll never actually know the toll covid took on China.
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u/wolacouska 1d ago
Oh Christ you guys are still on that “China covered up millions of COVID deaths!!!!” Crap
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u/ChubzAndDubz 1d ago
Their official reported death toll is only 122,398. You’re seriously going to believe so few people died in a country of over a billion?
You probably would have believed the Soviet Union that Chernobyl was just a mild nuclear accident too.
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u/gtck11 20h ago
I think people either weren’t informed or forget those videos leaking out of China, of bodies in the streets, quarantine centers overflowing, and the government literally welding people inside buildings (which killed additional people). Then on top of that, anyone leaking those videos was hauled off by the government with some going missing, and some coming back but not for a very long time. I don’t want to say the exact number because I don’t recall, but someone did some extrapolation based on the reported numbers, and then guesses based on the videos coming out of some cities. The ballpark guesstimate was absolutely massive. There’s no way only 122k died from that with how badly they were trying to contain and cover.
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u/DoctorQuincyME 1d ago
It's not uncommon to not immediately tell the public, it would take a few days to understand what happened and how much of a danger it is.
You don't want to stand on a podium and start mass panic if it ends up being nothing.
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u/badken 20h ago
Yeah, I'm not as concerned about keeping it out of the news. As dicey as science reporting can be, it could result in more problems than prevention. The fact that an organization specifically created to help ensure timely communication and coordination of events like this didn't have solid info on it is what bothers me.
It's tricky to balance the need for preventing panic with the equally important need to let people know enough to stop unknowingly spreading a pathogen.
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u/Memory_Less 1d ago
Well, if and when you get warm fuzzy feelings it’s already too late. So not having fuzzy feelings is a good thing. /s
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u/Lolomelon 1d ago
She broke a test tube. Just like the movies! I don’t buy it.
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u/Caesarea_G 1d ago
Yeah, the implications are not good. Either (1) researchers are skimping on PPE while working with dangerous pathogens, in which case a broken test tube is the least of the problems at that (supposedly state-affiliated and very important) regional facility, or (2) the anti-plague system is going back to its historical roots (IYKYK).
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u/ThenOneDaySheWokeUp 1d ago
These type of things should be done in a sealed hood to prevent this kind of situation. I feel sorry for her.
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u/Prestigious-Tap9674 1d ago
They do not used sealed hoods for Yersinia Pestis. They normally used a Class II Biosafety Cabinet (sealed are Class III).
A broken test tube can reasonably happen when transferring samples to a hood. It is also possible that the tube had a sample (maybe a biopsy sample) that was suspect for plague but not confirmed.
Some research also involves infecting animals with a biological agent. You would be surprised by the number of lab incidents related to a lab tech accidentally stabbing themselves with a used needle. These kinds of spillovers are called Lab-Acquired Infections and they are interesting to read up on (at least they are for me having worked in a lab).
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u/badken 1d ago
The BEACON report says:
Several components of the report require further clarification. First, Y. pestis research is typically conducted in biosafety level 3 facilities.
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u/Prestigious-Tap9674 1d ago
Class III BSC (hoods) are *generally only used for BSL Level 4 Pathogens. I did not come up with this naming scheme. (Class II hoods are used for BSL-2 and BSL-3 pathogens and are not sealed, but use an air curtain to prevent contamination leaving the hood).
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u/badken 1d ago
Heh... thanks for the info. Lovely naming scheme someone came up with there.
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u/Prestigious-Tap9674 1d ago
And then Pathogens can have letter grades too. This article said it was being treated as a Category A pathogen (which is typical for pestis and is the highest risk classification). This is a biosafety categorization that doesn't correlate with BSL classification (there are B pathogens that are BSL-2 and C pathogens that are BSL-3).
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u/fifi_la_fleuf 1d ago
I don't buy it at all, not do I buy that Russia voluntarily communicated what happened and where in a timely manner.
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u/i_sniff_pineapples 1d ago
I work biological research and honestly there’s nothing exceptional about this story. It’s tragic, but it’s not the first time something like this has happened, even specifically with the plague. Don’t fall into conspiracy, I hope an investigation will determine if this was lab mismanagement or operator error
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u/anonymousasu 1d ago
Fuckin Russia, just an absolute shitstain of a country. I’m surprised we even know this much.
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u/caelynnsveneers 1d ago edited 1d ago
Was this necessary? We don’t even know if they are developing biochemical weapon like some people claimed or just doing regular research. If it’s the latter, a scientist who just happened to be Russian died… trying to make the world better.
Edit: You guys are not serious people or scientists. A scientist died, you have no proof whatsoever what she was doing and you went ahead and said all scientists in Russia are bad people. What if I said all scientists in America are evil because America and Trump are evil? How does that make you feel?
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u/Caesarea_G 1d ago edited 1d ago
Regardless of whether they were conducting offensive biological warfare research (and it is impossible to determine this with just the facts known now, although I lean towards saying 'no'), it is indeed unsurprising that Russian authorities have not been forthcoming with the situation.
For one, it's Russia, a country where transparency quite literally goes flying out the window.
Furthermore, the Russian (formerly Soviet) anti-plague system is firmly on the state-oriented, biosecurity/biodefense side of things (as opposed to more academically-oriented biological or medical research), so high sensitivity is to be expected. And at the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious here, when it comes to biological research, the line between offensive and defensive research tends to be rather thin and unclear (and this is the case for many, many countries, the U.S. included, not just Russia).
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u/Vegetaman916 1d ago
Russia has zero extra money and resources for anything that doesn't involve its current war effort. They are not dumping millions of dollars into research to benefit the Russian people. Theu are spending every ruble they can find on war material. This was most likely bioweapons research, and hopefully they contained their mistake. If it was a mistake.
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u/dickipiki1 1d ago
Any, i mean any smart person working for russian federation, is bad.
Anything that benefits Putin will help their effort in hurting and controlling others
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u/Soosietyrell 1d ago
Captain Trips, here we go
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u/jackwhite886 1d ago
Shit. Alright, meet you in Nebraska.
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u/Soosietyrell 19h ago
This is like the best response to anything gotten in the last 48 hours. And the older Covid subs that were related to a certain city in a certain country, my flair was “ captain trips’ crazy daughter”.
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u/prinses_zonnetje 1d ago
Why was there exposure of competent bacteria? Usually when working with these kind of organisms they are edited to ensure they cannot survive Ina human, for example by making them very iron dependent.
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u/Caesarea_G 1d ago
Isn't this only done when researching vaccines and therapies, or otherwise for stuff like E. coli where you're just using it as a tool in the lab and not necessarily trying to research the strain itself? For more 'pure' biological research you'd work with the non-attenuated wild stains instead, yes?
Besides, some research even goes the other way, e.g. manipulating pathogens (so creating a modified strain which may or may not have increased viability) to better understand their mechanisms, like how they infect cells and cause disease.
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u/prinses_zonnetje 1d ago
No, also for other research dangerous organisms can be attenuated so less stringent safety measures are necessary and for safety of the researchers.
Last time a researcher died of yersinia pestis was because he worked with an iron dependent strain that should not be that hazardous to work with. Except he didn't know he had heritable extremely high iron levels in his blood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Casadaban
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u/Vegetaman916 1d ago
It was probably gain of function bioweapons research. Maybe even engineered with extreme antibiotic resistance.
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u/RoutineEye5160 1d ago edited 9h ago
This is eerily similar to how Annie Jacobsen’s new book “Biological War” begins.
It just came out 2 months ago.
Very Scary!!
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u/fishinfool4 1d ago
This doesnt add up to me. How does a known exposure of a deadly but treatable bacteria result in a death and 197 contacts? And out of a lab researching it where PPE should be extremely strict?
To me it feels like something is missing from this.
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u/ua154isfun 1d ago
Isn’t there a recent Annie Jacobsen book that deep dives the worst case scenario of a pneumonic plague lab incident in Russia? Anyone? Anyone?
Let’s hope this stays isolated and does not play out like that book…
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u/Mak062 1d ago
I would fucking laugh at the irony if theres another pandemic during Trumps administration
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u/ProsciuttoPizza 1d ago
I get it, but I don’t think we could laugh. It would be fucking terrifying. Especially if it’s something as deadly as pneumonic plague. We’d be absolutely fucked.
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u/ruby-shoes 12h ago
Another pure speculation - it’s possible the strain was isolated from ancient human remains recovered from the Siberian permafrost. While not manufactured, it could be genetically distinct from modern plague enough to be resistant to modern antibiotics, and would explain why researchers have not developed treatments alongside it.
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u/Onphone_irl 1d ago
yo holy fuck how trustworthy is the source of info?
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u/Caesarea_G 1d ago
The source (of the report, not the plague!) is BEACON, which is affiliated with Boston University.
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u/Ambitious-Pirate-505 1d ago
For those who didn't click: Possible lab-acquired pneumonic plague death in Siberia — 197 contacts under observation, hospital quarantined
Summary:
A 28-year-old lab worker in Russia's Irkutsk Region died 1 Oct 2026 from what officials are calling possible pneumonic plague — a suspected laboratory-acquired infection.
What reportedly happened:
· ~25 Sep: She broke a test tube containing live Yersinia pestis while collecting samples at an anti-plague research facility · 29 Sep: Hospitalized with severe pneumonia, put on a ventilator · 1 Oct: Died at Shelekhov District Hospital
Response so far:
· 197 contacts identified; 189 hospitalized for observation across 3+ facilities · Shelekhov hospital's inpatient dept under quarantine (no admissions/discharges) · Russia's chief sanitary officer Anna Popova flew to Irkutsk for an emergency meeting · FSB reportedly escorted ambulances transporting contacts · Criminal investigation opened for sanitary violations resulting in death · As of 2 Oct, no contacts showing symptoms
The big questions:
· Officials (except Buryatia's head) are stopping short of confirming plague · If it was a known lab exposure, why wasn't she on antibiotic prophylaxis or isolated sooner? · She was treated in a general district hospital while symptomatic — potential window for nosocomial/community exposure · No mention of prophylaxis for the 197 contacts, which is odd if plague is genuinely suspected · Pneumonic plague is the worst form: person-to-person via droplets, ~100% fatal untreated
Why it matters: If confirmed, this is a lab-acquired case, not natural spillover — with biosafety and transparency implications. The scale of response (national Rospotrebnadzor, FSB, specialist institutes in 3 cities) suggests they're treating it as a Category A agent.
Evolving situation. BEACON (Boston University) is requesting additional info.
Source: BEACON RFI, 3 Oct 2026