Emergency quarantine protocols are in place in Irkutsk after a suspected laboratory accident
Russian health authorities have reportedly placed hundreds of people in quarantine in Siberia following the death of a laboratory worker who was exposed to an “unknown” virus.
The 28-year-old victim was an employee at the Anti-Plague Research Institute in Shelekhov, a town near the regional capital of Irkutsk, according to reports.
Prior to her death, she reportedly told medical personnel that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live biological samples while working inside the facility.
New coronavirus ???
Oh God, please please please don’t be small pox.
Big Pox walks in
”You poor guy. You look like ka-ka!”
They really are going all out for the midterms. A new pandemic
Wikipedia is already referencing articles saying it’s a pathogen related to the Black Death.
And for people worried about it, the World Health Organization (WHO) says that “today it can be easily treated with antibiotics and the use of standard preventative measures.”
such fun times to be without spleen
So if it’s easily treated, and I’m sure they knew this at the lab, why did the worker die?
In a country where people suicide by 12 knife stabs in the back and where people randomly fall from an inoperable 5th floor window…
I would just say: because Russia?
Many possible explanations.
- Russia lying again to justify death of someome they wanted dead
- Russia lying again to try to scare the world into thinking they have some unknown bioweapon
- Russia lying again that this whole ordeal happened to make the world think they have scientists working on bioweapons
- Russia doing stupid fucking shit. Again.
Let’s not discount the possibility of creaking Soviet-era equipment that should have been replaced decades ago but the money was non-existent/spent corruptly/not enough to touch the sides of the neglect/delete as appropriate.
We’re talking about the country which operates the poor Kuznetsov which has been begging for death for many years.
Nah, they made their own equipment. That’s worse.
People die of treatable diseases.
Assuming of course, to be pessimistic, it hasn’t been weaponized. Siberian Anti-Plague Research facility doesn’t fill me with confidence, and you’d expect the hospital to have tried antibiotics, granted they may have been too late or used the wrong ones.
My ‘favourite’ fact about Soviet-era bioweapons is that they had a facility on an island in the Aral Sea. Said sea vanished from existence after the Kremlin redirected all the rivers which fed it in an effort to grow cotton in the desert, causing it to shrink to some 10% or less of its original volume. As well as destroying the livelihoods of the fishermen of Aralsk in Kazakhstan, it also made the island full of fucking anthrax among other things part of the mainland.
I’ll say this for the Soviets, they didn’t do environmental disasters by halves. Also as a Briton we had our own anthrax island in Scotland from the war that was only decontaminated in the '90s.
Why is this comment buried here? It’s literally the solution! Do people love the thrill of panicking? Internet, you so silly sometimes…
Chat how easy it is to brew an antibiotic resistant strain of plague considered we created some resistant diseases fully by accident?
renowned current health guidance has a high likelihood of failing to apply to new genetically-modified variants
(if that is the case)
oh hey look somebody wrote a book about this exact scenario recently…
I guarentee you, it’s not unknown.
So we’re going to have COVID-2 now?
Something about this image gave me temporary Dyslexia.
Fixed it. The cut off letters really threw me off.
“Anti Plague Research Institute”.
That’s a funny way of translating “Illegal Biological Warfare Institute”.
Anti Plague Research Institute
Anti Plague Research Institute
Anti Plague Research Institute
Anti Plague Research Institute
Kobzev stated that all identified close contacts remain asymptomatic and have tested negative.
How do someone test a virus that is “unknown”…?
its the pneumonic plague, so not a virus, but Yersinia pestis, aka the black death.
Because the facility specialises in dangerous pathogens, the incident has drawn speculation it could be pneumonic plague – one of three variants caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis
Speculation only, no one other than the lab know what that virus are, it could be just that, or it could be something else entirely that they made to test vaccine or some other test(which is very normal procedure iirc)
*Pathogen, we do not know if it’s a virus or a bacteria
The test is also unknown.
it wasnt a virus, it was PNEUMONIC plague, yersinia pestis.
Hopefully it’s contained, because if we get another pandemic conservatives are going to do everything in their power to make it kill as many people as possible.
Well, this time around, MAGA conservatives have proven that they can indeed wear masks so maybe… naw. They’ll come up with some reason not to again.
I mean… Aren’t the conservatives going to do that anyway?
The number of people possible will be higher
It’s way cheaper this way
They’ll mostly be successful in killing their own voter base, which would ultimately turn out positively?
I think that it’d be pretty hard to describe a plague pandemic in any terms approaching “positively”.
IDK an irradication of boomers, antivaxers, and conservatives would be approaching a positive outcome.
Or it disproportionately kills the most economically oppressed like always, spreads paranoia and destroys community trust, leading to another right wing surge.
So just fuck the disabled and immunocompromised?
And babies!
There is a way to rationalize all this but it’s obviously extremely cruel.
(A reminder that wishing your political enemies die by their own hand is… not great.)
It’s like eradication but also irradiation for some reason.
and Democrats! that would be great
I’d like to know what the “live biological samples” were.
Earlier articles said it was Pneumonic Plague. Maybe the independent is taking a step back from that since there’s nothing definitive, but it doesn’t really matter right now (note that this position is different from saying it doesn’t matter at all, or saying to not keep your ear to the ground).
If it’s the plague then it’s treatable with antibiotics, but not the first line ones, and it has to be treated quickly. As we all should know by now if it’s a virus you can only treat the symptoms until there’s a vaccine.
the pneumonic plague is more lethal than the bubonic, the classic one in medieval times, eventhough its the same bacteria. you need to be treated within 1day, or it becomes septicemic.
I’m hoping there is one, simply because the same thing will happen again.
The Left will follow instructions and survive, the Right will die in numbers large enough to affect elections
No matter if instructions are followed, there is always risk, especially to vulnerable people.
Totally what happened. We now have a leftist president and congress. The right wing is all dead.
Yeah, and those of us who are on the left and immunocompromised are fucked. I understand where you’re coming from, but this is a bad take.
Anti-Plague Research Institute
I bet I know what this mystery virus is
It’s like bills with titles that say the opposite of what they achieve.
Should be Pro-Plague Research Institute
