Darya Shipilova is said to have been exposed to the pathogen while working at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia
Hundreds of people have been placed into quarantine in Siberia after a laboratory worker died of suspected plague, according to reports.
Darya Shipilova, an employee at the Anti-Plague Research Institute in Shelekhov, was exposed to the bacteria after she accidentally broke a test tube containing the pathogen while she was collecting samples, the Kyiv Independent reported.
She was hospitalised on 29 September with severe pneumonia of "unknown origin” and placed on a ventilator, but died shortly after.
Independent Russian outlet Lyudi Baikal reported that several hospitals in the city of Irkutsk had closed for a three-week quarantine.
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.”
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.
Someone else wrote it’s a strain that specializes in colonizing the lungs and has to be treated within 24 hours or septicimia. Also that front line antibiotics might not work on it but others will.
So if it’s easily treated, and I’m sure they knew this at the lab, why did the worker die?
Many possible explanations.
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.
Hopefully Ukraine will grant it mercy and eternal rest 🙏
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?
People die of treatable diseases.
Usually not 28 year olds though
that kinda undercuts the whole “don’t worry, the black death can be cured now a days” argument
No idea if true but people on reddit said it had to be treated within 24 hours of symptom onset.
A ton of people would easily try to wait it out and be too late to get meds.
think about what it would do to housing prices to have a large number of nice houses be suddenly available
I’m guessing they made an extra feisty version. Otherwise, break out the antibiotics, no need for death or massive quarantine…
such fun times to be without spleen
Why is this comment buried here? It’s literally the solution! Do people love the thrill of panicking? Internet, you so silly sometimes…
renowned current health guidance has a high likelihood of failing to apply to new genetically-modified variants
(if that is the case)
Chat how easy it is to brew an antibiotic resistant strain of plague considered we created some resistant diseases fully by accident?
Not if it is developed by Russians to be antibiotic resistant.
Why would they have a lab working on it if it was easily treatable by antibiotic? Why the worker died anyway and they introduced a quarantine?