I literally just finished Annie Jacobsen's book 'Biological War: A Scenario' last week where the central plot point is an accidental release of modified form of pneumonic plague from a lab in Siberia. Very coincidental timing, especially since it made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.
> made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.<p>Did anyone ever confirm if the lab in Wuhan China was the originator of COVID? I remember that was a rumor but never heard if there was anything to it.
I recently heard a scientist use a phrase something along the lines of “when two extraordinarily improbably events occur together, there is probably a connection”.<p>We’ll never know if the lab in Wuhan originated the virus. But it is awfully strange that the first patients of a novel pandemic coronavirus were workers at a lab conducting gain of function research on coronavirus.
This is not an accurate description. The first identified patients were people working in or living near a "wet market" where (among other things) various wild animals were sold. It's plausible that someone was infected somewhere else and the market was only the site of a "superspreader event" (rather than the earliest jump from some other animal to humans), but further details are speculative, informed by indirect phylogenetic evidence rather than direct forensic evidence.<p>It's not unusual/unexpected that there were labs working on coronavirus research in several major Chinese cities: the 2002 SARS outbreak, which began in southern China and caught researchers and public health officials off guard, led to significant investment in the study of coronaviruses.
It is very unlikely that the initial superspreader event of a pandemic would be in a wet market that would be the one place for an animal spillover.<p>And when you look at the documented lab release of SARS-CoV-1, it killed the researcher's mother. If a lab leak happened, we would expect it to hit the people closest to the researchers at the lab who were infected, and the places they visited. Hitting only the wet market isn't very likely.<p>The outbreak looks like a wet market spillover. The fact that it happened in the same city as WIV is an unusual coincidence, but if the virus developed in rural Hubei, it was likely it would spillover in Wuhan.
I think perhaps there is a correlation with population density as well. Wuhan is fairly dense, and the wet market that is subject to speculation is located in the most densely populated district of wuhan.<p>Is it possible that the animals at the wet market itself was the source? Sure. But it seems sort of coincidental to me it is also the most dense area of the city; could’ve already been spreading and this location just happened to be where a major outbreak occurred from density factors alone.
The first corona identified. The Wuhan workers got sick around a month before.<p>They also didn’t find any animal corona samples at the market. Also around 50% of people of the initial cluster had no connection to the market.<p>Also the hospital where the lab workers were treated was on the corner of this market.
> But it is awfully strange that the first patients of a novel pandemic coronavirus were workers at a lab conducting gain of function research on coronavirus.<p>Except - as far as I know - the first patients weren’t.
What do you know?<p>In 2021 the WSJ reported that 3 workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 with symptoms resembling COVID-19 that they sought hospital care. Their source was a U.S. intelligence report.<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/china/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/world/china/intelligence-on-sick-staff-a...</a><p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210622121243/https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/covid-19-origins-wuhan-lab-staff-treatment-illness-flu-14873524" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20210622121243/https://www.chann...</a><p>The WHO responded by saying the lab leak theory was extremely unlikely, and this line of investigation was dropped (except possibly within the government - this is the sort of information that would be convenient for governments to know but inconvenient for the public to know). But then in a follow-up documentary, a WHO scientist that published that statement says that they were under heavy pressure from the Chinese government to do so:<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-embarek/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-...</a>
Virus outbreaks are usually first recognized in large cities. Most large Chinese cities have labs that study coronaviruses. They were established in response to SARS-CoV-1 in the early 2000s.<p>So no matter where it comes from the chances are good a coronavirus outbreak will first be detected in a city that has a coronavirus lab.
My understanding is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of only 2 BSL-4 labs in china in 2019, and the only one focused on emergent viruses. This is out of 684 major Chinese cities.
The good thing about free will is that one can just believe that something is true, regardless of how much people on the web hit oneself over the head for it.<p>Ideally, said belief is rooted in scientific methods, of course.<p>But there is actually no need for this "lab! No! Market! no! Lab!" ping-pong that seems to be developing here.
You seem to deliberately mislead readers...
I think we've overcorrected.<p>For what it's worth, the "first patients were lab workers" part isn't established. What is documented is that the earliest cases cluster around the Huanan market. The lab workers attribution shouldn't be carrying the argument.<p>Before COVID, people were just unable to be roused out of their sleep about the dangers of cross-species virus transmission. "Wake me up when something important happens." By a certain standard nothing important had ever happened: so people slept on.<p>Then COVID hit. "Time to wake up." Suddenly people went from basically unconscious to hypervigilant overnight. Something which was a clear and present danger - the wet markets - looked uninteresting compared to the lab. Environmental samples taken there tested positive. In other words: don't sleep on the wet markets again - they are dangerous, then and now.<p>While paying attention was arguably an improvement over complete indifference, I don't think we landed in the right place.
Were they first patients?
Well, according to some reports, the first reported incidents happened in November 2019 and the months prior, from people who worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology (according to US government sources) [0]. Those people were: Ben Hu, Yu Ping, Zhu Yan.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.public.news/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19" rel="nofollow">https://www.public.news/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19</a>
That is all based on the claim that they had illnesses with symptoms consistent with COVID. But those are also consistent with the flu and with the common cold and with other seasonal viruses which were also active at the time, since November is in the respiratory illness season there.
According to partisan online newsletter "public.news" that claims to have interviewed anonymous US government sources.<p>Unfortunately online search has gone useless and it's not possible to find out if anyone ever confirmed anything about that report. Just gazillion of other newslets repeating the original claim.
Not according to them and this little-known publication called "Science." I've never heard of it, but seems legit:<p><a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/ridiculous-says-chinese-scientist-accused-being-pandemic-s-patient-zero" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/ridiculous-says-chin...</a>
yes of course they all denied ever being sick in November 2019. China even denied that the wet market was the original source of infection. China also disputed any claims that they practiced "gain of function" research at all at WIV, even though that was uncovered by the recent evidence presented in Congress against Anthony Fauci, who funded the whole thing in the first place.
Normally, I would count that as a strong signal that the origin was said lab. But with the current government, I don't think such a report in isolation should be considered as strong evidence. The US is not trustworthy at the moment.
Beyond reasonable doubt doesn't mean impossible,any more than on the balance of probabilities means beyond reasonable doubt.
Source on first patients being WIV workers? I think there was a US intelligence report that claimed several fell ill in Nov., some with incompatible symptoms, and with claims from WIV they didn't test positive for antibodies (not saying take those at face value). There's also the wet market and the sampling done in gutters around the different stalls and a whole competing story there, which is also the kind of scenario in the 2002 SARS outbreak.
><i>...were workers at a lab conducting gain of function research on coronavirus...</i><p>...with funding from a US group that discussed conducting this gain of function research in China using a spike protein at the furin cleavage site, a group whose members were appointed to come up with an explanation for what had happened.
> I recently heard a scientist use a phrase something along the lines of “when two extraordinarily improbably events occur together, there is probably a connection”.<p>Dumbest thing I've heard today.<p>Ever since we started studying autism, we found it! Therefore studying causes autism.
Chinas actions following the event includes the destruction of evidence, refusal of access and using the WHO as their personal mouthpiece. Unless history is rewritten too, every textbook should clearly point to China.
I feel it's more complicated than that. I wouldn't be surprise if Beijing does not actually know whether this was a lab leak or not.<p>The local government might know. They would have started a cover up reflexively.<p>But in either case, it could be that neither the local government nor central government wants to know or to find out. Ultimately, destroying the evidence and failing to cooperate with foreign investigators has cost China very little or nothing, even.<p>In short, I feel China should be admonished for covering things up, but not that the cover up proves the lab leak.
In a state like China, this would probably happen as a panic response, not because the people covering up and destroying evidence <i>know</i> that their institution has done something bad/embarrassing, but because they <i>fear</i> it might be so and it's far better for their personal careers to suppress too much than to suppress too little. It's quite possible the people running cover-ups knew as little as us.<p>And that goes for western spy agencies too, by the way. Headless chickens all around.
this is one of the leaps of faith I allude to in my top level comment - just because a bad actor is involved and would be incentivized to cover something up, doesn't mean that the lab leak theory is correct. Those two ideas are not connected.<p>A really easy knockdown for this kind of argument is - why did they close down, sanitize, and dispose of all animals and items at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market? If your argument is that a coverup points to the source, why wouldn't that mean the wet market was the origin?
Of course, it should point to China. They're the ones who didn't shut down the wet markets after SARS-CoV-1.
Source? Your account is no better hearsay.
now do NIH / Doge / Twitter
almost nobody who understands the science and how viruses spread gives more credence to the lab leak theory over a zoonotic source. There are huge leaps of faith required by the lab leak theory that don't hold up against slight scrutiny. People will get into the weeds about "furin cleavage sites" etc. when none of that argumentation is necessary to determine the most likely source.
I believe it was zoonosis, not a lab leak: <a href="https://marketwise.substack.com/p/did-covid-19-come-from-a-lab-the" rel="nofollow">https://marketwise.substack.com/p/did-covid-19-come-from-a-l...</a>
There was endless discussion about how unlikely or reasonable it was with furin cleavage sites and whatnot. I wouldn't trust authoritative summaries.
That was exactly the strain of Coronavirus that the lab was working with, and exactly the kinds of mutations you'd expect them to make.<p>But no, I'm sure it was the wombats.
It wasn’t the exact strain, the mutations were nothing like you’d expect them to make, and good lord people on HN need better news and science sources if this is still the level of discussion on the topic.
The english indie rock band that formed in liverpool in 2003 did covid-19?
Pretty much confirmed by western intelligence including the German BND
Bill Gurley has a presentation about it, asking questions: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765794">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765794</a>
Last I saw, plausible, unconfirmed, nobody is willing/able to provide enough information to be able to confirm one way or another.
All the evidence was destroyed (probably just a coincidence, LOL), so it can't be proved either way.
It's difficult to say for sure, but the consensus is leaning towards zoonotic origin from a bat or pangolin in a wet market. (I'm not very well researched on this topic and don't have any formal background in it, so hedge accordingly)
there is zero evidence for zoonotic origin, and messages have been found and made public showing that the public proponents of a zoonotic origin hypothesis were in private saying "lab leak".<p><a href="https://archive.ph/WTsga" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/WTsga</a>
This says there’s 0 evidence to claim it’s a lab leak, and plenty of evidence, literal contact tracing from the wet market. They took the lab leak seriously and were emotionally resonant with you and I, however, they must deal in facts when they write.
>but the consensus is leaning towards zoonotic origin from a bat or pangolin in a wet market<p>I literally had to check the date on this post.<p>Does anyone else remember when claiming it was a lab in China that leaked was “racist”… but “they eat tainted exotic animals at wet markets” was “the consensus”?<p>Wild times!
> Does anyone else remember when claiming it was a lab in China that leaked was “racist”<p>No. I remember it being called a conspiracy theory. And it still is.
We should not be eating animals period
They are so tasty though
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Calling it the “Chinavirus” was obviously racist and weird. It was an ex posto facto thing to claim saying it was a lab leak was racist. I’m sure <i>someone</i> said that, however, no one serious was nor was it a common position.
I don't the formula: place + virus is racist. Racism is a serious issue and shouldn't be labelled on things that aren't making judgement using someone's race.<p>Normally city + virus using country + virus is incorrect. But to call it racist or transphobic or fascist would be an incorrect usage.
The Spanish Flu's first known case was in Kansas. French papers changed from calling it American Flu to Spanish Flu to avoid angering an ally (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#cite_note-fiction-57" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#cite_note-fiction-...</a>).<p>Maybe place + virus isn't inherently racist, but it's been politically charged & exploited; best to put the combination down.
People immediately started suggesting that the idea to close the border to Chinese travelers was racist. After it happened you even had the ever-politicized Lancet jump in claiming that such actions were "anchored in fear, misinformation, racism, and xenophobia." [1]<p>Similarly, you're referencing a name that was uncommonly used. People mostly called it the Wuhan Virus, which would be a far more typical name than "COVID-19". Major outbreaks are regularly named based on their origin: Spanish Flu, Hong Kong Flu, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Ebola, West Nile Virus, Marburg Virus, Zika Virus, Mexican Swine Flu, etc.<p>[1] - <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7133591/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7133591/</a>
> Major outbreaks are regularly named based on their origin: Spanish Flu<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu</a><p>> The earliest probable cases were documented in March 1918 in Haskell County, Kansas, United States<p>Oh.
That's a bit misleading: "The outbreak did not originate in Spain,[49] but reporting did, due to wartime censorship in belligerent nations. Spain was a neutral country unconcerned with appearances of combat readiness, and without a wartime propaganda machine to prop up morale,[50][51] so its newspapers freely reported epidemic effects, making Spain the apparent locus of the epidemic.[52] The censorship was so effective that Spain's health officials were unaware its neighboring countries were similarly affected."<p>In other words other countries were effectively censoring it out of existence owing to WW1. Spain didn't have such censorship/propaganda going on, and so was seen as the epicenter (even within Spain!), even though it ultimately wasn't.<p>[1] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spanish_flu&oldid=42685098" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spanish_flu&oldid...</a>
Okay, what about all the other examples?
> Major outbreaks are regularly named based on their origin: Spanish Flu,<p>Major outbreaks _were_ named like that, but as the other reply pointed out, the "Spanish Flu" did not actually originate in Spain at all.<p>It is for reasons like that, that WHO best practices now specifically say to not name diseases this way: <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-practices-for-naming-new-human-infectious-diseases" rel="nofollow">https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...</a><p>> Terms that should be avoided in disease names include geographic locations, people’s names, species of animal or food, cultural, population, industry or occupational references....
They were right, closing borders with China doesn't stop the virus from spreading, there's no scientific basis for that claim.<p>It's amazing how you had all those at the tip of your tongue, you are a clearly a learned medical scholar.<p>A peer comment discusses where the Spanish Flu originated, and illustrates the gap between what you asked the LLM for and well, how humans think and what the people you're talking to are actually talking about.<p>The LLM also went a bit overboard with the Wuhan Virus thing, it's <i>a</i> response, but it's hilariously out of context because, again, there's a gap between you're asking it for and what your interlocutor is communicating.<p>It's so confused that it's giving "Ah, but, people didn't say the thing you said was bad, because it was bad. The politically correct version was Wuhan Virus." - thus validating <i>exactly what I said</i>, the Chinavirus version was weird and bad.
> It was an ex posto facto thing to claim saying it was a lab leak was racist. I’m sure someone said that, however, no one serious was nor was it a common position.<p>I think you are misremembering.<p>> The lab-leak theory had been floated by President Trump and others in his circle in April last year. It was widely dismissed at the time as an unfounded conspiracy theory with racist undertones.<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-why-lab-leak-theory-is-back-despite-little-new-evidence-162215" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/covid-19-why-lab-leak-theory-is-...</a> (2021)<p>> New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli deleted a tweet Wednesday night that said the COVID-19 "lab leak theory" had "racist roots."<p><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ny-times-covid-reporter-deletes-132728236.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ny-times-covid-reporter-...</a> (2021)<p>> The lab-leak theory came to legitimacy by a circuitous path. It was first auditioned by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo shortly after lockdown started, but journalists were quick to distance themselves from its overtones of crude Trumpian racism. Nevertheless the theory gained new life last spring, when some of those same journalists — abetted by a chorus of concern trolls — began to question if they had been blinded by liberal partisanship.<p><a href="https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-42/politics/lab-leak-theory-and-the-asiatic-form/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-42/politics/lab-leak-theor...</a> (2022)<p>Some of this was a case of people failing to recognise that Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, reasoning (implicitly) like this:<p>Trump lies all the time + Trump said X => not X<p>instead of like this:<p>Trump says whatever suits him, regardless of the truth + Trump said X => no significant change to our credence in X<p>> Calling it the “Chinavirus” was obviously racist and weird.<p>That was a dumb Trumpism for sure, but separately from that, here in Australia, before the global spread of covid became too obvious to ignore, there was a sense among right-thinking people that even being concerned about it, let alone wanting to take any kind of action, was a manifestation of anti-Chinese racism / very literal xenophobia.
> Did anyone ever confirm if the lab in Wuhan China was the originator of COVID? I remember that was a rumor but never heard if there was anything to it.<p>Official report mandated by US Congress (under Biden btw): says it's <i>likely</i> it's a lab leak of a <i>modified</i> virus. CIA also changed its official stance and consider it's likely a lab leak.<p>The international expert who everybody based its idea that "it cannot possibly be a lab leak" has been debarred and cannot ever get funding from the US for research on modified viruses.<p>To me there's "something" off and it <i>is</i> a lab leak. And I always felt like this.
> And I always felt like this.<p>Hence you looked for evidence that matched and dismissed evidence that doesn't match.<p>Unless you can tell me that the majority of virologists agree it was a lab leak, I'm going to go with their majority opinion - which last I checked was that it couldn't possibly be a lab leak for specific genetic reasons.
> cannot ever get funding from the US for research on modified viruses.<p>So a guy who disagreed with the official CIA stance has been barred from obtaining funding for research from the US.<p>I mean, that just makes them seem more trustworthy.
Well, Americans were essentially prohibited from discussing this (most obvious) possibility because of fears that doing so would incite racist feelings towards Chinese people.<p>Then it was made worse by Trump's insistence on calling it the Chinavirus (just to make it "not my fault!") and predictably then the anti-Trump left reacted by censoring any connection between the lab and the outbreak.
I get downvoted every time I say this but the evidence doesn’t even prove it started in wuhan, or even China. It could of easily been brought here by the military games that happened before that
How did you enjoy the book? I did like her nuclear war volume, but it could have used some editing.
I thought it was better than the Nuclear war scenario, which I also enjoyed. I thought she did a better job in this one explaining possible off ramps or inflection points in the scenario but saying "this is the one we're exploring", which answers some of the critique of the nuclear war scenario.
I preferred the Nuclear War scenario book. Same style of narrative mixed with expert insights. The first several days of the scenario were riveting, after that less so. This one tries to describe the impact of social media and influencers, which I found inconclusive.<p>She also reports that Bush rode in the back of a laundry truck on the day of 9/11 to avoid detection getting to the Doomsday plane. Single source attribution, though.
How’d it turn out, are we boned?
No spoilers but Jacobsen's scenario books don't end with "and society came together, acted rationally, and solved the problem!"
Netflix ends up the series after Season 1, just after your are emotionally invested...
"The Siberian Incident", "Devil's Pass", Incident", Lake" also all deal with outbreaks of various sorts originating from Siberia. It's a trope.
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So breaks a test tube of live bacteria at an “anti-plague institute”, possible infects 100 colleagues, then when she developed plague like symptoms is taken to hospital and possibly infects 100 patients.<p>I think they need to investigate their safety protocols<p>> She reportedly told medical staff that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria while collecting samples for testing.<p>> At least 197 people who may have had contact with her were reportedly placed under medical isolation, including more than 100 in hospital wards.
Was this a glass test tube? I understand why glass is probably the best material for the inner lining of containers that hold biological material, but I'm surprised that there aren't better solutions for hazardous material (e.g. an unbreakable, transparent polymer outer coating).
I believe the biggest reason to use glass is that it doesn't react with much stuff, but I've yet to see an explanation for why your idea wouldn't work. I imagine there could be problems with autoclaves (i.e. degradation of the polymer) and fear of chemical leaching.
Polymer coated glass is commonplace in chemistry labs for large containers of hazardous reagents held in storage. There's no chemical leaching concern because it's on the outside.<p>If anything, disposable plastic test tubes are the norm in microbiology labs at this point. No need to autoclave because they come sterile and you throw them away after a single use.<p>Plenty of plastic that's designed for it goes through the autoclave. For example micropipette tips. Nearly all of it is disposable single use so it only has to withstand a single cycle.
There is regular soda-lime glass and there is borosilicate glass.
I don't think there is any actual evidence that it was a broken test tube because she would have started on prophylactic antibiotic treatment immediately.<p>Luckily you need to be in close contact with someone already very sick to catch it. It's not silent transmission like COVID. But maybe there is something different about this outbreak?
That's Russia we're talking about. You can have 1000 protocols and people will ignore them anyway. You can ask a ton of questions, like was she immunized before working with plague (Russia has pretty effective vaccines against all types) and if not why the heck not, why they use easily breakable test tubes to hold dangerous pathogens, how the incident with live biomaterial was not immediately reported and caused a lockdown, but they allowed waiting for symptoms and then going to a general hospital, etc., etc. - but the answer for all of that, I suspect, is: "it's Russia". For an American, it's hard to appreciate to what measure Russia is <i>not</i> a "safety culture" country.
> That's Russia we're talking about. You can have 1000 protocols and people will ignore them anyway.<p>Speaking as someone who has a part of their job convincing people to follow safety processes, this isn't a Russia thing, it's a human thing.
According to aquaintances in a few different industries where some of their competition is Russian: They basically work for vodka, then their equipment breaks down, they can't fix it and the customer has to call a western company. They apparently have no consistent maintenance or service protocol whatsoever, and in some rather safety critical areas.
This is a human thing, of course, but in different cultures the emphasis on following the rules and taking safety measures is different. In Russia, there isn't one.
“You know why Russians rarely go to the doctor?<p>Because they only have two diseases — clusterfuck and bullshit.<p>Clusterfuck is completely incurable, and bullshit just goes away on its own…”
Are we fairly confident that these labs do more good than the risk they present to the public? I’m not sure we should be keeping dangerous pathogens around just for giggles and PhD papers. What are examples of how the research done in these places improves public health?
One of the things which surprised me during covid was how e.g. Turkic central Asian states not only had clearly well-funded bio labs, but sometimes even their own vaccines (effective, too!) quickly in production.<p>The conclusion I drew from that is that people like Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow have asked a lot of questions about bioweapons in secret for a long time. And if he did it, you bet all similar leaders, in a wide sense, did it too. And I wouldn't like to be the scientist who got approached by security state people with these questions.<p>I guess I'm not conveying this well. What I'm trying to say is that we're not at all confident about anything like that - none of us - because it's all so hush hush because it's WMD-adjacent. The secrecy cripples our ability to have an honest well-informed discussion about it.
knowledge. how to handle that and how it looks/works. if you forget it you will be reminded later.
For all the hand wringing we're doing over AI, I'm surprised that post-covid, regardless of origin, there wasn't a more serious discussion on what sorts of biological research are worth the risk.
I think this is in part because more people have some amount of knowledge about software and can directly see the effect AI has on the job market around them than do about biological research. Biological research labs usually don't expose convenient chat interfaces, besides, you only hear and read about them in scientific papers as long as things go well.<p>But totally agreed that that conversation should be had, a kind of test ban treaty would be useful but frankly, the three groups most likely to conduct this kind of research would never agree to such a ban.
I wonder if people downvoting consider your question to be a thoughtcrime or something. It’s a legitimate line of inquiry. Research happens because somebody is interested and writes a grant request that is accepted. Governments and institutions where the research happens have rules as well. It’s possible that the researchers, the folks reviewing the grants, and the people making the rules haven’t done a cost-benefit analysis that adequately covers the tail risks. For some kinds of research, the answer can be: no, we shouldn’t do this. It’s reasonable to publicly discuss these concerns.
Plague exists naturally. It's not some kind of a movie-land bioweapon McGuffin. The US has half a dozen cases of plague each year.<p>Russia did a lot of work to control the plague with anti-plague vaccinations of cattle and pets, resulting in almost no human plague cases. This obviously requires research and development for vaccines.<p>BTW, same applies to anthrax. It also exists naturally, which surprises a lot of people.
Yersinia Pestis is normally treated with doxycycline, cipro, or streptomycin.<p>Is this a resistant strain?<p><a href="https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/235627-medication#1" rel="nofollow">https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/235627-medication#1</a>
This information that she "broke a tube" is tabloid bs.<p>Non-tabloid version is that she didn't catch it in the lab, she got ill "while being on a research trip to Buryatia region near the border where sources of the disease were found".
OP article claims the former. Is there a better source for the latter?
In absence of sources, the latter sounds like government cover-up bs to me.
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20261003051644/https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2026/10/02/29438899.shtml" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20261003051644/https://www.gazet...</a><p>the government does cover-ups. There was already an epidemic problem earlier this year when they seized and killed cattle in Siberia while keeping silence and pretending nothing happens. Then they have to admit that there is a disease after unrest cause them keeping silence was used for messages like "gov helps big corpos destroy local farmers' business". But they still named less dangerous one, which didn't match the harshness of the protocol they used. Cause if they named the real problem, other countries would've stopped buying meat.<p>for the cattle epidemic see: <a href="https://ru-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B0_%D0%B2_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8_(2026)?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp" rel="nofollow">https://ru-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1...</a>
>Oct. 2<p>Here's a newer CNN story from today:<p>>Researcher at Russian plague laboratory dies of ‘unknown’ infection<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/04/europe/russia-laboratory-plague-accident-intl" rel="nofollow">https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/04/europe/russia-laboratory-...</a><p>This post from local Irkutsk region media (now in exile) is also interesting:<p><a href="https://t.me/Baikal_People/16651" rel="nofollow">https://t.me/Baikal_People/16651</a> (in Russian)
How often does this sort of thing happen? I'm guessing more than we think, either because we forget the news stories we read or because it isn't reported.
There was a COVID 19 lab leak in Taiwan about a year into the pandemic.<p><a href="https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/4374289" rel="nofollow">https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/4374289</a><p>Six errors contributed to this leak.
Bubonic plague is known to be active in Colorado, I think there are a handful of cases each year
Endemic in Antananarivo (very many deaths per year), not sure about the rest of Madagascar.
If you live in the Rocky Mountains try to avoid close contact with prairie dogs or animal carcasses and you'll be fine. If you catch it, get to a hospital quickly and take the antibiotics and you'll probably be fine. If you delay treatment you should use that time to get your affairs in order.
Also ask how much is this failed route procedures because organisms or viri of this variety won't continue without human sustainment which is prone to human failures...
Janet Parker was the last person to die of smallpox and, yes, she caught it in a lab [1].<p>[1]: <a href="https://whyy.org/segments/the-tragic-case-of-smallpoxs-final-victim/" rel="nofollow">https://whyy.org/segments/the-tragic-case-of-smallpoxs-final...</a>
The Irkutsk governor, Igor Kobzev, seems to actually have experience in emergency management, and has served for many years in the Ministry of Emergency Situations. This makes the serious response a little bit less surprising (actually doing something instead of just covering it up is the thing that made me actually worried about this situation).
> The woman was identified as Daria Sh., a 27- or 28-year-old employee of the Irkutsk anti-plague institute, by the exiled news outlet Lyudi Baikala (People of Baikal) and pro-Kremlin broadcaster REN TV.<p>> She reportedly told medical staff that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria while collecting samples for testing.<p>This is just weird. Plague is easily treated if antibiotics are given right away. I'm shocked that <i>an anti-plague institute</i> wouldn't have detailed and proactive plans in case of mishaps. Obviously I think it's likely that there is more to it than what's reported in the article, but I would find it truly baffling if within 60 seconds of her breaking that test tube that protocols weren't initiated to protect her, her colleagues and the community.<p>Of course, Russia...
It's not clear if she even died from plague. The Russian-language version of the article lists various "versions" of what happened, and her breaking a test tube is only listed as one of the versions. Sounds like random rumors but at the same time, you can't trust the government either (which says no one has tested for plague positively). What's clear is that an employee at an "anti-plague' institute suddenly died from pneumonia-like symptoms, which certainly sounds suspicious but interpreting it as evidence of a plague infection may also be an overreaction
I'm assuming if its a bio-lab that its a gain of function version that may be immune to conventional antibiotics.<p>Actually went to a scout camp as a teenager (in the 80s) and one of our scouts got the plauge. Took a long while for the hospital to identify it and get him on heavy antibiotics because no one had seen it in real life before.
>the exiled news outlet<p>i wouldn't rely as a source of information on some very niche outlet whose stuff located thousands kms from the place where something happens<p>> REN TV.<p>these are guys whose bread and butter are paranormal activity and UFOs
She probably didn't tell anybody she broke the tube, because, you know, they might yell at her and it may cost her a bit of money if they discover she was clumsy. So she just went home and when she felt bad, went to the hospital. Where nobody knew shit about the plague, as expected - when a person with respiratory symptoms in the autumn shows up in a hospital, nobody thinks "let's test her for plague". When she died, and when they learned where she worked, probably some major "oh shit!" lightbulbs gone up, but by then it was a done deed.
"Don't worry, Mikhail. We have extensive containment measures in place. In case pathogen breaks containment, detachment of troops stands ready to terminate all remaining personnel and burn facility to ground."<p>"But sir, you are talking about—"<p>"I am talking about courageous scientists giving their lives to protect Mother Russia. Any further questions?"
>Irkutsk region Governor Igor Kobzev urged the public to remain calm after meeting with Rospotrebnadzor chief Anna Popova to coordinate emergency containment measures.<p>>“All identified contact persons have been placed under medical observation. As of today, the contacts show no signs of illness, and their laboratory test results are negative,”<p>Why is the knee jerk reaction of authority figures to say everything is fine? Be it epidemic risk, or cybersecurity incidents, the spokepeople always output noise in the form of "everything is fine", there's almost no signal
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Thankfully I still have a decent supply of ivermectin from HNs guidance during COVID.
Sounds cartoon-like and unbelievable.