Russian lab worker dies of suspected plague after ‘being exposed to virus by broken test tube’
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.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-plague-unknown-virus-quarantine-siberia-b3061181.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
185 replies
For all folks concerned of massive epidemic:
Also, to those concerned that this is a biological weapon lab:
I am pinning my hopes on a random Lemmy commentor.
I hate this timeline.
Erm, Actually. It's obvious they're still researching the Suppression and Sympto-Statis gene tech so they can sneak the plague into other countries without panic.
You casuals wouldn't understand. 😏 /s
Plague isn't a virus. Sigh.
It is a bacteria, and since this one likely is modified in a bioweapons, it will be practically immediately fatal and incurable.
Do you have any evidence for either of those statements or are you just doing Russophobia?
Anyone who wants something extra to feel anxious about should read the hot zone by Richard Preston. It's about Ebola, not plague, but it's. . . alarming. Ebola is a virus, not a bacteria like plague, but the difficulty of containment even in secure labs, and the possibilities of mutation - as far as I know, they're not dissimilar. Especially if a government lab has been fucking around trying to weaponise it, as I suspect happened here.
I will never understand the thought behind weaponizing diseases. They kill indiscriminately, even you, the developer or the president who orders it's release. Anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.
I think the idea is to develop a vaccine or cure along with the disease so you can deploy that selectively.
Doesn't make the idea any better though.
Especially because diseases obviously mutate and the cure may then be ineffective!
I wish ppl understood this about nuclear weapons. Like ok so you want to attack that country over there.... what do you think 60 seconds to midnight means exactly?
Really any weapons. Start a war is literally fucking around and finding out. It all comes with blow back.
Everyone has the same choice to be assholes. It's not a super power. Just a choice.
This is why all of the interest in genetics and gene manipulation by the creepy rich, like Epstein and company, should freak people out into swift action
They say fiction predicts fact...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_7_(novel)
Those who weaponize diseases don't think that far ahead. They don't care, because it hurts other people, and that's all they need to feel like they "won".
"fuck them" mentality is the reason.
His book The Demon in the Freezer is also really good and about small pox.
Incidentally there are two facilities in the world that contain and research smallpox, one in Russia and one, of course, in the USA. The latter has previously had "incidents".
'Anti' plague research.
How could Joe Biden and the Democrats let this happen! They're only doing this yo make Trump look bad, and after the election it will conveniently disappear.
Red vs Blue brain rot on full display here. You managed to turn some news about a lab leak in Russia … about US Politics?
That's just what being American is like. Everything always has to be about them.
As an American I need everyone to help me steer this conversation towards gun control or abortion.
I’m American and I think that behavior is unhinged
How long until the orange pedo uses this as an excuse for a lockdown and cancels the midterms
Likely won't be a blip on the radar.
FYI the US averages seven cases of Plague a year. Usually happens in the western plains, Utah and Arizona and occasionally into northern California and Orgeon.
Often tied to those rural areas with prairie dog populations since the bacteria likes rodents and they can become carriers.
It's not the 1300's anymore and treatment is a few rounds of azithromycin or some other heavy-duty anti-biotic.
I'm sure his buddy Vlad will tell him that he has it under control and there's nothing to worry about.
Awesome. My question is: does Anti-Plague Research Institute actually mean Biological Weapon Research Institute?
My guess is yes, since she died. I'm pretty sure that it's pretty trivial to cure plague these days, just using antibiotics. Since she died, and there's a big quarantine, that suggests the possibility that they've been fucking with the bacteria and made it extra spicy. It's so obvious that governments will do this - just because - that Stephen King wrote the stand back in the 70s.
It could be antibiotics-resistant strain, and that can occur naturally pretty easily. Russian healthcare system likes to prescribe antibiotics for anything and everything, so probability of her being on some prolonged course that allowed for a super-plague to develop naturally is not zero.
Which, frankly speaking, will be so much worse. At this point, I hope it's a bioweapon.
Weren't they pioneering phage research back in the old USSR days..?
Yeah, well, you know how it is...
Depends on the form. Even regular Yersinia can be very, very bad if it gets into the wrong organs.
Does it really matter what the label is on the name of the institute that wipes out humanity? If the place has deadly viruses with the only protection stopping it from killing people that work there is a thin glass test tube, then it doesn't really matter what the intent was, the place was always designed to wipe out humanity.
It doesn't, but I'm willing to bet a dollar that the name on the institute that wipes out humanity will be a reference to the Lord of the Rings, and it will be one of the evil things.
Yup.
Those damnable Valinor-made crystal balls will get you EVERY time.
Remember that conservatives constantly whine about "plandemics". And we have learned with the. That accusation is a confession.
-Pizzagate was Epstein -Stolen elections are literally all just conservatives cheating -Biden crime family was just giving permission to the insane corruption of the whore family.
Conservatives need to go away for the safety of all life on earth.
They are insane pedophile supporting psychopaths that only care about money
We are all going to fucking die, aren't we?
Eventually yes
I mean from this plague that they are likely going to stupidly released into the world.
No, probably not.
Does the author not know that there's a difference between a virus and a bacterium?
It's funny how often you see this mistake made in articles about diseases. Like, people think bacteria and viruses are the same sorta nasty so what's the big deal? FFS - the word 'antibiotics' ought to give them a clue that these things are treated very differently.
By all appearances, no.
I swear to all that is holy if there's another pandemic I will have a bitch fit
that's some vintage russian behavior.
Will DDR5 become affordable if 90% of humanity dies?
climate change may be slowed or even reversed though.
No, because LLMs are all vaccinated.
I guess we've reached the point where LLMs are actually smarter that a portion of the population.
Unless, they used Norton's......
to be fair, a playschool see-n-say is smarter than a decently large portion of hte population
Welp, time to get a somewhat more substantial face filter mask thing.
You'd be safer keeping mouse traps on hand and have flea collars on your pets.
Throughout history, plague almost always has come in on a tide of rodents. Rats or mice. (and in the Western US, it's hosts are often Prairie Dogs..)
"Mah freedom!"
"No, we're going to recommend simple surgical masks, and then when those don't work, we're going to claim that no masks or filtration devices work at all."
Ivermectin manufacturers are rubbing their hands and upping production.
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."
I'm guessing they made an extra feisty version. Otherwise, break out the antibiotics, no need for death or massive quarantine..
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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)
Prep for chemical warfare. Putin's last act as a desperate man.
biological*
I don't care if it's the first act of Henry the Fifth, that's a bit much.
They really are going all out for the midterms. A new pandemic
”You poor guy. You look like ka-ka!”
Best Randall Flagg ever!
oh hey look somebody wrote a book about this exact scenario recently...
Someone had written about viral pneumonia coming from wuhan china prior to 2019 too. I forget how they said that novel played out it was different than what happened otherwise. No writer could've forseen just how stupid we were becoming.
Something about this image gave me temporary Dyslexia.
Fixed it. The cut off letters really threw me off.
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.
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".
The black death caused the renaissance¹, and the end of feudalism in Europe. I'd say that was pretty positive (eventually), despite the overall tragedy.
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!
The Epstein class is way ahead of you on that front
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make"
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.)
I thought you folks loved democracy.
It's like eradication but also irradiation for some reason.
and Democrats! that would be great
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
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’d like to know what the “live biological samples” were.
What I've heard was Y. Pestis, Yersinia Pestis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yersinia_pestis
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”.
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
I bet I know what this mystery virus is
The articles says it's not a virus:
Why does it say virus in the title?
It's said to be yersina pestis there, the black death, but an airborne strain that causes septicimia within a day if not treated.
I would imagine that is from gain of function research they've been doing.
It’s like bills with titles that say the opposite of what they achieve.
Should be Pro-Plague Research Institute
I guarentee you, it’s not unknown.
You are right. It's a known bacteria. Read the article.
Aw shit, here we go again…
How do someone test a virus that is "unknown"...?
It's not a virus, and it's not unknown.
its the pneumonic plague, so not a virus, but Yersinia pestis, aka the black death.
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.
Wow. What’s Putin doing, manufacturing plague to deal with Ukraine?
There are very legitimate reasons to be doing research like this. Every developed nation pretty much has labs like this.
However, that isn't to say none of these are attempting to make weapons. The issue is research for a weapon like this looks pretty much identical to the good kind of research. The only way to know the difference would be getting your hands on documents saying it's for a weapon.
Sure, but, Putin.
what kind of scientist accidently breaks open a test tube containing plague
I've lost count of the glassware I've broken. Now none of them were plague cultures, but I wouldn't get less clumsy just because they were.
Also this sort of thing becomes more likely when we're overworked and tired. So if you don't want another plague, it might be a good idea to make sure your local scientists have reasonable workloads.
Never underestimate the human capacity for failure.
There are a lot of labs who work on all kinds of diseases. They keep them in test tubes sometimes. Accidents happen. The big issue is there should be protocols that prevent that accident from spreading, which there apparently weren't in this case. This could be for a ton of reasons, like the person not following protocol, or issues caused by a lack of funding due to the war. I don't think we can really speculate on why this happened, just that it did, and the fact that they were doing this work isn't that strange.
Always has been.
The USSR from the Stalin era onwards had world-leading biological and chemical weapons programmes, largely due to having plenty of test subjects in the gulag system.
So if Putin calls it the Anti-Plague Research Institute we can be pretty sure they're actively creating plagues right?
T-Virus time?
I look forward to conservatives fighting for their right to get bitten by zombies.
Well looking through the list of symptoms, it makes you murderous and violent, you never seem to die a natural death, and all you want to do in life is destroy the brains of the woke.
...I guess they've already got it.
it wasnt a virus, it was PNEUMONIC plague, yersinia pestis.
Oh God, please please please don't be small pox.
They have a lab with that in Russia too. Oh and one in Georgia! Which has also had "incidents".
Big Pox walks in
Bigly pox
So we're going to have COVID-2 now?
COVID-2026
It’s gonna be like madden in a few years. The devs will get lazy and just slap a new coat of paint on it each year.
I gotta say the moment the RUSSIANS start taking things like this seriously is usually quite late. So uuuuuuuh
Everybody get ready to add a "Russian Plague" box to your bingo card.
NGL the news about this one is stressing me the fuck out for some reason. Maybe because its Russia and it came from a lab, so I'm immediately dooming this is like an antibiotic superweapon or some shit. I don't know, that's just needless anxiety right?
But also I can't trust the US government to take care of people and I can't trust the Russian government to tell the truth about this so I feel like shit is gonna hit the fan.
It's a bacteria and it's known.
Yes, I fucked up a little and forgot a word it seems, I said "Antibiotic superweapon" instead of "Antibiotic resistant superweapon." Which, has the potential to be catastrophic, given you treat bacterial infections with antibiotics.
they had accidental releases, or infections from BSL-4 labs before. anthrax, other plague, read up on it, its quite interesting.
Surprisingly it's actually mildly comforting to know we've had worse accidental releases lmao.
Yeah but the important part is it hasn't led to the end of the world yet!
Sidenote: putting asterisks into alt-text makes it go nuts. Interesting.
Ooo we haven’t had a pandemic in 6.5 years.
Uh, it hasn’t stopped.
We have dozens of ongoing pandemics. We haven't had a new and notable pandemic in 6.5 years. Just the same flus and colds and uhhh measles? And whooping cough and-
Those are all endemic at this point.
Pandemic is characterized by fast, unpredictable spread across many international regions.
Hey, bud, what do you think that makes Covid?
Hey, bud.
I’d say that makes it endemic. It has been for a couple of years now.
Those toilet paper hoarders sure are laughing now...
Sonofabitchman...
I gotta get a bidet this time around
New coronavirus ???
Sure. Let’s do this.
Welp… here it comes.
I'm not ready for another quarantine.
I'm not ready for the world to return to being terminally online, invading my safe spaces.
I so am. I loved it. Antisocial reclusiveness is my specialty.
Is it really being antisocial when the rest of the world is forced into the same online spaces as you though?
I doubt the rest of the world will join us on Lemmy but time will tell.
Please not again
Time for some YEBID-26?
Anyone for a watch party of Terry Nation's Survivors?
Awesome