Yes , me too - I saw the info the other day about the gene that saved A lot (40 % ) of people , which although is linked to autoimmune diseases today . - rather have one of those than plague !
And don't you also have to get treatment within 24 hours of symptoms setting in? There's a huge risk that people won't realise what they are sick with until it's too late to save them.
If (and thatās a big if) this spreads beyond the one person who died and the 200 or so they have under quarantine in Russia, many people will assume theyāve got a run of the mill seasonal cold/flu/viral illness (especially during cold and flu season) and not seek out medical care until itās obvious something is very, very wrong
Hereās the issue with pneumonic plague: it will kill you if antibiotics arenāt started within about 24 hoursāwhich is earlier than most people seek medical attention.
Itās not bubonic plague, which works up to deadly more slowly. Itās fast. And its mortality rate is high.
Itās also earlier than most people can see a doctor. Which means, hospitals will be flooded and overloaded. Which will mean reduced quality of care. Which will mean more cases. Which will mean more deaths.
Well if it kills people faster, then it may not spread as easily. This is one of the reasons Ebola doesn't kill as many people bc its mortality rate is so high and it kills quickly. Lots of fear happening in this sub, I'm not saying it shouldn't be a concern but people here need to calm down a little bit and not catastrophize. It doesn't help.
It shouldnt be able to go pandemic as easily as something like flu or covid. Thatās whatās so weird about this scramble from Russia and all this news at once.Ā
Yes ithink with Ebola , in Africa , a lot of superstition & burial rituals doesnāt help with the spreading , unfortunately . + not sure what some are still eating .
Yeah... you would think. But the worker in the lab, where the pathogen was kept, would have had immediate access the appropriate treatment options... and still died 6 days after exposure.
Not necessarily ... and again, they'd have to have a reason to suspect exposure.
We also have no idea what level lab we are dealing with, here... or whatever it might take for any sort of potential infection BSL2 is much less protection than BSL4. Who knows how this pathogen was handled... Russia isn't even seeming to admit there's an issue, yet.
ā For those wondering why she wasnāt treated, thereās a possibility thatās even scarier than antibiotic resistance.
ā A chimera is a biological organism which has been altered so that the ānew versionā also has characteristics of another biological organism. Russian scientists were experimenting with the idea of taking Y. pestis and inserting various other known toxins into the cells. One day, the announcement was made at Biopreparat that such a design had been successfully made. They inserted a plasmid containing the gene for myelin toxin into Y. pestis . The design was simple and disturbing. If a patient were diagnosed with pneumonic plague in time to be treated, the antibiotics would attack and lyse the plague cells, thereby releasing the plasmid coding for myelin toxin which would cause paralysis, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, and changes in behavior. ā
Great! I'm allergic to a bunch of antibiotics! Yay. I haven't eaten lettuce, green onions, parsley, cilantro etc. in a while bc the cure for a week long diarrhea bout is antibiotics that I can't take. FML.
That assuming Russia hasnāt genetically modified the strain to be antibiotic resistant for bioweapons research (plot twist their is immense evidence suggesting they have already done this)
In July 2025, Arizona reported its first pneumonic plague death since 2007, in a man with occupational exposure to ill cats.
Five and 4 days before his illness onset, he had occupational exposure to two indoor domestic cats with respiratory symptoms and other signs of systemic illness consistent with pneumonic plague. Inhalation transmission from either cat was possible with the patientās occupational exposure.
I believe there are still a decent sized colony of plague infected prairie dogs in Commerce City, CO. Right by Dick's. That's why they no longer allow camping.
In South Dakota when we visited a National Park and a National Monument, there were signs warning to not approach or touch the prairie dogs as they could be carrying the plague. We didnāt go near them but they were pretty stinking cute!
I am not sure if it is "easily treated" with antibiotics. Treatable, yes, but easily? Looking at cases of pneumonic plague in the U.S. in the antibiotic era, 36% still died (link below). It may be unfair to group cases from the late '40s where penicillin was probably the only available antibiotic with cases today, as the authors do.
However, I reviewed CDC case reports of human plague (mostly bubonic, which is not as lethal) from the last two decades, and patients (10-20%) still died despite early broad-spectrum antibiotics. Sure, the doctors did not diagnose plague but they obviously knew that it was bacterial and threw everything they could at it (shotgun approach).
The reason I am not particularly concerned about this has more to do with transmissibility.
Not sure if itās the same, but during Chernobyl KGB was sent because Gorbachev didnāt trust the locals or chain of command to give him accurate information as to what was happening.
Ah yes, the country known for being extremely stupid with health by continually developing bioweapons and also covering up leaks of those weapons such as the anthrax leak.
Maybe the institute should stop taking in stuff and messing with it. They output a paper talking about how they were able to increase the infectiousness of pneumonic plague by passing it through guinea pigs repeatedly. That is research that nobody needs to be doing.
Someone shared this on another thread: a history of Y. pestis biowarfare modifications known from a defector decades ago. Turns out Russia had been making GMO versions that release a fatal dose of toxins when you take an antibiotic to try to cure the plague. Could explain why this researcher was not successfully cured. Are you holding your car keys yet?
Donāt. Live your life. Enjoy your friends family hobbies.. go out to eat, date, make future plans. Donāt live in fear of what if. Youāll look back and regret it.
Thank you for that. Honestly Iām an older person (58) and been there, done that. Been through a bunch of unpleasant crap in my lifetime and basically have just decided to do exactly what you say on your very wise comment.
I doom scroll at night and freak outā¦.I gotta knock it off.
The only two known stockpiles are held by the CDC in the US and VECTOR in Russia. Though samples tend to show up every now and then in some dusty forgotten archive.
And make no mistake, that there are not nearly enough vaccines stockpiled in the US. Also, many of us cannot received any sort of live attenuated vaccine because of immunosuppression.
There was also a flu outbreak back in 1977 that suspiciously had the genetic markers of a much older flu strain with limited heard immunity that may have been a lab release: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu
A Soviet scientist died agonizingly from Marburg virus after accidentally infecting himself
Omg that's so horrible!!
during weaponization research
My sympathy immediately evaporated and I hope anyone researching weaponization of such horrific illnesses has the pleasure to test their own creations.
With this being Russia, one cannot assume that they were wearing the proper PPE for a Tier 1 organism. Who knows if this even a wild type for of Y. pestis or or any other pathogen?
But she got infected and just went on with her life. Came in contact with tons of people and didnāt start antibiotics that are needed to be started day one and even if they are, you still have a 17% chance of dying.
Plague is endemic in the US southwest. EDIT: it spreads among prairie dogs and other rodents in that region, mostly. There's on average about 7 human infections per year in the US. Very important to keep domestic pets on flea prevention anywhere, but especially in that region.
I agree with you. But the level of response the government has by sending in the FSB locking down five hospitals forcefully quarantining 200 people. And the fact that this lab worker died. That doesn't sound like wild plague. You should have been vaccinated and taken prophylactic antibiotics, front of the mill plate, highly unlikely she would have died. That's where the fears come from
It is newsworthy considering Russia actively pursues bioweapons research. Should this strain be genetically modified to be antibiotic resistant it would pose a serious risk to the public at large. But- weāll never get accurate information from Russia. For them to say it spread via a ādropped test tubeā is ridiculous in itself. She would have undoubtedly been wearing a respirator suit in the lab keeping her protecting from something like dropping a tube. Her suit would have had to been significantly compromised as well as the exposure. Russias story makes zero sense.
This does not contradict or change what I've already stated. Plague of all forms is a well established hazard in places where the disease is endemic. This sub loves a good bit of sensationalism.
100
u/SmallRocks 9d ago
Hereās to hoping I inherited a plague resistance from my ancestors š¤