Damn, I'm worried whether Russia’s response will prioritise containing the pathogen or containing the embarrassment. You can’t patch a public-health incident with a press release.
Take a guess, will Putin prioritize the safety of humans or his own pride? He’s literally waging a war that is based on his warped divine feeling of pride for Rus
Worse yet, this is contained but Putin will use it to argue against foreign actors weakening him further because 'think of the consequences`. I hate how paranoid this timeline has made me.
Ever wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab?
That’s keeping me up. Threaten nukes and deploy the plague to show you aren’t kidding.
There was a news story yesterday about the Ukrainian government using drones to airlift medicine to occupied territories that have been cut off from pharmaceutical supply chains (the occupation forces said they would figure it out, but didn’t)
I suspect it will be similar to the current American regime's past handling of COVID: a lot of skilled people wanting to do the right thing, but having to fight an unnecessary uphill battle against the administration that was more interested in perception, economics, and politics than lives.
I'm not sure the public health establishment didn't do more harm than good during COVID, especially with all the politically expedient flip-flopping on masking: First claiming it was unnecessary as a white lie to protect supplies for front-line workers, then promoting cloth masks despite evidence not being able to establish it statistically significantly slows spread, and then insisting on masking children in their formative years who had already been vaccinated or otherwise gained natural protection against COVID.
Remember all the theater around wearing your mask to your restaurant table and then taking it off for your entire meal in an enclosed room with dozens of other people? Or shutting down public parks and beaches but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
The Trump admin was cartoonishly inept but the public health experts did plenty to kill their own credibility as well.
> If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period; conversely, the estimates suggest counterfactual increases of 13% to 17% if all states had restrictions similar to those in the 10 least-restrictive states. The estimated strong vs weak state restriction difference was 271 000 to 447 000 deaths, with behavior changes associated with 49% to 79% of the overall disparity.
The paper you linked also doesn't take into account economic impacts, which aren't negligible, and lead to deaths of despair, drug abuse, unaffordable housing, etc.. They also admit the school closures were ineffective and unnecessary and we've seen the mental health and educational impacts on kids and now young adults that had those years taken from them.
Keep in mind also that the favorite phrase of the COVID era was "abundance of caution." That's itself a tacit admission that they knew their recommendations went too far and they weren't putting enough weight on the secondary effects.
> Our meta-analysis finds that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had a relatively small effect on COVID-19 mortality and is consistent with the view that voluntary changes in behavior, such as social distancing, played an important role in mitigating the pandemic
I find it strange you bemoan the public health establishment's credibility when your own source shows that people following its guidelines played a greater role in saving hundreds of thousands of lives than legal mandates.
Social distancing in an infectious disease pandemic is obvious and people would have done that regardless. My point is that the specific advice of the public health establishment was nonsensical (don't wear masks, actually do wear masks and cloth is fine, don't go to parks or beaches but political protests are fine if we're sympathetic to the cause, wear a mask when you walk to your table but not at your table, natural immunity isn't as good as a vaccine, and on and on). It was ridiculous and a big reason public trust in institutions is at an all time low.
> but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
I had forgot about that. God what a ridiculous time, my county judge Clay Jenkins in Dallas would drive around yelling at people walking their dogs to get inside. He was overjoyed with his little hobby authoritative regime. During the pandemic, I met him at a fundraiser once where, gasp, no one was wearing masks (it was very fancy). I was going to ask him about it but my wife's friend who was putting it on just asked me to leave.
Sensible people living in sane societies understand the benefit of clear and simple rules that don't require a vast corpus of reference material to adjudicate.
It’s not nearly as black and white as you lay out. Despite evidence of immunity after contracting COVID, the prior administration continued to pursue a vaccination mandate through OSHA. Additionally arbitrary rules and limitations such as the 6’ rule were routinely parroted by public health authorities and state governments. That’s in addition to what another commenter pointed out about the mask flip flopping.
Immunity after contraction… what? Vaccines are designed to reduce symptoms and have never been a guarantee of immunity. They can reduce transmission in the populace too and make it survivable for at-risk people. You’ve been huffing some bad media friend.
Yeah well I got Covid before I was able to get the vaccine and I was just fine. And yet the admin still tried to force me to get the vaccine despite my body building antibodies (aka immunity) against the virus, protecting me.
I have very low trust in government- if this disrupts the US mid-term elections, I know what I’m going to assume about its cause (until proven otherwise). Hopefully it gets contained quickly- that will restore some trust
Wikipedia says: "in the United States, infections occasionally occur in rural areas, where the bacteria are believed to circulate among rodents." A few years ago a boy in Russia got plague after interacting with a wild marmot, he was cured no problem. I think this news is overblown, because everyone immediately pictures 14th century Europe
Similar to the cruise-ship Hantavirus situation earlier this year. People see a disease they've never encountered and assume it's a novel pandemic. Really, it's just one of the rare cases where a westerner contracts a disease that's endemic to the global poor.
Are you seriously accusing an anti-plague institute that works on containing outbreaks of building bio weapons? Maybe try taking the propaganda with a healthy dose of salt
Come on, coyotes are classified as a least endangered animal and for good reason; they breed like crazy and eat almost anything. They are also a massive nuisance to livestock, a minor danger to people and they'll eat your cat or dog given half a chance. Culling prairie dogs would just mean their population would be slightly less booming.
People just dramatically updated their priors since Covid. We went from pandemics are a problem of previous centuries to any new outbreak might be a pandemic.
I think you can safely agree that they are not mutually exclusive and both of them are problems. In this particular case, it was a 100% fatality disease in a gain-of-function lab. It is being handled extremely seriously by Russia.
Perhaps the Russian military is overreacting with the blanket quarantines, but the odds are more likely that they understand the nature better than anyone else.
Again, normal pneumonic plague approaches 100% fatality rates. This is potentially a weaponized form.
You realize life is complex enough that two things can be true, right? That everything isn't either/or?
The reason we've haven't had more outbreaks of more diseases in the last century is because we had a lot of smart vigilant well-resourced people who very much felt the disease was the problem, and took steps to mitigate.
Classic late-stage civilization blunder is taking the fruits of civilization for granted. Sorry you're not aware of those things, but that's on you.
Don't forget that what passes for a white house in the USA lately is ripping the copper out of the walls of our health and human services departments at incredible pace to give more tax cuts to billionaires
The world is far more connected logistically before. Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it. So, the priors-updating was probably both overdue, but maybe also overblown.
> Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it
Yea you are definitely right about that. In Africa (specific countries I can’t currently recall) attempts at vaccination programs for example are often met with hostility or suspicion or even some people believing a vaccine causes the disease.
There was also vaccine skepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like China which refused first-to-market western vaccines out of fear and suspicion. It’s tragic all around.
Maybe Pakistan shouldn’t have been harboring Bin Laden and whatever ill effects happened here are the fault of Pakistan. Not my problem - Pakistan’s government and people needed to do better and whatever the human cost there was it was worth it to get Bin Laden. Actions have consequences.
Also stop trying to deprive other people and governments of their agency just because it fits a convenient western superiority complex you have. They’re not stupid.
Blaming the 340 million citizens of the US for Trump’s actions is repulsive too, but plenty of people enjoy doing that on the Internet.
Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions. Vaccine denial in the US? Same thing. You can’t say Americans are responsible for anti-vax sentiments, for example, and then say other people around the world aren’t.
Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible? I’ll happily take you admitting we’re the best if you want to go that route.
You know, even being about to talk this much about your own government or foreign governments takes a certain level of privilege. At least 1/5th of Pakistan is in poverty.
I’m proud to be privileged and think more should be.
For example I think Iranians should be privileged to speak out against their repressive government without fear of being hung. Pakistanis aren’t privileged and can’t speak out against their government harboring Bin Laden? Someone should fix that so they are are able to speak out against that, right?
Regardless, being poor doesn’t make one stupid or uneducated. Many Americans who are anti-vax are also poor by American standards, but I don’t think it matters. You can’t have your cake and eat it too here.
> Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
In a democracy, yes. Pakistan however is a democracy only in distant theory, pretty much everyone sane calls it an authoritarian regime [1].
And no, in the age of guns and nuclear weapons, we can't go and blame a country's people for its government. I don't blame Gazan civilians for Hamas, I don't blame Iranian civilians for the Mullahs, I don't blame Chinese peasants for the CCP and I don't blame ordinary Russians for Putin. These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
> Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions.
Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
> Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible?
Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited. On average they are far more literate, they got actual schools, they have reasonably free elections. Yes, the US democracy is flawed (FPTP and gerrymandering basically rendering the votes of swaths of people irrelevant, billionaires manipulating media coverage, ICE and other government organisations being used for voter suppression), but the US still is miles ahead of Pakistan or virtually all "third world" countries.
> In a democracy, yes. Pakistan however is a democracy only in distant theory, pretty much everyone sane calls it an authoritarian regime [1]
No I reject this and neo-liberal views of the world. That’s the mental model that got us into the Iraq debacle. What follows is that this becomes a problem (authoritarianism) that needs to be corrected “spread democracy”.
> These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
There is always a choice. Democracies weren’t inherent in the world but had to be fought for. They need to fight for their rights. Or not. It’s their responsibility.
> Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
Same was true during the age of European colonialism. “We must christianize them and educate them”. &c &c
> Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited.
As long as you agree Americans are better and exceptional I can’t really argue against you here.
> What follows is that this becomes a problem (authoritarianism) that needs to be corrected “spread democracy”.
Well for once the neoliberals were correct. In fact, the idea of "universal human rights" was a direct lesson out of 1933-1945, and Article 21 [1] directly specifies everyone's right to take part in government.
A right however is only worth more than the paper it's written on as long as it is enforced, and kleptocrats don't tend to hand over their ill-gotten power willingly.
> There is always a choice. Democracies weren’t inherent in the world but had to be fought for. They need to fight for their rights. Or not.
Which the Iranians did, and tens of thousands were slaughtered just this very year while the rest of the world watched. Or many Arab countries that had their version of "Arab Spring". Or the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine that was a direct, if late, consequence of the Maidan revolution.
> It’s their responsibility.
It's ours as well. There's this infamous line you see every time you run "sudo" in a terminal: "With great power comes great responsibility". We, us Western nations, have power, and lots of it - but we are not using it the way we should, we instead are using it mostly to make money.
> As long as you agree Americans are better and exceptional I can’t really argue against you here.
I'm German, and for what it's worth "American Exceptionalism" is a whole lot of bollocks. Doesn't change my (decently sourced) facts.
There are directives that prevent using clergy and missionary work as a cover for intelligence operations, and a longstanding prohibition for using the peace corps.
That Bin Laden operation was so insanely short-sighted in the use of a vaccine program for spying. Completely erodes trust where it should never have eroded, and rightfully contributed to antivax mentality, not just in Pakistan, but also in the US. "Trust us, we're doctors" means nothing.
To be fair, in Europe, we largely rejected the russian COVID vaccine. In theory we had good reasons, the vaccine was a bit shady, but I always wondered how much geopolitics played the role and how much it was really the problem with russian manufacturing standards.
> in Europe, we largely rejected the russian COVID vaccine. In theory we had good reasons, the vaccine was a bit shady
That is an understantement. The Russians publicly acknowlaged the vaccine aproval had been rushed and international protocols hadn't been met. And that is what they said publicly.
Since more reputable vaccines were comming online from other sources, why take the risk?
Tbf Covid was unique in that it was a virus capable of airborne transmission while being asymptomatic and also it can be fatal without killing too quickly. That's extremely unusual. Even more rare, some people never showed symptoms or the symptoms were so mild so it was unclear if it was Covid at all.
Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola), for example, are incredibly deadly but that really limits their ability to spread. You still have to be diligent but there's a reason why Ebola has been contained to parts of Africa the the virus seemingly spreads from animals to humans every now and again, starting another local outbreak. But it's never spread globally and it's unlikely to.
Probably the last comparable disease to Covid was the Spanish flu in terms of its ability to spread and that was over 100 years ago. It's worth noting that the Spanish flu could also spread asymptomatically, which also explains it's impact to a large degree. Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu, which also tells you something about what tends to happen to novel diseases.
Y pestus is a bacteria, not a virus. We now have antibiotics that could likely combat it, which was obviously something that didn't exist in medieval Europe. Back then it wasn't at all clear that diseases spread by microorganisms at all. Plus, rodents were key to that spread and that's a far smaller problem now.
The nightmare scenario is probably some deadly variant of measles because measles is so incredibly contagious, probably more than any other disease I can think of. It can survive airborne for a very long time and in the modern era we've traced outbreaks of tens of thousands of cases to one single person. But the ability of measles to survive outside a host is also (luckily) incredibly rare.
Unfortunately, you can force evolution in bacteria, fungi and viruses. There's more than enough examples of multi-resistant pathogens in all three families, especially in hospitals but also around agriculture (because they use stuff meant as a last-resort to promote animal growth or prevent animals from falling ill to the effects of overcrowding)... honestly between these and prions, I often do wonder how long we as humanity will be able to keep both hospitals and large-scale farming in existence.
Every evolved trait has a cost. We as a civilization have certainly been careless with, say, antibiotic resistance. If we stopped using a certain antibiotic tomorrow and didn't start using it for another 50 years, we'd find that most if not all of the resistant bacteria would've lost that resistance as they'd evolved new traits.
I'm reminded of the pronghorn antelope, a herbivore that evolved fast speed to avoid a predator that no longer exists, a cat having died out 7000+ years ago. It still has that speed but it has a real cost to their metabolism and their need to constantly eat. at some point they're going to lose that if it's not reinforced by some new predator or other evolutionary advantage.
> If we stopped using a certain antibiotic tomorrow and didn't start using it for another 50 years, we'd find that most if not all of the resistant bacteria would've lost that resistance as they'd evolved new traits.
The problem is, for most of the multiresistant species we don't have anything we can use in the 50 years we need to wait for one resistance to be outcompeted. And we haven't discovered any major new class of agents in decades as we cut back foundational research, which makes the situation worse - we don't just have substances, we don't have the pipeline to develop substances.
Sure, for bacteria we got phage therapy, but we lost a lot of the knowledge there during the collapse of the USSR, not all bacteria are suitable for phage usage, phages have their own side effects (including our immune system attacking the phages as well), and we have mRNA based vaccines but these act too late (when the patient has already caught the pathogen) and are useless in immunosuppressed patients such as organ transplant receivers and some cancer patients.
> ”Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu”
Not really. While it was true for much of the last century that many “seasonal flu” viruses were direct decedents from H1N1 Spanish flu, the H1N1 that caused the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic was a distinct strain combining new genes of pig, avian, and human flu origins. Since then, derivatives of that virus have replaced earlier ones as the most common circulating H1N1 types.
And right now the most common circulating influenza is actually H3N2 which is from a completely different (avian) lineage with origins in the 1968 pandemic.
I'd further note that the H1N1 flu is widely believed to have gone extinct in the wild, then been reintroduced in 1977 from a laboratory source, probably through a failed vaccine trial:
> The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens.19,31
This explanation is now printed uncontroversially in major journals, though at the time the WHO rejected it:
> Laboratory contamination can be excluded because the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time.
I don't think we are on the verge of a y pestus pandemic, but you dismiss it somewhat lightly. Yes, there are antibiotics but there are also weaponized antibiotic resistant strains. Yes, rodents were key to the spread in medieval europe, but there are now weaponized pneumonic plague strains that spread airborne...
I think a lot of people don't realize the Black Plague is bacterial and we already have a cure for it. Most people getting anxious probably assume its like Covid and a cure would have to be developed.
there is not information that's exactly the same bacteria and that drugs work. It might be novel one or modified in the lab. Even for flu we don't have general vaccine that works.
And there might be a teapot on the other side of the sun.
It’s bacteria, antibiotics work more generally than vaccines for viruses do.
There are of course, antibiotic resistant bacteria but we still have some exotic antibiotics in our arsenal.
If anything for a widespread bacterial plague I’d be more concerned about our ability to produce enough antibiotics rather than _if_ we could develop a cure
I've got bad news for you. It may seem like a good thing that Y. Pestis is bacterial since we have antibiotics but remember that bacteria can become antibiotic resistant. You might say "no problem, that would only happen if there were a lot of cases and people weren't properly using antibiotics" and while this is true it is also possible to deliberately make Y. Pestis antibiotic resistant. "Who in their right mind would do a stupid thing like that?" you may ask, well it turns out the Soviets did and likely stockpiled large amounts of it with plans to deliver it in an aerosolized form over cities. Aerosolized particles are how you contract pneumonic plague which if you can't treat it with antibiotics is nearly 100% lethal in all cases. It can also be passed from human to human via coughing. So, here's hoping that this is just a rare case of wild type Y. Pestis that the lab worker somehow unfortunately inhaled and didn't get treatment for in time.
Answered this in another comment but my major fear if a bacterial plague like this became a pandemic would be our manufacturing output keeping pace with demand, not like during covid when it was not clear if it was even possible to create a cure.
Indeed. I wonder how much work it would be to make this antibiotic resistant. Then the Russians develop some bacteriophage that infects and kills the bacteria as their own cure.
Making it antibiotic resistant is not difficult and they already did that back when they were the USSR. Not only did they develop it, they produced large quantities of it to stockpile for a rainy day.
The phrase "gain-of-function research" has acquired almost magical properties on the Internet. You can do literally anything you want to a pathogen with it.
I saw a post about this on Reddit this morning. Haven't looked into it further, but people were claiming that there are versions of this plague that have been modified to release other toxins. It's effectively a bioweapon: they cure you for the plague, which kills you with the poison it contained.
There are some that had been modified to release endorphins!
>"When we first heard Soviet scientists were inserting the endorphin gene [for euphoria] into plague," says Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist, "we were appalled. That they would purposefully engineer the Y. pestis bacteria to behave this way... to make you want to go out and socialize... this was some horrifying stuff."
> . . .
> Former assistant secretary of defense Andy Weber agrees. "I grew up thinking Reagan’s phrase ‘Evil Empire’ was an exaggeration," he tells us. "Then I learned what the Russians were doing [with biological warfare]." He pauses for effect. "It was evil."
The accounts are from Annie Jacobsen's notes in "Biological War".
(the link is a translation to Russian, I was unable to find the original text in English)
Also consider that toxoplasma changes rat's dopamine serum level to such extent that they stop fearing cats. The same happens with humans, changes in dopamine serum level are so profound that toxoplasma-infected people become more appealing than regular people.
Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source. (Having said that, bacteria upregulate selected interleukins to reduce inflammation, so maybe this is a game of telephone based on some actual Soviet effort to increase virulence, just not "euphoria.")
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source.
Where was this claimed? Do we have any definitive confirmation of the Roswell incident anyway?
This is so ridiculous that I had to check. The book is Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. This unflattering contemporary review, retrieved from the Wayback Machine, has an excerpt:
The engineers were told that the children were rumored to have been kidnapped by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi madman who, at Auschwitz and elsewhere, was known to have performed unspeakable experimental surgical procedures mostly on children, dwarfs, and twins. The engineers learned that just before the war ended, Josef Mengele made a deal with Stalin. Stalin offered Mengele an opportunity to continue work in eugenics. . . . in secret, in the Soviet Union.
Mengele held up his side of the Faustian bargain and provided Stalin with the child-size crew. . . .
Endorphins make you happy as you are. Endorphins have sedative effect. Morphine is a similar substance and it is a sedative, all opioids are.
What makes one socialize is dopamine [1]: "Hypomania, manifesting with feelings of euphoria, omnipotence, or grandiosity are prone to appear in those moments when medication (dopaminergic medication - thesz) effects are at their maximum."
This dopamine dysregulation occurs naturally in people with toxoplasmosis.
This kind of mistake - mistaking dopamine and endorphine, - strongly suggests a fake. I know of one such fake from the former employee of my friend, you can read his account here [2]. My friend was a lead of the "secret" laboratory (next to Kitay Gorod metro station in the center of Moscow, in an institute that needed no documents to enter) that researched how "psychics" and "healers" achieve their results.
The laboratory researched what these "extrasensing people" do and found nothing - given very little training an ordinary men can do the same and even better. At the end of USSR, there was a string of visitors from USA there in the lab, and one of those visitors successfully persuaded US government to open similar research program, according to [2].
The fearmongering of "endorphin-producing bugs that make one socialize and spread" looks like, well, fearmongering to obtain funds for Big Pharma's government contracts, etc. It messes up two very different neurotransmitters, a mistake that real scientist would not make.
Sedatives are often also dis-inhibitory drugs (like alcohol, but that one has a more complicated profile also involving dopamine) and benzos, and they contribute to socialization by downregulating inhibitory behavior.
Those two things are not alike, and the claim about Wikipedia is a blatant lie ... certainly it is vastly more reliable than you are. Other comments from you:
> there is a gatekeeping cretin in his basement hitting refresh to make sure he controls the world's definition for egg salad.
Regarding Reddit, there is a lining of truth behind his claim (despite possibly being a troll based on account age). Someone years ago made a well written post about it on reddit (yes I know, kind of ironic)
Things have certainly changed since the introduction of AI, but I still believe the status quo is mostly the same regarding people who create content or write content and people who passively consume it.
Yeah, and I heard that those “hidden toxins” are actually nanobots, after release they’re activated by 5G towers, better put on your tinfoil space suit!
In a similar vein, I highly recommend Annie Jacobsen's recent book, Biological War: A scenario. It dives into the Soviet/Russian biological weapons programs and discusses facilities such as the Vector Institute (State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology) located in Koltsovo, Siberia. Interestingly enough, the scenario follows a lab leak of weaponized plague at this research facility... having read the book it was rather shocking to see this headline.
The algorithm giveth, and the algorithm keepeth away.
Before I clicked that link I had never heard of Breaking Points, a political series with over 2MM subscribers. I'm a YT premium subscriber and watch a ton of political stuff, much of it damn similar to what that channel produces.
I also watched a lot of news content and never saw them until seeking them out. I suspect they are suppressed by the algorithm because they are generally willing to give voice to anti-establishment, anti-oligrachy sentiments (both from the hosts and guests). But yea they're great. The primary hosts are explicitly left and right leaning but rarely get caught up in partisan discord and instead focus on high quality, fact based journalism. (Relatedly, the one topic that does most often trigger the occasional bouts of partisan bickering between Saagar and Krystal is COVID and Dr. Fauci, make of that what you will).
Funnily enough the reason why virology therapy (something the Soviets did a lot of research in cuz they didn't have good antibiotics and biotech/pharma) hasn't seen much success at scale is precisely because the body's immune system adapts too quickly. Maybe we will see more success now with AI but it will be a cold day in hell before the powers that be let any garage biohacker have access to LLMs trained on this sort of information.
Gosh I hadn't realised there was that much - employing up to 65,000 people and able to produce 100 tons of smallpox!
I read a bit about bioweapons re covid. Apparently Xi said he wanted China on a par with other countries in all military technology which presumably included biological - the Wuhan lab was run by the military and very secretive - China signed the Biological Weapons Convention not do do that kind of thing.
Also a bit on the Ukraine biolabs stuff - there were conspiracy theories they had those making biological weapons funded by the US which I'd assumed was just nonsense but they were actually real soviet bioweapons labs that the US had funded to switch to non weapons research.
I also think it's overblown. My fear is that this is a special form of the disease, modified by Russian researchers for who knows what reasons, and may therefore be a problem.
My fear is that this is an enhanced virus that was being subjected to gain of function research, making it potentially much more dangerous than bog standard plague.
> Former head of the national public health agency Rospotrebnadzor stated that the disease the researcher died of is "most likely not the plague, but even if confirmed, there will be no spread of this disease
The particular bacterium if infecting the skin is fairly treatable and mild with modern medicine, pneumonic plague is 100% lethal if not treated within 24h and utterly asymptomatic during the first 24h, it’s also airborne. Same bacterium but very different diseases..
I have had trouble finding an official source that agrees with that assessment. This source [0], for example, says it is from when symptoms show. Incubation period can be as long as a week.
Absolutely is. About as bad as threatening to mute.
If you have a point you say it, don’t craft a witty question to reveal an error and then respond with a woosh when people think you are being genuine. At any rate the root of the “mistake” was further up.
There are three ways the plague manifests: bubonic (Black Death, highly treatable), pneumonic (what this researcher died of) and systemic (gets in your blood–super nasty, but also doesn't spread easily).
Pneumonic is the most transmissible. That's why this is worth paying attention to. Not reacting to in any manner. But keeping a close eye on. Russia being Russia we'll probably only learn if containment was lost from Mongolia or China.
I mostly agree, but I am more concerned about a strain from a lab than the wild. Many times we study the worst strains, which might mean this has more potential to spread, higher fatality, etc.
'The “young adult male” died eight hours after he was admitted to the hospital, where doctors initially suspected he had hantavirus disease or bacterial pneumonia. Post-mortem testing confirmed Y pestis presence in his blood and lung tissue. It's Arizona’s first pneumonic plague death since 2007.'
I would think the significance being the person was a lab worker. Someone getting hantavirus while camping in Yosemite is a lot less concerning than a lab worker death from pneumonic plague after having a test tube break.
Expect more cases of rare things, because more rain = more green plants, which means rodents will be able to breed many fold over. We saw something similar in the 90's
Lol. You can look it up, but this will kill you in two days if untreated. Most Americans go without treatments for more than 48 hours because they dread the potential medical bill.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls Vladimir Putin "patient zero" of global wars spreading: "He must be denied the space to act and the space to spread this evil further."
- Taylor Swift announces surprise new single: “Patient Zero”
the person who died , I believ lived and worked in the same area, and presumably would have recieved every availible escalation in care, and that she was likely ambulatory on admitance would have relayed her ocupational hazards, that she died implies that, she had a compromised immune system or pre existing complication or condition, or this was an exceptionaly virolent infection or less likely, incompetence and botched care, even less likely her cause of death is completly unrelated to the plauge.
that they have quarantined hundreds suggests that this is in fact an unknown virolent infectios disease.
almost certainly, cultures and dna tests are well underway and there will be clear answers within 48 hr's or sooner.
Isn't this easily treated with anti-biotics these days? Surprised that someone would die of plague in this day and age so long as treatment is prompt, which for a lab worker it seemingly should have been...
Another comment said treatment needs to begin 24 hours after infection or its almost always fatal. And they also said you don't have many symptoms within the 24 hour window.
I could see that still killing a lot of people even though a treatment would guarantee survival
One of the popular sarcastic meme posting channels on russian Telegram today posted a picture of an ad "Wanted: lab worker, ready to break a vial right next to just the right person. Benefits: $10M payout; guaranteed care of your descendants; your name mentioned in annals of history". Nice and dark and very accurate.
"sarcastic meme posting channels on russian Telegram"
That phrase.
I think these people and how they are using tech and memes are part of the current problem of this world. A large part of the problem, in my opinion. It's may be just coping, dark humor for most but it is deep psychosis for others and it's giving them ideas and power over the rest of us. I'd strive to be better than falling into such meme sharing sociopathy.
This spells out a scenario that had just popped into my mind: what if this is an intentional "demonstration" of their bioweapon prowess, which they are using as leverage for backroom negotiations around Ukraine or whatever.
oh no no no, just about everything about Russia these days is explained by Hanlon's Razor. There is absolutely no any conspiracy/planning, I assure you
The Plague is very much still around, yes. Around the world, we get a few cases every year, but we are not in the Dark Ages. Much of the reason it caused as many deaths as it did was due to a lack of understanding. We did not know what really caused disease, we did not know ships were caring the disease vector, we did not have proper treatments, etc. Today for the cases we have, it is a lot more treatable. We of course monitor it, so we can be prepared (close off vectors of spread like airlines, for example), but there really is nothing to worry about. Happens all the time.
“Youhuang Xiang (“Xiang”), 32, formerly a post-doctoral researcher at Indiana University and a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, has been sentenced to more than four months in prison, a $500 fine, and one year of supervised release, after pleading guilty to smuggling biologic materials into the United States from China.”
Let me start by saying that I am not a lawyer but that being said, I don't know how I feel about this. I don't like the taste of plea bargain in my mouth. It feels a lot like the government basically tells any suspect, plead guilty or you will face the maximum fury and unlimited budget of the government. Especially after Aaron Swartz, the fiction that prosecutors and even judges are fair and balanced arbiters of justice has evaporated away.
> They may not be ignored at the whim and folly of scientific researchers and academic institutions.
I for one support scientists and researchers and trust them to follow all the necessary protocol than any pencil pusher. I don't even consider prosecutors living organisms more like a machine whose only goal is career advancement, justice be damned. Expecting grace from them is folly.
185 comments
[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 54.9 ms ] threadEver wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab?
That’s keeping me up. Threaten nukes and deploy the plague to show you aren’t kidding.
There was a news story yesterday about the Ukrainian government using drones to airlift medicine to occupied territories that have been cut off from pharmaceutical supply chains (the occupation forces said they would figure it out, but didn’t)
Remember all the theater around wearing your mask to your restaurant table and then taking it off for your entire meal in an enclosed room with dozens of other people? Or shutting down public parks and beaches but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
The Trump admin was cartoonishly inept but the public health experts did plenty to kill their own credibility as well.
> If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period; conversely, the estimates suggest counterfactual increases of 13% to 17% if all states had restrictions similar to those in the 10 least-restrictive states. The estimated strong vs weak state restriction difference was 271 000 to 447 000 deaths, with behavior changes associated with 49% to 79% of the overall disparity.
The paper you linked also doesn't take into account economic impacts, which aren't negligible, and lead to deaths of despair, drug abuse, unaffordable housing, etc.. They also admit the school closures were ineffective and unnecessary and we've seen the mental health and educational impacts on kids and now young adults that had those years taken from them.
Keep in mind also that the favorite phrase of the COVID era was "abundance of caution." That's itself a tacit admission that they knew their recommendations went too far and they weren't putting enough weight on the secondary effects.
I find it strange you bemoan the public health establishment's credibility when your own source shows that people following its guidelines played a greater role in saving hundreds of thousands of lives than legal mandates.
I had forgot about that. God what a ridiculous time, my county judge Clay Jenkins in Dallas would drive around yelling at people walking their dogs to get inside. He was overjoyed with his little hobby authoritative regime. During the pandemic, I met him at a fundraiser once where, gasp, no one was wearing masks (it was very fancy). I was going to ask him about it but my wife's friend who was putting it on just asked me to leave.
Oh, and National Security Advisor.
This is the successor state to the country that thought it could hide a cloud of nuclear fallout.
Every single one of the people infected by COVID has been contaminated by someone around them.
(It wasn't true of the plague during the great pandemics, as it was also borne by rats and their poop)
Perhaps the Russian military is overreacting with the blanket quarantines, but the odds are more likely that they understand the nature better than anyone else.
Again, normal pneumonic plague approaches 100% fatality rates. This is potentially a weaponized form.
This is an "oh, fuck" moment.
The reason we've haven't had more outbreaks of more diseases in the last century is because we had a lot of smart vigilant well-resourced people who very much felt the disease was the problem, and took steps to mitigate.
Classic late-stage civilization blunder is taking the fruits of civilization for granted. Sorry you're not aware of those things, but that's on you.
To some billionaires. Congress isn't doing jack shit in statute.
Yea you are definitely right about that. In Africa (specific countries I can’t currently recall) attempts at vaccination programs for example are often met with hostility or suspicion or even some people believing a vaccine causes the disease.
There was also vaccine skepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like China which refused first-to-market western vaccines out of fear and suspicion. It’s tragic all around.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06/1034631928/the-cias-hunt-for-...
Also stop trying to deprive other people and governments of their agency just because it fits a convenient western superiority complex you have. They’re not stupid.
blaming the ~260M citizens for the actions of Pakistani government is repulsive.
Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions. Vaccine denial in the US? Same thing. You can’t say Americans are responsible for anti-vax sentiments, for example, and then say other people around the world aren’t.
Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible? I’ll happily take you admitting we’re the best if you want to go that route.
For example I think Iranians should be privileged to speak out against their repressive government without fear of being hung. Pakistanis aren’t privileged and can’t speak out against their government harboring Bin Laden? Someone should fix that so they are are able to speak out against that, right?
Regardless, being poor doesn’t make one stupid or uneducated. Many Americans who are anti-vax are also poor by American standards, but I don’t think it matters. You can’t have your cake and eat it too here.
In a democracy, yes. Pakistan however is a democracy only in distant theory, pretty much everyone sane calls it an authoritarian regime [1].
And no, in the age of guns and nuclear weapons, we can't go and blame a country's people for its government. I don't blame Gazan civilians for Hamas, I don't blame Iranian civilians for the Mullahs, I don't blame Chinese peasants for the CCP and I don't blame ordinary Russians for Putin. These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
> Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions.
Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
> Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible?
Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited. On average they are far more literate, they got actual schools, they have reasonably free elections. Yes, the US democracy is flawed (FPTP and gerrymandering basically rendering the votes of swaths of people irrelevant, billionaires manipulating media coverage, ICE and other government organisations being used for voter suppression), but the US still is miles ahead of Pakistan or virtually all "third world" countries.
[1] https://statbase.org/data/pak-democracy-index/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_Pakistan
No I reject this and neo-liberal views of the world. That’s the mental model that got us into the Iraq debacle. What follows is that this becomes a problem (authoritarianism) that needs to be corrected “spread democracy”.
> These people do not have a choice - either openly (e.g. China) or in practice (Pakistan, Russia, Iran).
There is always a choice. Democracies weren’t inherent in the world but had to be fought for. They need to fight for their rights. Or not. It’s their responsibility.
> Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, are barely literate [2], and we're talking basic literacy here. Informed decisions require the ability to both access and understand relevant information.
Same was true during the age of European colonialism. “We must christianize them and educate them”. &c &c
> Americans (as a whole) are at least better suited.
As long as you agree Americans are better and exceptional I can’t really argue against you here.
Well for once the neoliberals were correct. In fact, the idea of "universal human rights" was a direct lesson out of 1933-1945, and Article 21 [1] directly specifies everyone's right to take part in government.
A right however is only worth more than the paper it's written on as long as it is enforced, and kleptocrats don't tend to hand over their ill-gotten power willingly.
> There is always a choice. Democracies weren’t inherent in the world but had to be fought for. They need to fight for their rights. Or not.
Which the Iranians did, and tens of thousands were slaughtered just this very year while the rest of the world watched. Or many Arab countries that had their version of "Arab Spring". Or the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine that was a direct, if late, consequence of the Maidan revolution.
> It’s their responsibility.
It's ours as well. There's this infamous line you see every time you run "sudo" in a terminal: "With great power comes great responsibility". We, us Western nations, have power, and lots of it - but we are not using it the way we should, we instead are using it mostly to make money.
> As long as you agree Americans are better and exceptional I can’t really argue against you here.
I'm German, and for what it's worth "American Exceptionalism" is a whole lot of bollocks. Doesn't change my (decently sourced) facts.
[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
That Bin Laden operation was so insanely short-sighted in the use of a vaccine program for spying. Completely erodes trust where it should never have eroded, and rightfully contributed to antivax mentality, not just in Pakistan, but also in the US. "Trust us, we're doctors" means nothing.
In the USA too. Just look at all the nonsense around the MMR vaccine in Trump's orbit and what's happened to the CDC and FDA under RFK's leadership
It's very hard to trust something coming out of their system. It's something inherited from the USSR.
Apparently this isn't even being reported in the news in Russia, just in the local news.
Or for example, Trump as president sent COVID tests for Putin, when the pandemic started, in secret. Why?
That is an understantement. The Russians publicly acknowlaged the vaccine aproval had been rushed and international protocols hadn't been met. And that is what they said publicly.
Since more reputable vaccines were comming online from other sources, why take the risk?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200819152533/https://www.teleg...
Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola), for example, are incredibly deadly but that really limits their ability to spread. You still have to be diligent but there's a reason why Ebola has been contained to parts of Africa the the virus seemingly spreads from animals to humans every now and again, starting another local outbreak. But it's never spread globally and it's unlikely to.
Probably the last comparable disease to Covid was the Spanish flu in terms of its ability to spread and that was over 100 years ago. It's worth noting that the Spanish flu could also spread asymptomatically, which also explains it's impact to a large degree. Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu, which also tells you something about what tends to happen to novel diseases.
Y pestus is a bacteria, not a virus. We now have antibiotics that could likely combat it, which was obviously something that didn't exist in medieval Europe. Back then it wasn't at all clear that diseases spread by microorganisms at all. Plus, rodents were key to that spread and that's a far smaller problem now.
The nightmare scenario is probably some deadly variant of measles because measles is so incredibly contagious, probably more than any other disease I can think of. It can survive airborne for a very long time and in the modern era we've traced outbreaks of tens of thousands of cases to one single person. But the ability of measles to survive outside a host is also (luckily) incredibly rare.
I'm reminded of the pronghorn antelope, a herbivore that evolved fast speed to avoid a predator that no longer exists, a cat having died out 7000+ years ago. It still has that speed but it has a real cost to their metabolism and their need to constantly eat. at some point they're going to lose that if it's not reinforced by some new predator or other evolutionary advantage.
The problem is, for most of the multiresistant species we don't have anything we can use in the 50 years we need to wait for one resistance to be outcompeted. And we haven't discovered any major new class of agents in decades as we cut back foundational research, which makes the situation worse - we don't just have substances, we don't have the pipeline to develop substances.
Sure, for bacteria we got phage therapy, but we lost a lot of the knowledge there during the collapse of the USSR, not all bacteria are suitable for phage usage, phages have their own side effects (including our immune system attacking the phages as well), and we have mRNA based vaccines but these act too late (when the patient has already caught the pathogen) and are useless in immunosuppressed patients such as organ transplant receivers and some cancer patients.
Not really. While it was true for much of the last century that many “seasonal flu” viruses were direct decedents from H1N1 Spanish flu, the H1N1 that caused the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic was a distinct strain combining new genes of pig, avian, and human flu origins. Since then, derivatives of that virus have replaced earlier ones as the most common circulating H1N1 types.
And right now the most common circulating influenza is actually H3N2 which is from a completely different (avian) lineage with origins in the 1968 pandemic.
> The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens.19,31
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0904322
This explanation is now printed uncontroversially in major journals, though at the time the WHO rejected it:
> Laboratory contamination can be excluded because the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2395678/pdf/bullwho...
It’s bacteria, antibiotics work more generally than vaccines for viruses do.
There are of course, antibiotic resistant bacteria but we still have some exotic antibiotics in our arsenal.
If anything for a widespread bacterial plague I’d be more concerned about our ability to produce enough antibiotics rather than _if_ we could develop a cure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_prog...
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/rr/rr7003a1.htm?
>"When we first heard Soviet scientists were inserting the endorphin gene [for euphoria] into plague," says Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist, "we were appalled. That they would purposefully engineer the Y. pestis bacteria to behave this way... to make you want to go out and socialize... this was some horrifying stuff."
> . . .
> Former assistant secretary of defense Andy Weber agrees. "I grew up thinking Reagan’s phrase ‘Evil Empire’ was an exaggeration," he tells us. "Then I learned what the Russians were doing [with biological warfare]." He pauses for effect. "It was evil."
The accounts are from Annie Jacobsen's notes in "Biological War".
(the link is a translation to Russian, I was unable to find the original text in English)
Also consider that toxoplasma changes rat's dopamine serum level to such extent that they stop fearing cats. The same happens with humans, changes in dopamine serum level are so profound that toxoplasma-infected people become more appealing than regular people.
And people take her seriously?
Where was this claimed? Do we have any definitive confirmation of the Roswell incident anyway?
https://web.archive.org/web/20110713153629/https://www.washi...
The engineers were told that the children were rumored to have been kidnapped by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi madman who, at Auschwitz and elsewhere, was known to have performed unspeakable experimental surgical procedures mostly on children, dwarfs, and twins. The engineers learned that just before the war ended, Josef Mengele made a deal with Stalin. Stalin offered Mengele an opportunity to continue work in eugenics. . . . in secret, in the Soviet Union.
Mengele held up his side of the Faustian bargain and provided Stalin with the child-size crew. . . .
What makes one socialize is dopamine [1]: "Hypomania, manifesting with feelings of euphoria, omnipotence, or grandiosity are prone to appear in those moments when medication (dopaminergic medication - thesz) effects are at their maximum."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_dysregulation_syndrom...
This dopamine dysregulation occurs naturally in people with toxoplasmosis.
This kind of mistake - mistaking dopamine and endorphine, - strongly suggests a fake. I know of one such fake from the former employee of my friend, you can read his account here [2]. My friend was a lead of the "secret" laboratory (next to Kitay Gorod metro station in the center of Moscow, in an institute that needed no documents to enter) that researched how "psychics" and "healers" achieve their results.
[2] https://lit.lib.ru/t/torin_a/text_0100.shtml (it is in Russian, but language is not a barrier at all nowadays)
The laboratory researched what these "extrasensing people" do and found nothing - given very little training an ordinary men can do the same and even better. At the end of USSR, there was a string of visitors from USA there in the lab, and one of those visitors successfully persuaded US government to open similar research program, according to [2].
The fearmongering of "endorphin-producing bugs that make one socialize and spread" looks like, well, fearmongering to obtain funds for Big Pharma's government contracts, etc. It messes up two very different neurotransmitters, a mistake that real scientist would not make.
(but I agree it's probably fake).
> there is a gatekeeping cretin in his basement hitting refresh to make sure he controls the world's definition for egg salad.
> Wikipedia is filled with ministers of truth.
Permanently muted and dismissed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
Also discussed on HN 5 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600274
Things have certainly changed since the introduction of AI, but I still believe the status quo is mostly the same regarding people who create content or write content and people who passively consume it.
Um, what part of "Those two things are not alike" don't you understand?
Before I clicked that link I had never heard of Breaking Points, a political series with over 2MM subscribers. I'm a YT premium subscriber and watch a ton of political stuff, much of it damn similar to what that channel produces.
I read a bit about bioweapons re covid. Apparently Xi said he wanted China on a par with other countries in all military technology which presumably included biological - the Wuhan lab was run by the military and very secretive - China signed the Biological Weapons Convention not do do that kind of thing.
Also a bit on the Ukraine biolabs stuff - there were conspiracy theories they had those making biological weapons funded by the US which I'd assumed was just nonsense but they were actually real soviet bioweapons labs that the US had funded to switch to non weapons research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonic_plague
> Former head of the national public health agency Rospotrebnadzor stated that the disease the researcher died of is "most likely not the plague, but even if confirmed, there will be no spread of this disease
Very reassuring.
But isn't the 24 hour critical window of treatment measured from the onset of symptoms?
[0] https://mnpoison.org/plague-fact-sheet/
Muted for the generally offensive attitude.
If you have a point you say it, don’t craft a witty question to reveal an error and then respond with a woosh when people think you are being genuine. At any rate the root of the “mistake” was further up.
Pneumonic is the most transmissible. That's why this is worth paying attention to. Not reacting to in any manner. But keeping a close eye on. Russia being Russia we'll probably only learn if containment was lost from Mongolia or China.
Where are you getting this from?
'The “young adult male” died eight hours after he was admitted to the hospital, where doctors initially suspected he had hantavirus disease or bacterial pneumonia. Post-mortem testing confirmed Y pestis presence in his blood and lung tissue. It's Arizona’s first pneumonic plague death since 2007.'
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/plague/cdc-reminds-doctors-southw...
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls Vladimir Putin "patient zero" of global wars spreading: "He must be denied the space to act and the space to spread this evil further."
- Taylor Swift announces surprise new single: “Patient Zero”
The quicker it is, the less it spreads.
Has this got a name?
> It remains unclear how she became unwell.
That's some fine reporting right there.
Patient zero died 4-5 days ago after being infected for about a week (likely infected Sept 25th).
There are probably already clear answers to some of these questions, but that doesn't mean the public will get them.
I could see that still killing a lot of people even though a treatment would guarantee survival
That phrase. I think these people and how they are using tech and memes are part of the current problem of this world. A large part of the problem, in my opinion. It's may be just coping, dark humor for most but it is deep psychosis for others and it's giving them ideas and power over the rest of us. I'd strive to be better than falling into such meme sharing sociopathy.
I'll keep the rest of my words to myself.
“Youhuang Xiang (“Xiang”), 32, formerly a post-doctoral researcher at Indiana University and a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, has been sentenced to more than four months in prison, a $500 fine, and one year of supervised release, after pleading guilty to smuggling biologic materials into the United States from China.”
Let me start by saying that I am not a lawyer but that being said, I don't know how I feel about this. I don't like the taste of plea bargain in my mouth. It feels a lot like the government basically tells any suspect, plead guilty or you will face the maximum fury and unlimited budget of the government. Especially after Aaron Swartz, the fiction that prosecutors and even judges are fair and balanced arbiters of justice has evaporated away.
> They may not be ignored at the whim and folly of scientific researchers and academic institutions.
I for one support scientists and researchers and trust them to follow all the necessary protocol than any pencil pusher. I don't even consider prosecutors living organisms more like a machine whose only goal is career advancement, justice be damned. Expecting grace from them is folly.
I read about this on r/PrepperIntel 2 days ago.
https://old.reddit.com/r/PrepperIntel/comments/1wwektn/irkut...
It isn't a concern. Just more noise to "flood the zone" while the Trump admins keeps doing illegal and scandalous things.