| ▲ | US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia(theguardian.com) |
| 80 points by tosh an hour ago | 40 comments |
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| ▲ | kgeist 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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 contracted the plague after interacting with a wild marmot, he was treated successfully without any problems. I think this news is overblown, because everyone immediately pictures 14th century Europe |
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| ▲ | chiffre01 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | You should read up on the long history of Russian Biological War programs. Fascinating stuff. They came up with some insane versions of plague. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_prog... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/rr/rr7003a1.htm? | | |
| ▲ | DennisP 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Yep. And this is a lab that was reportedly doing gain-of-function research. |
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| ▲ | aqme28 23 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | tokioyoyo 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Most of people who are alive can relate to a very specific period in their lives, and it’s easy to imagine now what virus can do in terms of social life. | |
| ▲ | mcmcmc 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you discounting rural Americans as not being part of the global poor then? There have been roughly 30 cases a year in western states since the disease was first found here in the 90s |
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| ▲ | password54321 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | | |
| ▲ | mcmcmc 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Prairie dogs are the main carriers in the US, and yet some people still want to give them protections because they are “cute”. They are literal vermin. Colorado is attempting to put a bag limit on hunting them, which is ridiculous given nobody is bagging their prairie dog kills. Because again, they are vermin. | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | They are food for coyotes and similar predators, no? They have a place in the ecology of the area. |
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| ▲ | iso1631 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This was a "28-year-old employee at the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk", she didn't catch it from a rat in a rural area. | |
| ▲ | lovich 16 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | jacquesm 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Another thing is that the Black Plague symptoms are pretty horrible, enough to cause anxiety even if you know there is a cure. | |
| ▲ | CoastalCoder 10 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you have a theory for why that researcher died? | |
| ▲ | pzo 10 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway20222 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Yes, the fact that is the plague is less worrying than it is plague from a bio research lab that escaped. The only unfounded, non verified news i have read is that it can from collecting of samples, not post experimenting. But your guess is as good as mine at this point |
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| ▲ | tomashertus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | Waterluvian 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | bobthepanda 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I mean we are talking about the successor state to the one that botched the Chernobyl response, it's not hard to imagine a repeat | |
| ▲ | sib 19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is your implication that COVID was intentionally created in an American bioweapons lab with the goal of creating something both highly deadly and highly transmissible for use in future conflicts? | | |
| ▲ | Waterluvian 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I see how this could be confusing for you. Note that we're discussing the response to a potential crisis. | |
| ▲ | khazhoux 9 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Literally nothing in parent comment would suggest that, no. |
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| ▲ | surfingdino 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Russians don't do disasters by halves, so we should prepare ourselves for the worst outcome. | |
| ▲ | lelandfe 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Who will be Russia’s Li Wenliang | |
| ▲ | dozerly 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 | | |
| ▲ | GolfPopper 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Alternatively, that's just an excuse, and he's waging a war because the existential threat to his autocratic kleptocracy by even a modestly successful, somewhat democratic neighboring state with significant inter-country exchange of people and ideas. | |
| ▲ | bigmattystyles 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | mikrl 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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) | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Ever wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab? There's a reason the US and Soviets were largely willing to get rid of the stuff - it's fairly useless geopolitically, because you mostly can't target it. |
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| ▲ | volkk 19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | you should consume less internet -- will make you feel a bit better |
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| ▲ | r721 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960084 (277 comments) |
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| ▲ | rootedbox 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I really don't like FAFO science. |
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| ▲ | jorblumesea 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| glad we laid off so many government workers and cdc staff, and politicized their work. very cool and certainly making things great. |
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| ▲ | iAMkenough 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The AI giants are developing their own private bio labs, so at least we can rely on them to fill the knowledge gap. |
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| ▲ | 2OEH8eoCRo0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| First China and now Russia? We can't allow a pandemic gap! |
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| ▲ | davidee 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Either way it's a communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. | | |
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| ▲ | ChrisArchitect 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960084 |
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| ▲ | DeepYogurt an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I always wanted to live through TWO pandemics! /s |
