HA!! That zinger wins the prize! LOL
Just for the record, we have a vaccine for plague, and it responds well to antibiotics, barring conspiracy theory levels of ‘weaponization’, it’s not that worrisome.
Having confidence that Trump’s government has stockpiled enough antibiotics, and that the same government will dispense them efficiently and humanely, is a bridge too far for most well-informed people.
Most well-informed people would know that plague is already found in western North America. About 10 cases a year pop up in the US.
Bubonic plague is endemic in the rodent population in N. Arizona.
But, Pneumonic plague is a different kettle of bacteria.
God I wish you’d said “altogether” at the end of that sentence.
“Pneumonic plague is a different kettle of bacteria.”
There it is again…
Can someone explain to me how a country can unleash a deadly disease on another country without everyone else getting sick all over the planet?
As a warfare tactic it just doesn’t make sense to me.
Which is why it’s rarely been attempted in modern times.
Yup, as I said:
So I just don’t think it’s likely Russia would do that, on that basis alone.
The Trump thing on the other hand seems plausible.
Yeah, but it pops up very occasionally as it did last year in Arizona. It’s all the same critter, it just depends on the source of the infection and/or the course the disease takes. Basically an untreated bubonic plague victim (human or animal) can have it invade the lungs and turn pneumonic (or the blood vessels and turn septicemic), potentially causing an explosion in spread and overall virulence.
But potentially is the key word. That poor guy who died in Arizona didn’t start an epidemic, he just died. Even if he had as noted normal plague epidemics are “easy” to shut down in this day and age. It might get a few folks in a small locale, but it won’t run hogwild through the country. Of course an engineered “super-plague” immune to antibiotics might be a different story…
How fucking unlucky do you have to be to die of Plague in the US in 2025?
If the guy wasn’t totally out of his mind I can only imagine what was running through his head.
When I go to the Grand Canyon, I see idiot tourists feeding the Rock Squirrels (despite the signs everywhere saying not to feed the wildlife) all the time. I say “they carry the plague, you know” as I pass…
Its impossible to know at this point what research was being done on the plague. If there was gain of function research, or if it was designed to be antibiotic resistant as part of a weapons program that could cause issues. Putins Russia is not a nation I’d consider trustworthy or moral on these issues. It won’t be as bad as covid, but at this point theres no telling what all this could mean. Hopefully its a localized situation that responds to quarantines and antibiotics. But we don’t know enough.
Also the vaccine only works on bubonic plague, not pneumonic plague from what I know.
My understanding is biological weapons are generally designed to be extremely deadly and debilitating, as well as resistant to treatments, but to have a fairly low R0 to prevent a worldwide pandemic. So you can poison the air or water supply without it spreading beyond that area.
See: anthrax. Deadly in aerosolized form, but doesn’t really spread well from person to person, so you can kill people with it without worrying about infecting your own troops, etc.
Bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic plague are all caused by the same yersinia pestis bacterium, it’s just about what part of your body it gets a foothold on. The early vaccine, in use since 1890, was less effective against pneumonic, but live-attenuated and recombinant versions have since been developed.
We’ve had some cases in California, at lake Tahoe and Yosemite over the last decade, but no fatalities IIRC.
Trump ALLEGEDLY had COVID. Who knows what goes on with that guy, anyway?
In the book (this doesn’t really justify a spoiler alert), “we” know something happened at the plague lab when “we” saw the satellite images, with the damaged building and lots of vehicles moving around.
In late 2001, VH-1 had a metal program hosted by Anthrax bassist Scott Ian, and I caught him, LIVE, while channel-surfing, and he was explaining that Anthrax.com was not a brand-new gimmick - that the band chose the name about 20 years earlier when they were teenagers. They were getting a lot of angry feedback in this regard.