A Russian employee of an infectious disease research center in Siberia died of a pneumonia of supposedly unknown origin (or perhaps pneumonic plague). The center is the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia. Dozens of people are in isolation as a result. Gift link to a New York Times article on the story while here is the story from CNN.
Maybe it’s nothing but I’ve seen movies that start with stories like this and end very badly.
I’m not too concerned (yet). Irkutsk is pretty remote, and doesn’t see a ton of intl travel. Should be easy to contain.
I just remember the early reports (from December 2019) out of China of a new disease. By March the disease reached the United States.
If it’s bacterial, I’m guessing it’s far easier to treat and less contagious?
I’ve read that intravenous antibiotics need to be started within 24 hours to be effective.
Otherwise it aggressive and has a very high fatality rate.
Not sure if that’s accurate but I’ve seen it posted quite a bit.
Let’s hope this is contained regionally and burns itself out.
There is a pneumonia vaccine, I think. Would it help to get that vaccine now?
The plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, and is well known to the medical community. There is a vaccine available, but its effectiveness is unknown, and availability is very limited. The symptoms are well documented, so a an epidemic, much less a pandemic, is unlikely unless the Russians do something really stupid. I would be more concerned with someone frying up armadillo roadkill; the armadillo being a natural reservoir of pestis.
We’re all fucked if we need to rely on the Russians not doing something stupid. (Consider the invasion of Ukraine; a prime example of Russian stupidity.)
At least we in America didn’t do anything similarly stupid. Oh, wait, we did cut back on public health spending and staffing. Also on support for the World Health Organization.
I believe the armadillo carries leprosy (Mycobacterium leprae).
Yes, it does, a disease that 95% of people are genetically immune to.
I have a feeling this is going to be like Ebola or Marburg - a disease that is devastating to people who have it but unlikely to affect anyone who didn’t have direct contact with them. This current best-seller, which I have read, has people in the know on higher alert than they otherwise would be IMHO; in this case, it involves the escape of a genetically altered Y. pestis organism, one that causes “The Stand” - level death in its wake.
I was thinking of something along the lines of Chernobyl, which I cannot spell.
You are correct, it does. My days in a micro lab were a while ago, and I’ve forgotten a lot.
The Russian government (AKA Putin, for the moment) may be making politically stupid decisions, but they know pestis as well as we do, and unless they’re all suicidal, they will continue taking effective actions as they have already started. I think Putin knows that he can’t flex his pectoral muscles at it to make it back down.
Isn’t it generally true that highly lethal diseases aren’t easy to spread, and highly-contagious diseases aren’t much lethal?
I’m more afraid of viruses. I can tolerate IV antibiotics. So give me bacteria , any day.
What am I saying? Well, I’m gonna buy antibacterial hand sanitizer now.
Good thing Amazon Prime day is tomorrow.
(I’m not being facetious, I’m serious. Got Amazon pulled up as I type)
Which is not the sort of thing that leads to worldwide pandemics. The diseases that spread widely (like covid) are those that show few symptoms, and very seldom kill or impair the host from traveling and encountering other people. Or at least have a long incubation period where that’s the case.
In general, that’s due to the way evolutionary pressure affects infectious microorganisms. If they kill their host, then they die as well, so there is evolutionary pressure to cause milder disease. That’s why a lot of the worst diseases (Ebola, Marburg, rabies, etc.) are things that are deadly to us, but are basically background noise to their normal hosts. They infect humans by accident. What they are designed for is to infect bats or other wildlife, in which they cause mild to no disease. Similarly, something like the bird flu that has evolved to infect humans usually causes mild to no symptoms in humans (although obviously can rarely cause severe illness), but is devastating to birds when it accidentally spreads to them.
First of all, it is not really something to worry about. Most people don’t realize that we tend to see something like three to five cases of plague in the US every year.
With prompt treatment, they are generally quite treatable.
You can help yourself a lot by staying out of prairie dog towns.
Second, there are three forms of the plague.
The first form, bubonic plague, is acquired by being bitten by a flew that had fed on an infected rat or other animal. I don’t remember the mortality, but it is about 50%, untreated.
The second form, pneumonic plague, is acquired by breathing in the bacteria. During the Black Death, the first person in the household to get plague had about 50% chance of dying. Everyone else in the household would typically breathe in the bacteria and get pneumonic plague and their chances were much worse.
The third from, septicemic (sp?) is a plague infection of the blood. I think that the mortality is something like 98% or so.
The issue of diseases being released from the permafrost due to global warming is a real one. But going from that to “global pandemic” requires a whole specific set of circumstances that need to be met in order for that to happen.
We will likely see more people in Arctic regions fall ill and potentially die from these zombie viruses, but I would not panic prematurely about the fall of civilization until more is known about the specific characteristics of the diseases. Although panicking about this may be warranted: