Lab Leak in Russia
I haven’t seen this posted yet; I know lots of people here care about pandemic preparedness. It looks like there was a lab leak of pneumonic plague in Russia after a worker “accidentally broke[] a test tube containing live bacteria”. Unfortunately she later died at the hospital on a ventilator.
Definitely worth watching closely; naturally people are noticing the similarities to the scenario posed in Annie Jacobsen’s “Biological War”.
Base rate says it is probably a standard strain of Yersinia Pestis, but if we see additional cases, or don’t see strong evidence that the 200 people who were exposed (who are being treated prophylactically) are getting better, that could indicate that it is an engineered variant which could be catastrophic.
Pending more evidence though, my money would still be on a standard strain.
Twitter thread by JenniferRM who has some virology background
https://x.com/almostlikethat/status/2106283229221367932
To be clear, Pneumonic Plague is not a virus. It is a gram negative bacteria, which makes the natural version highly treatable using antibiotics; the concern would be that if this were an engineered variant of the pathogen, then it might be designed to be more virulent or more antibiotic resistant.
Again, I would say prior odds of this being engineered are low, though the involvement of Russian FSB and the shift in official narrative are not a good sign. Russia is known to have an active bioweapons program and we have had knowledge of their engineered variants of Yersinius Pestis since the 90′s, thanks to defectors.
Background: I’m a Biotechnologist (master’s degree) with most of my experience in oncology. I decided to transition to biosecurity last spring and have been studying and taking classes since.
I’m not an expert, but I am an active student, so grade my analysis accordingly!
Erm why aren’t more people talking about it?
It seems quite self-contained (at least from what they shared) but would like to see more conversations around this!!