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?

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.

Pneumonic plague seems bad enough, though its high mortality rate might limit spread.

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.

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.

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.

There was a recent fatality in Arizona.

'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...

There are three ways the plague manifests: bubonic (Black Death, highly treatable), pneumonic [1] (what this researcher died of) and septicemic (gets in your blood–super nasty, but also doesn't spread easily).

Pneumonic is the most transmissible. There are also no commercially-available vaccines for it in most countries. That's why this is worth paying attention to. Not reacting. But keeping a close eye on. Russia being Russia we'll probably only learn if containment was lost from Mongolia or China.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonic_plague

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.

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.

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.

My concern is that it is “the plague”.

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..

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

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.

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.

Yes the bubonic plague was terrifying for the pre-modern old world but in the 21st century it is easily countered with common antibiotics.

What's your point?

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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.