it's not time to panic yet, but... Too long to post in it's entirety, read the whole thing at the link.

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On the menu today: On the other side of the world, a government-run lab with past ties to bioweapons research has an accident and records the sudden death of a researcher, and an authoritarian state that I loathe begins an extensive response, including quarantines, while insisting everything is fine and there’s nothing for the public to worry about. If you’ve been reading this newsletter since, oh, April 2020, you know that’s my personal Bat-Signal. Read on.

Tracking the Irkutsk Infection

Late last night, Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stated reports of a death from plague in the Russian city of Irkutsk:

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Rospotrebnadzor reported that the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region and the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov is stable.

“The sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region and the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov is stable. A special set of measures has been organized and implemented in response to the case of an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East who has been diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown etiology,” the Rospotrebnadzor press service said in a statement on Sunday.

Based on the results of extensive testing, no microorganisms associated with the patient’s professional activities were detected in the patient’s sample, the department noted.

Rospotrebnadzor reported that no infectious disease cases have been reported among the institute’s employees over the past 10 days.


As you might guess, Russian authorities don’t issue a “don’t worry, no plague here” statement unless people are worried that there is a risk of plague.

The Moscow Times is an independent media entity that covers Russia from Amsterdam after media censorship laws made continuing their work from within Russia impossible. The Moscow Times reported Friday, October 2:

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Health authorities in Siberia’s Irkutsk region have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation after a laboratory worker died from plague, according to media reports and a statement by a regional leader Friday.

Alexei Tsydenov, head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, confirmed that the woman had died from an unspecified form of plague. Irkutsk officials had previously described the illness only as a “particularly dangerous infection.”

Citing information from Russia’s consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor and Buryatia’s government, Tsydenov said the woman had not visited his republic and that her infection was unrelated to the region.

“There are no plague outbreaks in the republic, including in areas bordering Mongolia,” he wrote on social media.


Tsydenov’s post was later edited to read “the woman who may have died of plague.” Similarly, “on October 3, the city administration in Baikalsk, in the Irkutsk region, urged people not to travel to Shelekhov “because of unofficial reports that a person in Shelekhov had been diagnosed with plague.” It later deleted the post. The national television channel REN TV also deleted five social media posts about the spread of plague in Shelekhov.”

When posts warning about a contagious disease just disappear with no correction, that’s just so reassuring, isn’t it?

Irkutsk, the city, is the capital of Irkutsk Oblast, a state in south-central Russia, part of the Siberian Federal District, not too far from the Mongolian border. The “Republic of Buryatia” is an adjacent federal subject that is also part of the Russian Federation; a stretch of Buryatia is between Irkutsk and Mongolia....


Onward and upward,
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