https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_prog...
Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola), for example, are incredibly deadly but that really limits their ability to spread. You still have to be diligent but there's a reason why Ebola has been contained to parts of Africa the the virus seemingly spreads from animals to humans every now and again, starting another local outbreak. But it's never spread globally and it's unlikely to.
Probably the last comparable disease to Covid was the Spanish flu in terms of its ability to spread and that was over 100 years ago. It's worth noting that the Spanish flu could also spread asymptomatically, which also explains it's impact to a large degree. Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu, which also tells you something about what tends to happen to novel diseases.
Y pestus is a bacteria, not a virus. We now have antibiotics that could likely combat it, which was obviously something that didn't exist in medieval Europe. Back then it wasn't at all clear that diseases spread by microorganisms at all. Plus, rodents were key to that spread and that's a far smaller problem now.
The nightmare scenario is probably some deadly variant of measles because measles is so incredibly contagious, probably more than any other disease I can think of. It can survive airborne for a very long time and in the modern era we've traced outbreaks of tens of thousands of cases to one single person. But the ability of measles to survive outside a host is also (luckily) incredibly rare.
Pneumonic is the most transmissible. That's why this is worth paying attention to. Not reacting to in any manner. But keeping a close eye on. Russia being Russia we'll probably only learn if containment was lost from Mongolia or China.
'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...
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.
> It remains unclear how she became unwell.
That's some fine reporting right there.
The quicker it is, the less it spreads.
Has this got a name?
a) why are we comparing treated death rates with untreated death rates?
b) COVID got significantly less deadly as it evolved, which is a known phenomenon that should also apply to this plague
c) that link hijacked my back button, I don't appreciate that >:-(
No, it isn't a known phenomenon, and no, that isn't what happened.
Transmissibility and virulence are actually linked.
Delta was more transmissible and was more deadly, not less. Omicron was also highly transmissible and highly deadly.
Viral replication is also linked to both transmissibility and virulence, and that also increased with Delta and Omicron.
The headlines that Omicron was less virulent were falsified when Omicron hit Taiwan (a largely immune-naive elderly population) and was every bit as deadly as Delta was.
What happened to make later strains less deadly was the evolution of the human immune system since pretty much everyone became vaccinated or recovered and acquired T-cells that would recognize later strains.
The virus only "cares" if it becomes so virulent that it kills you before it spreads. The way that COVID kills, long after the presymptomatic shedding period, after several weeks, doesn't matter--you can dial it up and make that worse, and you won't prevent the virus from spreading.
Patient zero died 4-5 days ago after being infected for about a week (likely infected Sept 25th).
There are probably already clear answers to some of these questions, but that doesn't mean the public will get them.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls Vladimir Putin “patient zero” of global wars spreading: “He must be denied the space to act and the space to spread this evil further.”
- Taylor Swift announces surprise new single: “Patient Zero”
This is the successor state to the country that thought it could hide a cloud of nuclear fallout.
The truth is the CDC and broader public-health apparatus were not starved of money; they performed badly despite substantial resources. The CDC botched its initial COVID test, their systems were antiquated, guidance was wildly inconsistent, and the agency later reorganized itself after acknowledging major operational failures.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scientists-behind-paper-...
Remember all the theater around wearing your mask to your restaurant table and then taking it off for your entire meal in an enclosed room with dozens of other people? Or shutting down public parks and beaches but excusing BLM protests because they agreed with their politics?
The Trump admin was cartoonishly inept but the public health experts did plenty to kill their own credibility as well.
Why pneumonic plague? Pneumonic plague is the form of infection that occurs when plague bacteria are inhaled in aerosolized form into the lungs, or when septicemic plague (plague in the bloodstreams) reaches the lungs. Like, for example, when a test tube breaks. Her method of infection was a pretty textbook vector for pneumonic plague. Other cases have been caused when tissue samples of infected rodents have been splayed open, for example, or when blood from an infected person splatters the respiratory tract. Plague bacteria spreads pretty poorly otherwise, which is why the main vector for bubonic plague is flea bites.
Ever wonder what a country waging a grinding siege war could do with a plague lab?
That’s keeping me up. Threaten nukes and deploy the plague to show you aren’t kidding.
There was a news story yesterday about the Ukrainian government using drones to airlift medicine to occupied territories that have been cut off from pharmaceutical supply chains (the occupation forces said they would figure it out, but didn’t)
There's a reason the US and Soviets were largely willing to get rid of the stuff - it's fairly useless geopolitically, because you mostly can't target it.
It can definitely be targeted: behind enemy lines, or in the occupied territory with selective access to antibiotics. Population migration can be enforced coercively too.
This is the same regime pulling stunts like this [0] and threatening nuclear war, absolutely would not be surprised.
[0] https://www.occrp.org/en/news/putins-chef-sends-bloody-sledg...
It’s bacteria, antibiotics work more generally than vaccines for viruses do.
There are of course, antibiotic resistant bacteria but we still have some exotic antibiotics in our arsenal.
If anything for a widespread bacterial plague I’d be more concerned about our ability to produce enough antibiotics rather than _if_ we could develop a cure
Nobody who dies of obesity-related health issues is a member of the global poor.
Treating that low number like a low number is not "discounting" rural US citizens. The US - all populations included - does not really live with the hantavirus in any real sense. It's incredibly rare. 10x as many people are struck by lightening annually in the US.
Perhaps the Russian military is overreacting with the blanket quarantines, but the odds are more likely that they understand the nature better than anyone else.
Again, normal pneumonic plague approaches 100% fatality rates. This is potentially a weaponized form.
This is an "oh, fuck" moment.
Yea you are definitely right about that. In Africa (specific countries I can’t currently recall) attempts at vaccination programs for example are often met with hostility or suspicion or even some people believing a vaccine causes the disease.
There was also vaccine skepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like China which refused first-to-market western vaccines out of fear and suspicion. It’s tragic all around.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06/1034631928/the-cias-hunt-for-...
> If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period; conversely, the estimates suggest counterfactual increases of 13% to 17% if all states had restrictions similar to those in the 10 least-restrictive states. The estimated strong vs weak state restriction difference was 271 000 to 447 000 deaths, with behavior changes associated with 49% to 79% of the overall disparity.
The paper you linked also doesn't take into account economic impacts, which aren't negligible, and lead to deaths of despair, drug abuse, unaffordable housing, etc.. They also admit the school closures were ineffective and unnecessary and we've seen the mental health and educational impacts on kids and now young adults that had those years taken from them.
Keep in mind also that the favorite phrase of the COVID era was "abundance of caution." That's itself a tacit admission that they knew their recommendations went too far and they weren't putting enough weight on the secondary effects.
>"When we first heard Soviet scientists were inserting the endorphin gene [for euphoria] into plague," says Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist, "we were appalled. That they would purposefully engineer the Y. pestis bacteria to behave this way... to make you want to go out and socialize... this was some horrifying stuff."
> . . .
> Former assistant secretary of defense Andy Weber agrees. "I grew up thinking Reagan’s phrase ‘Evil Empire’ was an exaggeration," he tells us. "Then I learned what the Russians were doing [with biological warfare]." He pauses for effect. "It was evil."
The accounts are from Annie Jacobsen's notes in "Biological War".
> there is a gatekeeping cretin in his basement hitting refresh to make sure he controls the world's definition for egg salad.
> Wikipedia is filled with ministers of truth.
Permanently muted and dismissed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
Also discussed on HN 5 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600274
Things have certainly changed since the introduction of AI, but I still believe the status quo is mostly the same regarding people who create content or write content and people who passively consume it.