kgeist16 minutes ago
Wikipedia says: "in the United States, infections occasionally occur in rural areas, where the bacteria are believed to circulate among rodents." A few years ago a boy in Russia contracted the plague after interacting with a wild marmot, he was treated successfully without any problems. I think this news is overblown, because everyone immediately pictures 14th century Europe
mcmcmc5 minutes ago
[delayed]
aqme2810 minutes ago
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.
tokioyoyo7 minutes ago
Most of people who are alive can relate to a very specific period in their lives, and it’s easy to imagine now what virus can do in terms of social life.
password543215 minutes ago
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.
lovich2 minutes ago
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.
tomashertus34 minutes ago
Damn, I'm worried whether Russia’s response will prioritise containing the pathogen or containing the embarrassment. You can’t patch a public-health incident with a press release.
Waterluvian15 minutes ago
I suspect it will be similar to the current American regime's past handling of COVID: a lot of skilled people wanting to do the right thing, but having to fight an unnecessary uphill battle against the administration that was more interested in perception, economics, and politics than lives.
sib6 minutes ago
Is your implication that COVID was intentionally created in an American bioweapons lab with the goal of creating something both highly deadly and highly transmissible for use in future conflicts?
Waterluvian3 minutes ago
I see how this could be confusing for you. Note that we're discussing the response to a potential crisis.
ptdcc13 minutes ago
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howunfortunate9 minutes ago
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lelandfe20 minutes ago
Who will be Russia’s Li Wenliang
dozerly26 minutes ago
Take a guess, will Putin prioritize the safety of humans or his own pride? He’s literally waging a war that is based on his warped divine feeling of pride for Rus
GolfPopper17 minutes ago
Alternatively, that's just an excuse, and he's waging a war because the existential threat to his autocratic kleptocracy by even a modestly successful, somewhat democratic neighboring state with significant inter-country exchange of people and ideas.
bigmattystyles15 minutes ago
Worse yet, this is contained but Putin will use it to argue against foreign actors weakening him further because 'think of the consequences`. I hate how paranoid this timeline has made me.
volkk5 minutes ago
you should consume less internet -- will make you feel a bit better
r72131 minutes ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960084 (277 comments)
rootedbox4 minutes ago
I really don't like FAFO science.
ChrisArchitect11 minutes ago
jorblumesea6 minutes ago
glad we laid off so many government workers and cdc staff, and politicized their work. very cool and certainly making things great.
2OEH8eoCRo032 minutes ago
First China and now Russia? We can't allow a pandemic gap!
davidee28 minutes ago
Either way it's a communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
fasterik4 minutes ago
That's why I only drink pure grain alcohol and rainwater
tclancy16 minutes ago
Thankfully the MAHA movement will get the fluoride out of our water.
DeepYogurt39 minutes ago
I always wanted to live through TWO pandemics! /s
x86x8731 minutes ago
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lenerdenator17 minutes ago
If you think we don't care, well, get ready for a level of not caring that will be hard to fathom.
This is the successor state to the country that thought it could hide a cloud of nuclear fallout.
actionfromafar27 minutes ago
Rubio is closely monitoring - by frantically reloading X and reddit.
Papazsazsa18 minutes ago
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beedeebeedee23 minutes ago
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streetfighter6418 minutes ago
The CIA broke into the lab in Irkutsk and caused the worker to drop the vial, in order to influence elections in the US? Sounds plausible...
beedeebeedee13 minutes ago
There are as many possibilities as one could imagine. This is still hypothetical, but means, motives and who benefits are important to remember when evaluating unknowable situations. Granting the benefit of the doubt is not something I do for this US administration and their fellow travelers.
streetfighter643 minutes ago
> means, motives and who benefits are important
I agree, which is why it's important to realize that the means for the US administration to cause this are very remote, and the potential benefits of this situation (particularly on the elections as you mention) are even more obscure.
I'm not saying the US hasn't done its fair share of shady and immoral operations, probably more than any other country in the world, but the scenario you propose is more akin to a Rube Goldberg machine than any realistic covert operation.
DannyBee16 minutes ago
Putin was told that <whatever they named this plague> was responsible for causing problems, and therefore the vial was thrown out a window.