Ok so, as funny as this was, the ACTUAL situation is the following:

1. In parts of Russia, particularly the Siberian and Far Eastern steppes, plague is endemic in some local animal populations - rodents and the like, ground squirrels in particular. Sometimes people get infected, just like in other parts of the world with endemic plague (e.g. the western US, where people also sometimes catch plague from prairie dogs and such). Plague is not a dangerous epidemiological threat these days, it is easily treated with antibiotics.

2. A woman in Irkutsk, who worked at an institute for combating these endemic plague populations (this has been going on for many decades, but it's tricky to eradicate it completely) fell ill with pneumonia of unknown etiology. She died in the hospital.

3. The woman had been on a work trip to Buryatia to study one of those animal populations with endemic plague just before she fell ill. Because of this and the fact that her pneumonia was of unknown etiology, the hospital where she was treated and people she had contact with were put in quarantine as a precautionary measure.

4. A suspected pneumonic plague diagnosis was NOT confirmed during the autopsy of the woman who died.

5. There's a nasty flu going around right now, a bunch of my friends and my wife had it, so authorities are somewhat worried, but it appears to just be normal seasonal flu.

6. All the above combined gave enough material for domestic and foreign actors to spam the internet with fake news and panic slop. Most of the people the woman had been in contact with have been tested, some had flu or COVID. There are no heightened quarantine measures. No hospitals or cities are on lockdown. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is happening. When a person who studies dangerous illnesses falls ill, you take some common sense routine security measures, that's just the normal thing to do everywhere in the world.

We discussed the Irkutsk case (though this was recorded before it was confirmed that the woman did not die of plague) and other news on our most recent episode: https://rwasamizdat.substack.com/p/rwa-news-plague-bears-and-bridges

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