A Plague on All Our Houses

It’s not a plague. It’s not that plague. It’s nothing to worry about. Probably.

The pathogens we know about may not be the problem. Credit: Microsoft Designer

No, I’m not reliving COVID in late 2019/early 2020. It’s a story that broke a couple of days ago: a young researcher -- Darya Shipilova – at the Antiplague Scientific Research Institute in Irkutsk province in Siberia died Friday, after a sudden illness. The institute studies, in case you are wondering, infectious diseases, so you can see why people might get worried.

At first the official line was that she died of “pneumonia of an unknown cause.” Later reports suggested that, oops, she had broken a test vial, which contained live Yersinia pestis (plague) bacteria, although official sources have denied it. Russia’s public head agency Rospotrebnadzor has insisted: “No micro-organisms associated with the employee’s professional duties were detected in samples taken from the patient.” Its former head Gennady Onishchenko told CNN it was “most likely not the plague, but even if confirmed, there will be no spread of this disease.”

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Darya Shipilova

Still, though, it appears the institute has been closed, with the staff inside. “They’ve been isolating everybody since Friday – more than 60 people,” one relative, Roman, told the news portal Siberia.Realities. The local hospital seems to have been quarantined as well, and possibly some other local health centers. Neighboring cities and provinces, some as far away as 1500 miles, are monitoring closely and, in some cases, putting quarantine controls at border crossings.  

The Governor of Irkutsk tried to calm the situation: “I understand that the events have triggered a number of very different theories among residents or the region and beyond. It’s important that in recent days there have been no recorded instances of other co-workers of the Antiplague Institute seeking medical help.” He also added that all identified contacts of the woman “have been placed under medical observation.” 

A State Department spokesperson told CNN: "We are aware of ​reports of a fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. We are monitoring the situation closely with the CDC and our other interagency partners. Many details have not been confirmed. We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly.”

As scary as the plague sounds, and as many people it has killed throughout history, it can be treated with antibiotics, and it is not easily airborne. Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, England, told The New York Times that the case “seems like a rare lab accident and is unlikely to go much further.”

Still, Dr. Ashish K. Jha posted on X: “We need to understand exactly what has happened. And we have to assume we may not know the full truth. And have to act to build up our biodefense accordingly.”

If it was, indeed, a lab leak of the plague, I doubt there are many of us who would expect Russia will tell us the truth, either about exactly what happened or how many people it impacts. The lab leak theory of COVID remains a favorite topic of discussion in certain circles, and no one believes the official fatality numbers for either China nor Russia. So might Russia try to cover up a plague outbreak, especially one that started in one of its biolabs? Sure.

Personally, I’m hoping that it is only the plague. If it is, it can be contained, it can be treated, it doesn’t means the Black Death has returned. I worry it is something different, and possibly even worse. Epidemiologist Mikhail Favorov questioned that a trained scientist working in an anti-plague institute would have gotten infected from a broken vial, due to her protective equipment.  “It’s laughable,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to the general public – they’ll believe the ‘dropped test tube story.” So far, he’s right. And he describes the situation: “It’s absolutely hair-raising,”

OK, now I’m worried.

Perhaps the institute was working on bioweapons. Perhaps the institute was using AI to create new, more clever, more targeted, more deadly bioweapons. Dr. Jha wrote in Stat recently about how AI is making it easier for people, or AI itself, to create bioweapons. “For decades, biological weapons were rare for a reason: Building them takes expertise that’s hard to acquire and harder to combine,” he said. Unfortunately:

AI is closing those gaps. Models trained on the biological literature can connect ideas across subfields that few researchers have mastered alone. These models can make someone with relevant training in one area more capable and dangerous by helping them learn key steps in another area. 

And he wrote that before he knew about Irkutsk.

Credit: Bloomberg

As bad as that is, I also worry that it is global warming coming home to roost. Yes, you read that right. One of the many consequences of global warming is that the permafrost – and Siberia has lots of permafrost – is thawing, and as it thaws it is releasing lots of things that we were assuming were going to stay frozen.

For example, it is releasing lots of toxic metals into previously pristine waterways. "This was a process that was not forecast, predicted or included in any assessment of how the Arctic will change under a warmer climate, but we're seeing it in rivers across the Arctic,” said one scientist.

More to the point, the thawing may release waves of microbes that have been frozen, some of which modern humans may have never been exposed to (and thus have no immunity for).  Navigating New Horizons, a 2025 report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Science Council, highlights the potential problem.

“The fact that these microbes are present in the permafrost means it’s hard to say how widespread, or dangerous, this problem could be,” says Andrea Hinwood, UNEP’s Chief Scientist. “But there are reasons to be concerned.”  

I wrote about these so-called “zombie viruses of the permafrost” a couple years ago, and global warming has only increased since then. I quoted one scientist: “We know there’s bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens that are in permafrost. We know that upon thaw, all three of those classes of pathogens could be released. What we don’t know is how viable it is for them to stay alive and then infect.”

We don’t know what is out there.

So Dr. Shipilova accidently catching the garden variety plague from a broken vial seems like a much better thing than her getting infected by a new bioweapon or a zombie virus. Today it is just one woman in a faraway place, but COVID should have taught us that we better play close attention to what happens next.