God Doesn't Strike with a Club: A Plague Outbreak in Russia?

Donald Trump offered his help, the mainstream media reported, and the dim-witted American probably really did offer Moscow assistance in combating or preventing a plague outbreak — though for now it's unclear, since the whole affair is shrouded in exactly as much fog as things usually are in Russia. We know something is going on, and we know it's connected to the plague, but the Russian authorities are doing exactly what they did during Chernobyl: nothing to see here, you can all go home, everything is fine, everything will be fine, in fact everything has always been fine.

An investigation has been launched in Russia over the death of an employee at a Siberian plague research institute; the case is being monitored by the World Health Organization, the European disease control agency, and even Russia's greatest friend, Donald Trump.

Let's start with the most Russian part of the whole affair: a laboratory worker at a plague research institute in Irkutsk has died. Abruptly and strangely, of a rapidly progressing, fatal pneumonia, and the inpatient ward of the local hospital was placed under quarantine the very next day. According to a summary by Meduza, the local newspaper Lyudi Baikala, the Telegram channel Mash and the broadcaster REN TV all reported that the woman died of pneumonic plague. One explanation circulating is that she broke a test tube containing the pathogen while working. Russia's public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, however, stated that no pathogen-related accident occurred at the institute, and described the woman's death as pneumonia of unknown origin — in other words: Chernobyl-style communication, internet-enhanced, and the oddities keep piling up:

• the head of neighboring Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, first referred to Sipilova as a woman who had died of plague, then edited his post — in the new version he spoke only of the possibility of plague,

• while the city administration of Baikalsk for a while advised residents not to travel to Shelekhov because of unofficial information about a plague infection, a notice that was later deleted.

People who had come into contact with the woman were tracked down, and many of them were placed under hospital observation. Importantly: the figure of around two hundred that has appeared in the press refers to this — that many contacts were isolated, not that many plague patients were found, at least as far as we know today. According to Rospotrebnadzor, none of them tested positive for plague; the tests identified two coronavirus infections and two rhinovirus infections, which would also be a clear Russian message to our own anti-vaccine morons, if the number of their brain cells exceeded the square root of two: the coronavirus is deadly — but let's add the Russian authority's qualifier: no microorganism connected to her work — that is, to plague — was found in the deceased woman's body. Knowing Russia's legendary truthfulness, we can already be fairly certain that plague — in some form and to some degree — is definitely part of this story. There's no raging epidemic to report yet, but there's a special irony to the story: at its center stands a plague research institute — in other words, a bio-lab.

We remember, don't we? At the start of the war, Russian propaganda machinery pushed the conspiracy theory — and to some extent still does today — that the Americans were running bio-labs in Ukraine. And plenty of brain-dead European Putinists not only believed it but spread it too — now in the war's fifth year, we still haven't seen a single bio-lab, the Russian side has produced no evidence of any such thing, yet now it's a Russian bio-lab that's apparently about to unleash a plague outbreak.

Isn't this the perfect historical illustration of "God doesn't strike with a club"?

And since then the story has gained another, unmistakably Russian chapter. On October 6, Donald Trump announced that he would soon speak with Putin by phone about the possible plague case; a briefing on the American intelligence findings was promised for the following day, that is, today. According to Meduza's October 7 report, TASS and RIA Novosti both wrote that a presidential phone call was being prepared — they just left out what it was about. So the phone call exists, Trump unfortunately exists, Putin unfortunately exists, but the plague has successfully vanished somewhere in the news agencies' editing process. If public health works as efficiently as the censors, we'll soon be curing cancer by laying on of hands. One truly gets that "history repeats itself" feeling:

• The Americans said: Chernobyl exploded. The Russians claimed: nothing's wrong, it didn't explode. Reality: Chernobyl exploded.

• The Americans said: Russia is going to attack Ukraine. Russia said: that's a lie, we won't attack. Reality: Russia attacked Ukraine.

• According to American intelligence, worrying plague-related news is coming out of Russia (otherwise it wouldn't be aired before the global public). Russia claims there's nothing to see here, everything is fine. Reality: ?

Hilarious