If you report it, now someone has to get in trouble for it, and nobody wants to deal with being the one on the chopping block for fucking up the “plague that kills you” containment.
The nice thing about rabies is you have a lot of time to get a post exposure vaccine before symptoms start. Yersinia pestis is a class A bioterrorism agent and rabies is only class C.
Uhh... no. Rabies is 100% lethal when symptoms show, and there's basically know way to know if you're infected until symptoms show. It's also maybe one of the most horrific experiences a person could go through as they die. Pneumonic plague you get 24 hours once symptoms start, it also only takes an aggressive antibiotic regimen vs a months long routine of abdominal injections for rabies.
The person who down voted me that I was about to reply to deleted their comment so I’m going to leave it under yours lol because it’s with the same mindset:
Neither is pneumonic plague (100% fatal in 24 hours). It can kill in the first 24 hours, so can bacterial meningitis. But when treated promptly even after symptoms have started the mortality rate is about 20%. Not great but not universally fatal. Rabies has absolutely no treatment once even early symptoms develop (I’m disregarding Milwaukee protocol because that was a fluke), and in my opinion it’s a significantly worse death. Respiratory failure is awful, but the neurological symptoms of rabies plus the insane fever are horrific. I guess that’s subjective, but I would be a lot more afraid if an altered rabies virus with increased transmissibility was released than I would be about y. pestis. Especially because at least with that you have the chance of just the bubonic subtype. There’s no less deadly subtype of rabies.
Two days later Shipilova's condition suddenly worsened. She was rushed to Shelekhov district hospital. At first doctors, unaware of what had happened, suspected a severe case of coronavirus and admitted her to a specialised Covid unit. However, the rapid deterioration and the clinical picture forced them to carry out rapid tests for highly dangerous infections. The patient was put on a ventilator, but her life could not be saved. [1]
According to euronews she got treated for COVID at the hospital which is a virus so the treatment wouldn't do anything against the plague bacteria.
Pneumonic plague can kill in 48 to 72 hours if not immediately treated with strong antibiotics. COVID is treated with anti-virals.
Sadly the worker might have tried to hide her negligence to not get fired or reprimanded at work and it cost her her life.
Easily treatable, can still kill you depending on exposure severity and state of physical health.
Which implies they didn't follow any sort of protocol for containment/reporting.
If one person was exposed they should have been able to easily quarantine the threat and minimize exposure. Instead they're isolating hundreds... Not a good look
Welcome to Russian vranyo culture where saving face is more important than safety and proper safety procedures with deadly microbes are for weak westerners.
This incident shouldn't be possible in the first place, such vials have to be handled in negative pressure fume hoods while wearing a personal respirator and full PPE.
If you treat in the first 24 hours it drops the mortality rate to 20-ish percent (even if already symptomatic). If you can treat before symptoms that’s best because it minimizes the damage to the respiratory system and consequently the rest of the body. The longer past 24 hours you go the worse the odds get of it being survivable even with treatment. Without treatment the mortality rate gets pretty close to 100% (it’s more like 98% but obviously that’s not great).
Good news is that most people (~80%) exposed to Yersinia pestis bacteria will develop the bubonic form of the illness. That one is much less deadly and has a longer window for initiating treatment. The problem with the pneumonic and septicemic forms are less that they’re hard to treat and more that they fly under the radar and then move really really fast. If you know someone has been exposed prophylactic antibiotics and supportive care have pretty positive outcomes.
Now if someone was manufacturing an altered strain that pretty exclusively caused the pneumonic version that could be a pretty bad situation. Because a lot of people would assume they had a bad cold and then suddenly be in respiratory failure. It still would likely burn out though because people do get sick so quickly so there’s less time for them to wander around infecting huge groups of people. It’s also not nearly as contagious as people used to think. You have to be in pretty close proximity to someone with the pulmonary form of the disease to contract it.
It will depend on the individual person how freaked out they are about this, but I was relieved when I saw which bacteria they were mentioning.
Yersinia pestis acts fast. It's considered a true pathogen, meaning it always causes infection in humans vs an opportunistic pathogen which only causes infections under certain conditions like location. Pneumonic plague is a more deadly infection of Y pestis that always leads to death if untreated. It requires early treatment in order to be successful, otherwise the infection will have too much of a headstart. The antibiotics won't be able to kill it fast enough before you die.
it's easily treated, standard antibiotics are an effective treatment. however, it's incredibly deadly, and will almost always kill you if untreated within 18-24 hours
Maybe her condition was neglected , and besides not everyone reacts the same to the disease or medication and it could have just been an anomaly ( +2/-2 SD )
If it's not treated within 24 hours of first symptoms it's very likely you could still die. If he wasn't aware that he came into contact with a possible plague infection and then ignored the first symptoms for a little while it's hardly surprising that he died.
You must be given effective treatment within 24 hours of first symptoms for the best chance of survival. Several antibiotics are capable of killing the bacterium (like streptomycin and tetracyclines) which are all quite common and easily attained. However, without treatment the death rate is close as makes no difference to this conversation, 100%.
If the exposed lab worker went home and then didn’t seek attention immediately, I’m not surprised they died. Early symptoms include fever, shortness of breath, coughing and chest pain. Death can follow infection in as little as 36 hours, with respiratory failure likely on 2-4 days. The time frames are so incredibly short that hours matter.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan 7h ago
Shouldn’t the worker have been easily treated then? Surely the lab would know exactly what antibiotics to give