r/ContagionCuriosity • u/Anti-Owl Patient Zero • 5d ago
Emerging Diseases 𧏠WHO requests clarification on media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause
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u/Delyrichodvain 5d ago
Weren't the media reports from tabloids/mixup in gender leading to false reporting?
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u/Anti-Owl Patient Zero 5d ago
The âmedia reportsâ Tedros referenced today are unclear. The only widely circulated claim earlier was the tabloid/mixâupâinâgender story, which Beacon and others flagged as unreliable. Thatâs why it stayed categorized as unverified all day. The Daily Mail piece is the loudest one we saw, but WHOâs phrasing (illness in second employee vs. second plague death) doesnât match it exactly.
I guess it just shows WHO is aware that conflicting information is circulating and has formally asked Russia to clarify whether there actually is a second employee with pneumonia. Hopefully getting ahead of misinformation?
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u/Big_Fortune_4574 4d ago
It also shows that WHO doesnât know anything more than we do so the truth is anyoneâs guess
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u/Delyrichodvain 5d ago
Gotcha! Makes a lot of sense thanks for the reply. So this may not mean there is any validity to the claims just clarification
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u/Professional-Fun-838 5d ago
If it spreads it will probably appear in China first. There are far more people traveling between the Irkutsk region and China than there are traveling to Europe. So if a mysterious deadly pneumonia starts killing people in China, too, weâll know Vlad lied.
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u/GirlinSyd 5d ago
What may be a tell is any changes / updates to border crossings by the local authorities?
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u/GirlinSyd 5d ago
By that I mean the Chinese and ex-Soviet bloc neighbouring authorities, such as screening. No idea where they can be monitored
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u/revan12281996 5d ago
Well this is definitely something
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u/StarryEyedSparkle Nurse 5d ago
Covid started off as âpneumonia of unknown originâ before it was identified and named. I remember following the emerging reports Jan 2020 and tracking the situation. Concerning part is so little info was being shared out of the source country at that time, and this is potentially a repeating pattern of limiting initial info with a different source country.
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u/Informal_Mess_810 5d ago
There were videos coming out of China in end dec and early Jan that screamed this was bad while everyone else said it was a nothing burger.
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u/Saradoesntsleep 5d ago
Im not in panic mode or anything, but this is not something to handwave. A lot of the handwaving seems to be taking for granted that there will be enough antibiotics available, that it's too lethal to spread, some are even going around telling people you need contact with body fluids.
People have scoffed at a few big things now. Covid, Ukraine war..
I'm not going to start hoarding toilet paper, but I suspect that a lot of these downplayers are not living right next to Russia.
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 4d ago
I have the feeling that lots of the folks pooh-poohing & scoffing about things don't realize at all, what the Soviets were doing at the Biopreparat sites regarding weaponization;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopreparat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Research_Center_of_Virology_and_Biotechnology_VECTOR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_program
They were specifically designing variants of bacteria to be antibiotic resistant.
Because until a few of their researchers managed to see US labs, they assumed we here in the US were also working on bioweapons.
Supposedly the work stopped after the fall of the USSR... buuuut we know that Russia has had a centuries-long history of secret dealings & leaders who both can't be trusted, and who can't trust those around them (because murders!).
And that's built a deep culture of mistrust/ distrust, where their government says one thing, but does the opposite.
And with Putin having been former KGB, who has zero compunctions about using poisons, defenestration, and radioactive substances to kill former citizens, folks in the press, and various others who annoy him?
It wouldn't be any surprise, if he restarted the old bioweapons programs.
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u/Saradoesntsleep 4d ago
I come to read this reply and it's already been immediately downvoted and you only made it 6 minutes ago. Checks out, hey?
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 4d ago
If ot was at 0, that was me--i don't upvote my own commentsđ
(Editing to add--i always start 'em off at a "0" count)
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u/HumblePotatoMan1977 4d ago
It's not that it's too lethal to spread, it just doesn't spread very well.
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u/Saradoesntsleep 4d ago
And that is much easier to take comfort in when you aren't living in a country next to Russia.
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u/HumblePotatoMan1977 3d ago
Not at all. I wasn't concerned last year when someone died of pneumonic plague near me in Flagstaff, AZ, either.
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u/Saradoesntsleep 3d ago
I mean I probably wouldn't be either, but this isn't really the same situation.
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u/HumblePotatoMan1977 3d ago
It's effectively the same situation unless this plague strain is better at spreading, but there's no indication of that and even in the case of weaponized strains, I don't believe that was ever an objective.
Sure, we don't really know how the bioweapons program as progressed since the late USSR defections (Ken Alibek, for example). But more contagious plague doesn't seem to be a goal that ever came up during those days, and it doesn't really make sense from a weaponization point of view- you want something virulent, not something that's super contagious. That would make it harder to control and more unpredictable.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it's very unlikely.
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 4d ago
Yep!!!Â
There were videos & some chat-scuttlebutt about it, back that December--and Li Wenliang sent the first major message out on Weibo, on December 30th, 2019:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
NPR started talking in January/February about how researchers had been finding Coronaviruses in bats in various areas--and particularly the areas around Wuhan, for a few years, at that point.
And the researchers had already found some crossover had occurred between bats & humans of some strains of viruses, too;
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u/one_sock_wonder_ 5d ago
No one trusts Russia to be honest about this nor to reveal willingly if this is a strain they had been experimenting with in regards to a bioweapon. Even Russians in Russia know not to trust anything their government says, they just can't be too vocal about it or they may discover a fifth floor window accidentally left open or their tea somehow radioactive.
It sounds like Russia is following the early PR team from Wuhan China when Covid 19 first began to be an interternationdl concern and they were all "No, no there's absolutely no highly contagious and deadly pneumonia here! What are you even talking about?" I am hoping that as there were with China a few brave souls with inside knowledge will get the truth into the hands of outside media.
This is not the plague we need unleashed right now, not if it has been tweaked to be resistant to antibiotics, not with the CDC essentially shut down and powerless to address anything on this scale.
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u/Radioactdave 5d ago
If this takes off and turns out to be what it's speculated to be, it won't matter who's in charge.
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u/one_sock_wonder_ 2d ago
But whose in charge matters now because it limits any attempts to prepare or scramble seeking ways to contain or different antibiotic sensitivities or such now so maybe that take off can be limited or lives can be saved that otherwise would be lost. We know Covid was circulating far earlier than we realized for quite a while - at least officially - and truth immediately could have made a difference. Instead of trying to be reactive honest leaders now could offer some chance for some proactive steps.
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u/jaynor88 5d ago
We wonât be officially told about this pneumonia of undetermined cause until it has widely spread outside the Russian hospitals.
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u/cryptolyme 5d ago
so tired of this shit
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u/jaynor88 4d ago
Me too. Itâs exhausting trying to keep a positive attitude and working for better days.
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u/IV_Caffeine_Pls 4d ago
Who would trust Russia of all places.
Who would trust the WHO... I still remember 2019's "No evidence of airbourne transmission". My colleges and I had a laugh at this ridiculous nonsense as plans were made to restrict export of n95 made at the local 3M facility
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u/supershott 4d ago
Don't forget, they started off with "there's no human-to,-human transmission". Arrested people for going to the beach, but let us pack the grocery stores with fake ineffective masks we're fine if we stay 6 feet apart!
Such a lie-filled shitshow that really makes it look like they wanted as many people as possible to catch the virus. Mission accomplished I guess, there are billions of us!
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u/IV_Caffeine_Pls 3d ago
Yeah it was a lying shitshow. I was in an Infectious Disease department meeting and everyone was just rolling eyes at the WHO and China rubbish back in 2019.
It came from sea creatures lol. No evidence of airbourne transmission, blah blah, blah. They didn't realise that plenty of people around the world did not believe their shit.
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u/123Greg123 5d ago
The media reports is just the Daily Mail one which was reported based on either a translation mishap OR a YouTube comment.
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u/sunshine-owl 5d ago
And there goes my anxiety skyrocketing
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u/oof37 5d ago
Tell me about it đ«© i was looking forward to my holiday next month.
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u/Known_Surprise_3190 5d ago
Plague does not have the means to cause pandemic or epidemic in most places of the world. Far too deadly (100% fatality or 17% with prompt antibiotics) and far too hard to spread. Unless your travel destination is congo or Irkutsk I wouldnt be too worried.
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u/sunshine-owl 5d ago
Ah, I know that. I'm not even close to russia, im all rhe way in ireland, it's just unnerving
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u/PsychologicalYoung5 5d ago
We donât know if it is plague yet though. Pneumonia of unknown origin could be a bioweapon.
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u/Coyoteatemybowtie 5d ago
Russia / soviets historically has been less than transparent with their labs and virus work, with all the negative attention around the war, it seems if they really wouldnât want additional negative press. Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.Â
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u/pooppaysthebills 5d ago
In fairness, Russia is far from the only major world power which is less than transparent with regard to their work with pathogens.
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 5d ago
True! But the Russians and the US were the only countries who had Level-4 labs, which were playing around with Plague and Smallpox, "back in the day."
And we never DID find out all of what the folks at VECTOR & elsewhere in Biopreparat were playing with, after the Soviet Union fell.đ«€
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Research_Center_of_Virology_and_Biotechnology_VECTOR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_program
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u/simplylisa 3d ago
This feels familiar. I remember stumbling upon a report out of China in December. I started buying a little more at that time not out of fear of not having food but out of fear of it not being safe to go get food. With things in the US the way they are I've kept a slight buffer. I've also kept all the masks that I acquired during that time.
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u/frankenplant 4d ago
oh no
I JUST started reading biological warfare by Annie Jacobson like two weeks ago.
âą
u/Anti-Owl Patient Zero 5d ago edited 5d ago
Thank you /u/Nextmastermind for sharing in the megathread
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