this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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The plague never went away. Globally there's 1-3 cases each year. Luckily it treated with common antibiotics.
Far more than that. We average just over 4 per year in Colorado alone. https://cdphe.colorado.gov/colorado-plague-data
72 total human cases from 2005-2021 in Colorado, 11 of those fatal. That's 4.23 cases per year. There have also been 431 animal cases in Colorado over the same period.
WHO reports ~600-750 cases of plague per year globally with 3% being pneumonic, 10% being septicemic, and the other 87% being bubonic.
It's why there are warnings to not pick up ground squirrels and prairie dogs in Colorado, especially dead ones.
Luckily, it's almost entirely bubonic plague, which is the most treatable form of plague.
The one the Russians accidentally released is pneumonic plague, which is the most severe form. Incubation period can be as short as just a few hours, and the early signs are the same as pretty much a minor cold but it rapidly intensifies and can lead to death within as little as a day from initial contraction. If not caught and treated within a few hours, it's nearly 100% fatal.
This one is a much, MUCH bigger deal. Pneumonic plague is terrifying.
The fact that she actually died from it is still a bit strange tbh. They must have known what she was working with and could have given her the proper antibiotic treatment right away. They probably have the antibiotics at her own facility exactly for contaminations like this, which she could have taken minutes after the exposure. But it still wasn’t enough… I don’t think we’re ever going to find out what happened.
We probably will never truly know and they are denying anything is even happening.
There’s conflicting reports about what happened, and if it was even plague. One Russian report is that she contracted something in Thailand and then got sick when she was back in Russia. Another is that she accidentally broke a test tube with y. pestis cultures.
If it’s the latter, I’d imagine she hid the accident for fear of punishment until it was too late, and now the Russian government is covering it up.
There's always edge cases but yes it's very weird.
Pneumonic plague is the exact same bacteria, just infecting the lungs instead of lymph nodes. It's less common because the bacteria doesn't aerosolize very easily so it's not easy to get it into your lungs.
It's also really not that big of a deal, because it's still not particularly contagious. It's not that uncommon either; there's been several outbreaks just in the past 20-30 years. It is of course a very serious disease but it's fairly easy to contain.
Maybe what I remember seeing was 1-3 US only Deaths. Miss remembering.
There's a lot more than 1-3 cases each year -- there's hundreds. I don't know where you got 1-3 from because even pneumonic plague specifically is far more common than that.
Maybe what I remember seeing was 1-3 US only Deaths. Miss remembering.