Cliff’s Note:
A researcher at a Russian plague lab is dead, nearly 200 people around her were tested, and Moscow is telling everyone to stay calm. Meanwhile, the people whose job was to spot a threat like this before it reached us have been fired.
Behind the paywall, David Shuster walks through what happens if a case lands here: who’s left at the CDC to notice it, what the latest budget cut does to an emergency response, and why it’s much easier to fire a disease detective than to replace one in the middle of an outbreak.
It’s $60 a year—five bucks a month—to keep David’s reporting coming, with no corporate owner to answer to. Join us.
—Cliff
There are few things more disturbing than the Trump administration dismantling the scientific safeguards, monitoring, and government agencies that keep us alive.
But here we are.
Over the past year, Old Man Orange, RFK Jr. and their lunatic sycophants cut 25 percent of the staff and laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control. The Trumpsters eliminated a third of all senior CDC leadership and ended several teams whose primary responsibility was to track, analyze, and block deadly pathogens that could be part of the next global pandemic.
That pandemic may be approaching.
Russian authorities are investigating the death of a laboratory worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute who developed pneumonia of unknown origin.
This data is presented as part of a partnership with Polymarket.
The lab worker reportedly dropped a test tube containing the pneumonic plague, became sick within days, and died. Russian authorities have quarantined and placed dozens of contacts under observation. A Russian agency that deals with “emergencies” has been meeting, reviewing the lab death, and trying to track the potential exposure.
The Trump administration says officials are “monitoring the situation.”
Great.
