Here we go again.
My husband first showed me writer Annie Jacobsen’s tweet: “🚨Breaking. There’s been a pneumonic plague outbreak at a BSL-3 lab in Siberia, Russia.🚨”
Our household pays attention to Jacobsen. My husband and I both read Nuclear War: A Scenario, in which she spoke with high level officials who plan for nuclear war, and sketched out a frighteningly plausible scenario based on the world we live in. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well.
My husband had just bought Jacobsen’s new book, Biological War: A Scenario, which begins with a lab accident in Siberia and a plague that spreads from there. The similarities to what might be unfolding are hard to miss.
So far we don’t know a lot. (Jacobsen’s book also echoes this. Lack of information in certain parts of the world is part of why this stuff spreads so fast.)
Independent Russian media reports that a 28-year old woman who worked as a lab technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East broke a vial with bacteria, fell ill, and died about a week later. She may have traveled, that’s not as clear. Irkutsk, where she worked, is a city of approximately 600,000 people. Shelekhov, where she was hospitalized, is a town of about 40,000.
Russian authorities — who now claim the woman died of “pneumonia of an unknown entomology,” and deny any lab accident — supposedly initially followed the death with a rapid quarantine and then deleted posts warning of travel restrictions. The region is a suspected hotbed for Russian biological weapons research (which is also well detailed in Jacobsen’s new book).
If it’s all starting to sound a little Wuhan, China circa 2019, well, that may be what we are conditioned for these days. Our country hasn’t really recovered from the paranoia and fighting over Covid.
We first saw the reports Friday night when Jacobsen tweeted about it. Supposedly the death had just happened. By Sunday CNN had news alerted it, the White House said it was monitoring, and every Tom Dick and Harry on the internet had a take, many uneducated. We are a nation full of plague experts, apparently.
I would laugh, but, we are just a few years removed from watching people offer diagnoses live on TV. Our nation is still recovering, in a lot of ways, from a pandemic that shut down our schools, pitted us against each other with little reliable information, and destroyed trust. So I guess, as I said, here we go again.
Could this also be the beginning of an October surprise? (The October surprise, for all the non-politicals out there, is something that happens right before an election that could upend planning.)
Oh how many scenarios there could be.
No Predictions
I’m not going to use this space to predict a new global pandemic, nor am I going to tell you not to worry.
This is at least the second fear cycle we’ve been in over the last few months. Whatever happened to that rat poop cruise ship, the one that caused Americans to learn (many for the first time) about Hantavirus?
It turns out it quietly was declared contained. Three deaths were reported. The containment went massively under reported compared to the fear scenario that it would be the next virus to take us out.
The truth is: It could be nothing. It could also be a lab accident involving a biological weapons program Russia is known for. What a lovely thought to sleep with at night.
For now, what’s more interesting is what it says about the moment we are in. Covid destroyed trust in this country on a pandemic scale. Now we have little trust and in this particular incident there are precious few actors here who will be trusted if something did go wrong.
The Russian government, the same one that invaded its neighbor and kills anyone who goes rogue, is not known for truth telling.
The US government’s word seems to be good to only those who want to believe it at this moment. Departing the World Health Organization in a huff doesn’t help and we’re inclined to go to partisan corners and believe what we want to believe.
I suppose it’s not that unlike the last time we saw a new virus spread. Please let’s not talk about drinking bleach this time, if we do end up there again. Oh heaven forbid.
Some Perspective
The glimpse I saw working at the White House every day for six years is that a lot goes wrong every day, and that’s why it’s important to have leaders who get all of the information available, make tough calls, and communicate effectively.
I feel like it’s been a while since we hit that standard. It’s really where we should start.
Instead, our default is partisanship. If you are politically inclined to trust those in power, you’ll likely believe whatever they’re doing is sufficient. And if you’re not inclined to trust them, you will find the problems.
Whatever the case, the plague is far from the only scenario of something that could upend October. Trust in our elections is at an all-time low (there’s an assortment of reasons for this but namely it’s the President’s consistent insistence that he won an election he did not win). There’s a deficit of trust with the media, so when something we disagree with is reported, will we believe it?
And then what happens?
A Plague of Low Information
By Sunday night I was already seeing people on the left accusing the White House of politicizing the Russian outbreak (those I saw make those accusations had not served in government). There were also accusations that Jacobsen, an investigative reporter who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, was doing the bidding of the Russians, or just trying to sell a book.
As for the White House, I hope they’re monitoring. As for Jacobsen’s motivations, I don’t buy either one. She spent years interviewing the people whose job is to plan for this, and already has a bestselling book on the end of the world. So I don’t think her motivation is money. Nor do I think the Connecticut-born Angeleno is on the take for Putin.
But having lived in this world, I think she worries. I worry that all of the short-sighted politicians who continue to weaken our institutions set us up for these worries, and worse. I worry that we don’t have a trusted media we’ll need to guide us through.
But most of all I worry that after the last pandemic, and all the hate our kids watched us show each other, we’ve learned nothing.
And when you learn nothing you’re bound to repeat it.