Front Burner - Decoding the Russian plague scare

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Since last week, there have been a series of alarming bits of news emerging from Siberia. It began with the mysterious death of a woman who worked at a plague research institute. Russia has said she contracted pneumonia but has been slim on details. But the World Health Organization wants more information, including details about whether or not there has been a second case, which has been rumoured, but not confirmed.All of this, including Russia’s moves to quarantine, has people scared of an outbreak of one of the most aggressive forms of plague: the pneumonic plague. So we wanted to talk to someone who looks at global health risks and biosecurity to get a temperature check. Gregory Koblentz is the Director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He’s also the co-director of the Global Bio Labs initiative which tracks high containment labs around the world.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

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A web series where host Michelle Spina sits down with members of Gen Z to share real perspectives and experiences on money, life, and what comes next. with Dejard. Now streaming on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. Hey everyone, it's Jamie. Since last week, there have been a series of alarming bits of news emerging from Siberia. Alarming, but also slim on detail. It began with the mysterious death of a woman who worked at a plague research institute. Russia has said that she contracted pneumonia.

But the World Health Organization wants more information, including details about whether or not there has been a second case, which has been rumored but not confirmed. All of this, including Russia's moves to quarantine large swaths of people in hospitals, has people scared of an outbreak of one of the most aggressive forms of plague, pneumonic plague. The likelihood of that at this point is low, according to the WHO. But this situation has inspired a lot of breathless coverage. President Trump is the plague in Russia a bio-weapon?

Well, we don't think so. and we're going to find out soon enough, but we don't think so. So I wanted to talk to someone who looks at global health risks and biosecurity to get a temperature check. Gregory Koblenz is the director of the Biodefense graduate program at George Mason University Sharr School of Policy and Government. He's also the co-director of the Global Biolabs Initiative, which tracks high containment labs around the world. Greg, hi, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So I'm sure that you can probably understand in this post-coctuary.

COVID context why words like plague and lab leak immediately raised concerns. But let's go through what we know so far about what's happening in Russia. Russian authorities have said that the lab technician at the heart of this incident died of pneumonia of an unknown etiology, but they haven't confirmed whether she died of the pneumonic plague, which is what is suspected, right? So what do we know about the kind of research being done at this facility? So this is a public health laboratory that's been operating since the 1930s, and they do specialize in plague because that bacteria is endemic in the region, and it's been a longstanding public health and veterinary threat in Russia. The lab does both research on these types of pathogens

in order to develop new diagnostics and medical kind of measures, and they also run a clinical diagnostic lab for epidemiological surveillance purposes. And according to, Some of the reporting coming out of Russia, this woman worked in the clinical diagnostic lab, you know, testing samples for possible causes of illnesses of patients in the area. And I just, there have been conflicting reports on what happened, but one of the main theories is coming from reporting from an independent Siberian outlet. And they're suggesting that the lab worker was handling a test tube with a deadly pathogen and it broke. Russian reports say 28-year-old researcher Darya Shippalova.

dropped a test tube containing pneumonic plague. She'd fallen ill and died. As a precaution, dozens of staff were placed in quarantine. Is that a possible scenario here? It's certainly possible. And we just don't know a lot about what really happened inside the lab because the Russian authorities have not been forthcoming at all about what led to this incident.

But that is a plausible way for a lab accident to happen, especially since this lab does deal with, you know, pathogens that are, you know, that are dangerous, or they are also a lab that does testing for dangerous diseases that are endemic in the region. It is, you know, clearly a plausible route for an occupational exposure of this sort. I just want to be clear. When the WHO says that it's possible that it's pneumonic plague, I mean, is it because Russia has said that she died of pneumonia and because this lab does research with pneumonic plague, are those the two pieces of the puzzle that they're putting together?

Well, those two pieces are important, as well as some of the initial statements from some Russian authorities did use the term pneumonic plague, but then they were scrubbed from the Internet and from social media. So there is both the nature of the infection, which is a pneumonia, which can cause by lots of different kinds of bacteria and viruses, the fact that this woman worked at this facility that is known to specialize in the study of plague, and the fact that there were some initial reports that were then walked back in a way that looked very

suspicious. And then on top of that, the way that the Russians had been responding to this by tracing her contacts, quarantining these contacts for medical observation, indicates that they think she was infected with a contagious disease. And so that also is another kind of red flag that this was something like pneumonic plague and not just a regular pneumonia. So when people hear the word plague, I think it freaks them out. They're probably thinking of the bubonic plague, you know, which killed tens of millions of people in the 14th century. I just, this plague, tell me more about what a pneumonic plague is. How deadly is it?

How easily does it spread? So plague can come in three basic different types of varieties. The most famous one is the bubonic plague, which is what we saw during the black death in middle ages. And that's where you have these large swellings on the body. There's also sepsis plague where the plague bacteria get into the bloodstream, and that is an even more dangerous version. And then finally, the most dangerous is pneumonic plague where the plague bacteria get into the lungs and start causing the lungs to fill with liquid and get inflamed and infected. And that's also not just a severe disease, but because the bacteria are in the lungs and the airways, it also provides a way for that disease to spread from person to person when a patient coughs and that sort of thing. And so pneumatic plague is the most, you know, fearedversion because it can be spread person to person and it is generally fatal unless you have access to antibiotics.

Can you explain what that means when it comes to like a general public health risk? So the pneumonic plague can be transmitted person to person, but it is not an airborne respiratory threat like SARS-Govie-2 was or like influenza is. It has what's called a relatively low R-not number that kind of quantifies how transmissible the disease is. So it is much less transmissible than things like measles and chickenpox and flu and the coronaviruses. But under the conditions, it can be spread from person to person. Now, the good news is we are no longer living in the 14th century. And so we have, you know, sanitation and hygiene and modern medicine that make the factors that led to the Black Death 600 years ago possible. And we know the means to contain outbreaks of this bacteria, which is very well studied, well understood. And we have lots of tools in the medical arsenal to deal with it. You went through before some of what Russia has been doing up to 200 people are under medical supervision according to local media. Multiple hospitals

in the region have been shut down. You know, I've seen some analysts suggest that the response is disproportionate for just one single case of suspected pneumonic plague or a case of pneumonic plague. And it's raising fears that they're dealing with something even worse than that. I just, what do you make of that reading? So that is one interpretation. Another interpretation is that the Russians used a heavy hand, and since Russia is now basically an authoritarian police state, they were overly aggressive in implementing and forcing this quarantine, and they took a better safe and sorry approach and just quarantined lots of people all at once without really doing the due diligence to see, okay, was this person actually a plausible contact or not? So I think given the nature of,

you know, the Russian regime at this point, I think that's also a plausible explanation for why they responded so kind of dramatically and with a heavy hand. The WHO has been asking for further clarification from Russia, like more information. Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, has called on Russia to share more information with the world. That's what they should do. That's what we hope they will do. And the more we can learn about what happened, then the better all of us can be in a position of responding.

Trump on Tuesday said that he has a scheduled call with Putin. Are you getting the same vibe right now from Russia that he got from China at the start of COVID? Well, China didn't say much. And Russia's not saying much either, but they do say they have it very much under control. You know, as someone who's been watching this closely, how are you thinking about the amount of information? that has come out from Russia about what's going on. The Russians really have not been forthcoming about this.

In Moscow, the Kremlin's been commenting. But when I suggest a lack of official information is fueling rumor and speculation, he hits back. Our public health watchdog, he says, is providing comprehensive information. Clearly, the government is trying to avoid, using the word plague, maybe for purely optic reasons, because it is associated, as you said, with the black death and an uncontrollable epidemics. But that really is not helpful in the public

health context, because we need to know that the pathogen and its origin in order to implement the right kind of containment measures and make sure that disease does not spread anymore. So it really doesn't engender confidence with the Russians not being as forthcoming and transparent as they should be. And at this point, it's unlikely they're going to tell the U.S. anything more than the WHO, which is a problem. I've seen a lot of parallels being drawn here between this and the opacity around the origins of COVID-19. And I just, I know you've done a little bit of this, but I just wonder if you could do a little bit more of those similarities that you're seeing and also maybe importantly differences. Yeah, I mean, so one of the major similarities is that

those outbreaks started in countries that have authoritarian governments that try and strictly control information to control their own citizens, and they're deeply distrustful of outsiders. And so they don't want to admit or show weakness or admit to an outbreak that could be politically embarrassing or damaging. And so it's kind of the natural innate secretness of the Putin regime and the Chinese Communist Party that create this kind of problems. One of the big differences between these two episodes is that when SARS-Cubri 2 emerged in Wuhan, right, it was a novel virus. We knew nothing about its biology or its genealology. We had no antiviral medicines for it. We had no vaccines against it. And we just didn't understand how easily it could spread.

In contrast, right, we've studied plague for, you know, decades, if not, you know, a century now. And so it's a very well-understood bacteria. We have lots of antibiotics that can be used to treat it. their vaccines available for it. And so it just doesn't pose the same kind of threat of a global pandemic as we saw with COVID. So I think when people look at this and they do think, they do automatically think about the black death, but again, that historical analogy just does not hold up today, given the nature of this particular pathogen and the nature of our public health and

medical infrastructure. And I know I don't want to spend too much time basically asking you to like throw cold water on some of this breathless coverage. I know you're doing it. But there is also like this best-selling book out right now called Biological War, a scenario. And it maps what would happen hypothetically if a deadly weaponized pathogen were to escape a Russian lab. It basically ends in the collapse of society. I see a lot of people online talking about this.

You have the U.S. Embassy putting out an alert urging Americans to leave Russia immediately. I just, you seem pretty calm. Is that fair? If I live near Krusk, I would be concerned. But for anyone outside of that region, this is really not going to be a major health rate. I mean, if you live in the United States or in Canada, for that matter, you should be much more worried about measles in your neighborhood or your schools than should be about pneumonic plague in Siberia. That's just a realistic risk assessment puts local endemic diseases a much higher threat to the average Canadian or American than what's going on over in Russia. And on this Biological War book, it is for some reason marketed as nonfiction.

It is not. It is a work of science fiction. The scenario is completely implausible both biologically and epidemiologically. And so there is a coincidence in terms of the basic plot of that book and some elements which are going now in Russia are similar. And it's like eerily, is eerily similar that, yeah. Yes. And so it gives the book of very much. veneer of plausibility it does not deserve. I have talked to so many biosafety and biosafety

experts that have nothing but negative things to say about this book and the way it treats science, the way it treats public health, the way it treats international global health and biosephalance, it just gets so many things wrong on so many levels. I would really urge your listeners not to look at that book as any sort of prophecy or inspiration at all. I just tallied up my cost for this semester, and between tuition, campus fees, and a very expensive textbook I've barely opened, my budget is stretched thin.

Yeah, it's a lot to juggle at once. Right? It feels like everyone else somehow got a manual on how to navigate student life and figure out their finances, and I missed the memo. But trust me, nobody got a manual. When I started school last year, I felt the exact same way. Everyone's just figuring it out as they go.

Honestly, just knowing other people are asking the same questions makes me feel a whole lot better. You're definitely not the only one trying to make sense of it all. Navigating school and your finances comes with a lot of big questions. If you're figuring out your next steps, check out Count Us In. A web series where host Michelle Spina, It's down with members of Gen Z to share real perspectives and experiences on money, life, and what comes next. Paid content with Desjardin.

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And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. I want to broaden this conversation out a little bit, if you don't mind, because something that is also coming up in relation to the story that has also been in the ether is this question of biological warfare

and whether governments, bad actors, or even AI are helping to develop bio-weapons. Does Russia currently have a bio-weapons program? Could this lab be part of it? So the Soviet Union ran the world's oldest and largest biological weapons program until it collapsed. And so Russia inherited that program. And in the last 10 years or so, they've actually been modernizing their biological weapons program. Just within the last couple of years, they built a new BSO4 laboratory next to a military virology research institute at Sergei

POSAD. So the Russian Biological Warfare Program, unfortunately, is still, you know, alive and well. At this point, I haven't seen any evidence linking this Public Health Institute to the Military's Biological Weapons Program. There's no historical evidence that this Institute was part of the Soviet program, and I just haven't seen anything credible linking it to the current program. I think this is just one of many public health labs in Russia that does work on dangerous pathogens because a lot of these things are just endemic in Russia in that part of the world. But I do think that this episode should cast a very harsh light on what Russia is doing in terms of deliberately trying to develop disease as a weapon, which is banned by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. What do we know about other state actors or groups that have been accused of developing or stockpiling bio weapons that are also, like, as you've said, illegal under international law? So the other country of high concern is North Korea, which the United States and South Korean governments have accused of having biological weapons for many years.

That country is even more secretive than Russia, so we know even less about their activities in this domain. But I think there are several reasons to think that they are also developing these weapons, along with chemical weapons, along with nuclear weapons, as what they see as a way to deter the United States and South Korea from aggression against North Korea. And that's obviously a serious concern given the recurring crises on the peninsula and North Korea's, you know, threat to the region. You know, thankfully, bioterrorism has been very rare. Most terrorist groups simply are not interested in biologic weapons.

Either they think they won't work or they'll be kind of productive. but they might even be scared of them and they're afraid of infecting themselves. And so there have been, you know, a couple of cases where groups have sought to develop biological weapons. Most of those cases have failed. There have only been a handful of successful times that a non-state actor has actually used a biological agent to cause harm. And that's for good reason that developing biological weapons by a state or a non-state actor

is just a very challenging endeavor. And just fortunately, most non-state actors out there just are not able to develop and devote. the scientific, technical, organizational capacities needed to really pull that off. Just on that point, a recent report from Anthropic last month detailed these five case studies where scientists using AI models in biological research were able to circumvent safeguards and obscure the purpose of their research. And they wrote, quote, biological misuse is one of the most serious risks of frontier AI. And I just, what kind of additional challenges does the acceleration of AI present? Like, would it make it a lot easier to develop this kind of stuff?

Some of the AI tools that we're now seeing can help in the hands of an expert can help, you know, shorten that process or accelerate the process in a handful of steps. But it's not able to solve all the problems across the entire spectrum you have to go from acquiring a pathogen to modifying it, to growing it, to isolating it, to weaponizing it, disseminating it. There's just a very lengthy, challenging process to do that, especially in the hands of a group of amateurs or novices. And that's where a lot of the threat literature is looking at is looking at, you know, could someone with no training use AI to learn how to make a bioweapon? And that, frankly, is just nonsense. The case that Anthropic highlighted, what it did show is that there are lots of, you know,

science institutions who are using these tools to do what's called dual-use research. It's research that's being done for peaceful scientific purposes, but could in theory be misused to cause harm. And unfortunately, biology is just rife with this kind of research. And the individual piece of research they highlighted were not to me that suspicious in any way. They didn't, they didn't look like was bioweapons research. What I think triggered Anthropics focus on these cases was that these users were located in areas or in countries that weren't supposed to have access to some of these tools, and they're using a variety of cutouts and middlemen and the great market to get access to these powerful AI tools. And it was that process of kind of circumventing.

invention evasion that made what they were doing look suspicious. But the actual research they were doing was, in most cases, looked like legitimate research that is going on in labs around the world. I'd like to just come back to this lab in Siberia. With the global biolabs initiative, your initiative, as I understand it, your team tracks, well, maximum containment labs around the world. world. And your 2023 report found that the construction of labs dealing with highly dangerous pathogens are on the rise. And there are currently 69 BSL4 labs, ones with the highest level of

biosafety precautions in the world. And actually, the Air Kukts one in Siberia is like a level below that. It's not even one of these. And why a kind of boom with these labs? Why are they growing? So every time there's a major disease outbreak or incident, we see increased interest in these labs. This happened in 2001 after the anthrax that are attacked in the United States. In 2003, after SARS, in 2014, after the Ebola outbreak, in West Africa, and then after COVID in 2020, when countries look at the gap in their preparedness or their lack of understanding of the science behind some of these new emerging threats. And so lots of more and more countries are turning to BSO4 Lodge as a way to try and enhance their own preparedness and get a better understanding within the whole country about the range of biological threats that are emerging.

And because of global evasion and other things, emerging effects disease pops up in any country. It can be anywhere else in the world in 24 hours. And so that kind of globalization of disease outbreaks and the risk of pandemics is a major concern driving more and more countries to try and want to develop this kind of capacity. domestically. How much talk do you put in the possibility that the next epidemic or even pandemic could be caused by an accident or a breach at one of these labs that you're talking about? I think there are a variety of risks of natural outbreaks, accidental outbreaks, and deliberate threats that we have to be prepared for. And there are good reason to try and reduce all of those risks. And again, there are very sensible, easy implement policies that we can use on,

all three of those. And unfortunately, what we've seen is the risk of accidents has been kind of elevated in a way, because a lot of the discussion about, you know, the COVID origins, right, in ways that actually makes it harder to improve biosecurity and it makes it harder to also build the capacities we need to deal with the naturally occurring emerging effects diseases and pandemics. So I don't think it's a matter of trying to kind of prioritize one over the other, but recognizing there's a spectrum of threats out there, and we need different policies to address each of these. And again, they're definitely doable at the national level, the international level, but our policies are not keeping step with the type of risks that we're

facing. Well, just on that note, responding to COVID required kind of worldwide communication and cooperation, although high-income countries did hoard vaccines once they were available. But now, at least, geopolitically speaking, the world does seem even more fractured. And is that showing up in your work in the ways that global health risks are being managed? Especially, I guess, when it comes to communication, maybe. Yeah, I bet Secretary of St. Marco Rubio is really regretting pulling out of the WHO because he now has to go ask the Russians about the outbreak. The World Health Organization plays an incredibly valuable role in monitoring these kinds of these outbreaks, sharing information, analyzing it, and the United States withdrew from the organization and really kind of undermine our own health security.

What is this? Withdrawing from the World Health Organization. Oh, that's a big one. And then, you know, we've seen cuts mostly by the United States, but other countries as well, cutting back on global health assistance. And that's really decimated the ability of some countries to respond effectively to disease outbreaks. And what's going on in Congo now with what is untracted. to be, you know, the largest Ebola outbreak on record is indicative of that. So I think that there

are a bunch of lessons we need to learn here about how interconnected the global society is, the need for international cooperation, and then the need for working together to prevent these kinds of threats and then detect them and respond to them together. You mentioned before that if you were sitting in your house in the U.S. or Canada, you would be more concerned about the measles than you would be about potential pneumonic plague in Siberia. Let me ask you a similar question. Are you kind of more concerned about the Ebola outbreak generally than what's happening in Russia right now? I mean, the Ebola outbreak has already wrecked a huge, you know, death toll in Congo.

There now is a case that was just reported in Kenya. So there's constantly a risk for this outbreak to spread even more into other parts of Africa. So in terms of global health, yes, that is by far the more important and more dangerous situation. And we have, you know, less capacity control Ebola in that situation than the Russians do to control, you know, a single case of pneumonic plague in Siberia. So on the one hand, you know, I appreciate the media attention to biological threats, whether they're naturally occurring or accidental. But it is shocking how many calls I've gotten in the last 48 hours. about one case of New York Plague in Siberia compared to the number of calls I've gotten about, you know, 4,000 deaths from Ebola in the Congo, or now we've got five deaths from measles in

Pennsylvania, and they just don't grab the headlines that Pneumonic Plague does. And that does lead to, I think, a skewed distorted threat perception by the public. And then governments also respond in ways that are not the most helpful because of that. Greg, this is great. Thank you so much for coming on for Ealing. some of our concerns. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.