The incident occurred at the Anti-Plague Research Institute in Shelekhov, near Irkutsk [...] a “suspected case of a particularly dangerous infection affecting a resident of the region,”

Yeah, that's not alarming at all ...

an aluminum plant near the laboratory instructed staff to wear masks as a precautionary measure. [...] nearly 200 people were placed under observation at the hospital in Shelekhov [...] Quarantine has also been imposed in at least one of the city’s maternity hospitals [...] "even if [plague is] confirmed, there will be no spread of this disease,”

If this spreads and lockdowns and mask mandates come back, an entire portion of the US population will go actually, literally insane.

The Sun (which sucks, but often gets facts right underneath all the slanted coverage and yellow journalism) said

She was said to have become ill after breaking a test tube at Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute where she worked earlier this week.

They're already saying the quarantine there is to last for three weeks.

Despite there not being any other known current infections, Wikipedia's entry for the town of Shelekov now has a subsection for "2026 epidemic".

Guess I'll be poking at This Week In Virology again for a while ....

Well that seems less than ideal

It is unclear exactly what was released, according to the state agency that handles infectious disease, Rospotrebnadzor. One person – a laboratory worker – is said to have died in the incident after being diagnosed with a pneumonia of “unknown” origin.

Someone get AI on the case, stat!

The Andromeda Strain.

Oh no, not again.

This is a great time to watch Survivors (1975):

It concerns the plight of a group of people who have survived an apocalyptic plague pandemic, which was accidentally released by a Chinese scientist and quickly spread across the world via air travel. Referred to as "The Death", the plague kills approximately 4,999 out of every 5,000 human beings on the planet within a matter of weeks of being released.

Captain Trips

The person died of pneumonia. There is zero evidence she got infected in the facility. People die of pneumonia every day.

“No micro-organisms associated with the employee’s professional duties were detected in samples taken from the patient,”

I case you comment without actually reading the article.