Americans learned the hard way what happens when a foreign lab accident gets swept under the rug.
A young lab worker in Siberia is dead. Moscow keeps changing the subject.
And Rand Paul just raised one terrifying question the Kremlin doesn’t want anybody asking.
A Broken Test Tube in Siberia
Daria Shipilova worked at an anti-plague research facility in Russia’s Irkutsk region, according to Mediaite. She reportedly broke a test tube holding a plague sample on September 25.
Shipilova, 28, landed in the hospital in the town of Shelekhov on September 29 with symptoms of severe pneumonia, according to Down To Earth. She died on October 2, WKRC reported, citing The Moscow Times.
Then the story got murky fast.
Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev said she died of “pneumonia of unknown aetiology,” according to The Canberra Times. Earlier, Kobzev described the case on social media as a “particularly dangerous infection,” WKRC reported.
But Alexei Tsydenov, head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, reportedly confirmed that Shipilova died from an unspecified form of plague, according to Down To Earth. Mediaite reported that Russian officials still have not confirmed plague as the cause of death.
So which is it? Moscow can’t seem to decide, or doesn’t want to say.
Russian authorities placed nearly 200 people under medical observation, according to Down To Earth. Irkutsk officials canceled planned public events. The nearby Irkutsk Aluminum Plant told workers to wear masks, The Canberra Times reported.
That’s an awful lot of precaution for a case of plain old pneumonia.
Rand Paul Connects the Dots
US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, went on Fox News with host Will Cain to talk about the case.
Paul started with a detail that sounds like something out of a thriller paperback.
“I will tell you one thing that is disconcerting about this is that a book was written in the last year called biological war, a scenario and what happens in the book is a lab out in the east part of Russia leaks . . . the plague and it goes on to infect the world within days,” Paul said.
He didn’t oversell it. “Now that’s not what’s happening, but it’s disconcerting because this scenario was written about a year ago because people are worried about it,” Paul added.
He also noted the disease isn’t some extinct relic. “The plague itself happens naturally and there’s a couple hundred cases a year that get it. Most times it’s treatable with antibiotics. In this case, it wasn’t,” Paul said.
Paul called it “alarming” that Russian officials hadn’t confirmed the cause of death, since doctors can determine it fairly easily, according to Mediaite.
Then came the part that should make every American sit up.
“We do know from defectors in the 1970s and ’80 that they were weaponizing the plague so we do know that,” Paul said. “So it is concerning, and I think we should be doing our due diligence by looking at satellite images and looking to see what their military is doing.”
He added, “At least in the press reports unclassified it looks like some people are insinuating there is more activity than you would normally get from one case of the plague, which makes us concerned, could it be weaponized.”
Notice what Paul did and didn’t say. He didn’t claim Russia built a plague weapon. He asked whether Washington has looked. That’s a fair question for the man running the Senate’s homeland security committee.
The White House Is Watching
The Trump administration isn’t sleeping on this one.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department, and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response have all worked to learn more about the deaths, The Washington Post reported, according to Mediaite.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration is monitoring the situation “closely.”
President Trump echoed that. “Well, we’re looking at it very strongly. We just heard about it. And they call it pneumonia,” Trump said. “And pneumonia, you know, years ago, you could treat pneumonia easier. The microbes and the germs have gotten stronger disproportionately. But we’ll help them. We’ll help as much as we can.”
Read that again. “They call it pneumonia.” Trump caught the same thing everybody else caught.
And his answer was to offer help, not saber-rattling. That’s the America First instinct in a nutshell: keep a close eye, protect Americans first, and skip the chest-thumping.
A Russian official tried to cool things down, calling the situation “low risk” and saying “we should be alert but not panicked,” according to Mediaite.
Maybe so. But the folks who told Americans to stay calm about a certain lab city in China back in early 2020 didn’t exactly earn a lot of trust.
Wuhan Left a Lesson Nobody Should Forget
Paul has spent years leading the fight against Dr Anthony Fauci and pressing the case that COVID came out of a lab. For a long stretch, the political establishment and the corporate press treated that question as a fringe conspiracy.
Then the lab-leak question went mainstream, and the people who mocked it went quiet.
The pattern from Wuhan looks painfully familiar. A research facility handles a deadly pathogen. Something goes wrong. Local officials use vague language. The central government tells the world not to worry. The Chinese Communist Party ran that playbook, silencing doctors and stonewalling investigators, and the whole planet paid for it.
But Russia isn’t Communist China, and one dead lab worker isn’t a pandemic. Paul said as much himself.
The real issue is trust. A government that can’t give a straight answer about a single death in a single hospital ward doesn’t exactly inspire confidence about what goes on behind its lab doors. And Paul’s point about Soviet-era weapons work isn’t speculation; he pinned it on what defectors told the West decades ago.
Satellite photos cost Washington almost nothing. Asking hard questions costs even less.
If the Kremlin has nothing to hide, it can clear this up with one honest lab report. Until then, Rand Paul and the Trump administration have every reason to keep watching.
Sources:
“‘Concerning!’ Rand Paul Sounds Alarm Over Russian Plague, Questions if It’s ‘Weaponized’,” Mediaite
“Plague scare in Siberia’s Irkutsk after lab worker dies, 200 placed under medical observation,” Down To Earth
“Dozens quarantined in Russia as plague lab worker dies,” The Canberra Times
“Medical worker dies of plague, 200 under observation after potential exposure,” WKRC