Brian McDonald:

"If Russia were actually going to lock downs over the suspected case in Shelekhov, presumably it might start with Irkutsk Airport, 28 km away, rather than St Petersburg (over 3,000km to the west).

Irkutsk Airport is operating normally, as of now."
https://x.com/i/status/2107166329954271274

"Surely, if Russians had so little trust in their government that this episode revealed some profound weakness, they’d be panicking about plague rather than largely ignoring it?

I’m in Russia and literally nobody I know is talking about the plague because everyone knows that the disease circulates among wild rodents in parts of Siberia and the Altai, and such outbreaks are regularly reported in the news.

What makes this case unusual is the suspected human death (Russia’s previous confirmed human case was in 2016) but Irkutsk is about as close to Moscow or St Petersburg as Greenland or Canada, and the local airport isn’t even closed (which surely it would be if there was major concern).

The epidemic panic seems largely confined to the more sensationalist elements of the British and American press."
https://x.com/i/status/2107174732256911428

🇮🇷🇺🇸 Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz have bounced back to nearly 80% of pre-war levels, despite Iran's blockade and ongoing threats to shipping, but its very costly, per Reuters

Saudi Arabia has resumed sending tankers through Hormuz after an attack on its East-West pipeline pushed exports back toward the Gulf, proving large volumes can still cross.

But the new system is costly: tanker rates top $1.2 million a day, and freight has jumped from around 3% to 27% of the delivered cost of oil, keeping Brent above $100 even as supply recovers.

@Megatron_ron

It drives a Conservative voter block right out of the state. https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2106514011630305506

Ok so, as funny as this was, the ACTUAL situation is the following:

1. In parts of Russia, particularly the Siberian and Far Eastern steppes, plague is endemic in some local animal populations - rodents and the like, ground squirrels in particular. Sometimes people get infected, just like in other parts of the world with endemic plague (e.g. the western US, where people also sometimes catch plague from prairie dogs and such). Plague is not a dangerous epidemiological threat these days, it is easily treated with antibiotics.

2. A woman in Irkutsk, who worked at an institute for combating these endemic plague populations (this has been going on for many decades, but it's tricky to eradicate it completely) fell ill with pneumonia of unknown etiology. She died in the hospital.

3. The woman had been on a work trip to Buryatia to study one of those animal populations with endemic plague just before she fell ill. Because of this and the fact that her pneumonia was of unknown etiology, the hospital where she was treated and people she had contact with were put in quarantine as a precautionary measure.

4. A suspected pneumonic plague diagnosis was NOT confirmed during the autopsy of the woman who died.

5. There's a nasty flu going around right now, a bunch of my friends and my wife had it, so authorities are somewhat worried, but it appears to just be normal seasonal flu.

6. All the above combined gave enough material for domestic and foreign actors to spam the internet with fake news and panic slop. Most of the people the woman had been in contact with have been tested, some had flu or COVID. There are no heightened quarantine measures. No hospitals or cities are on lockdown. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is happening. When a person who studies dangerous illnesses falls ill, you take some common sense routine security measures, that's just the normal thing to do everywhere in the world.

We discussed the Irkutsk case (though this was recorded before it was confirmed that the woman did not die of plague) and other news on our most recent episode: https://rwasamizdat.substack.com/p/rwa-news-plague-bears-and-bridges

Also available on Gumroad

The Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, acknowledged that “new information” has come to light regarding the health incidents known as the Havana Syndrome and stated that he will await a detailed report before deciding what response his government will take. No other info.

U.S. State Dept. considers opening passport records to verify voter citizenship
Article Link
Ahead of midterm elections, the United States Department of State (DOS) is “assessing” how to share passport information with state and local governments, as well as non-profit groups, in an effort to establish citizenship checks for voters.

The Best They’ve Got II

Yesterday, I posted the first part of my critical review of Jason Rosenhouse’s 2022 book Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism, published by Cambridge University Press, in which I demonstrated how he badly misrepresented significant elements of the 1966 Wistar Symposium and how he falsely claimed that the biologists there had adequately answered the challenges posed to […]

https://voxday.net/2026/10/06/the-best-theyve-got-ii/