00:00Let's pick this up with Dr. Abhash Adalja. He's a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for
00:05Health Security. He's also an expert on emerging infectious diseases and biosecurity, and has
00:10served on U.S. government panels that developed guidance for responding to plague outbreaks and
00:15other high-consequence biological threats. Welcome to DW. So, sort of the top line, the headline on
00:22this. Lab worker in facility that experiments with pneumonic plague dies of pneumonia, but
00:27authorities say the origin of the disease is unknown. Are you buying that? I'm buying parts of
00:35it, and I think that the Russians could be much more transparent about what was going on with this
00:40woman. We don't know what killed her, and that's the biggest open question that we have. When someone
00:46dies of a pneumonia of unknown origin, it could be many things, and it was important to rule out
00:51plague, and it seems that plague wasn't the cause, and it makes sense, because when you saw the response
00:55that they had in terms of the hazmat suits, the monitoring of the 200 contacts, the hospital being
01:01put into quarantine, all of that was incongruous with plague. Plague is something that's more
01:06manageable and easier to deal with, even when it's drug-resistant. So, all of us in the biosecurity
01:12field thought that this was something different. The key question is, is this something that's
01:17communicable from person to person? And it doesn't appear that it is based on what the Russians
01:21have been saying, but again, you have to take all of that with the grain of salt, because the Russians
01:27do have a tendency to be very opaque about what's going on in their country. We know that they have
01:33an offensive biological weapons program, and we know that they experiment with some of these
01:37organisms. So, that being said, I think that all of the indications now are more reassuring than
01:44they were 24 hours ago. You see, that's really interesting. You say that the fact that we saw all
01:49these people in hazmat suits, and the fact that we saw all this quarantine going on, that does not
01:55indicate plague. So, all that drama, if it was plague, there would be less drama. That seems to
02:03be what you're saying. Exactly. So, we don't live in the 14th century anymore. We live in the 21st
02:09century. So, plague is an imminently treatable infection with antibiotics. When people get exposed
02:14in a workplace, such as a lab, there are post-exposure protocols that people can put into place to take
02:20antibiotics promptly, and they don't get ill. There's also the fact that plague doesn't spread
02:24that easily from person to person, even in pneumonic form. All of that seemed to be going above and
02:30beyond. So, many of us thought that signaled they weren't really worried about plague. They were worried
02:34about something else. And although plague might be clickbait, and people might think of the Black Death
02:39and think that's the worst thing it could be, that's not the worst thing it could be, in my mind,
02:43in many of my colleagues' minds. And is, okay, so is that where your mind has gone? All this drama,
02:49not plague, but potentially something worse? Exactly. So, I never thought it was plague. As soon as I saw
02:57those pictures, I thought, this can't be plague, especially when I heard the story that this person
03:01worked at the Siberian Anti-Plague Institute. I thought, there would be protocols in place. This
03:05shouldn't be plagued in someone like this. So, when they said pneumonia of unknown etiology or unknown
03:10origin, that made sense to me, because they were worried about something different. And that's
03:14immediately where my mind went. And my mind also went to the fact that Russia is a place where there
03:19are offensive biological weapons programs, often housed at these anti-plague institutes that
03:24scattered the whole area of the former Soviet Union. That was the biggest thing. And we know in the 1970s,
03:29there was an accidental release of anthrax from a biological weapons factory in Sverdlovsk. So,
03:34this isn't unprecedented. Okay. So, now we've raised this subject. We heard President Trump
03:44saying a little earlier that he didn't think that this was a bioweapon. As far as you can tell,
03:51what is the purpose of the Kutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute? Well, the purpose is to study
03:59certain infections like plague, like Brucella, other infections that go from animals to humans.
04:05And there are important research questions there. We want to improve our diagnostics,
04:09our countermeasures against many of these infectious diseases. So, there is legitimate
04:13research to be done there. It's just that in the Soviet Union days, many of those anti-plague
04:18institutes also, while studying these organisms, also had the dual purpose of trying to learn how to
04:25weaponize them. It's unclear whether that's going on anymore, but we know that Vladimir Putin has made
04:30statements about the offensive biological weapons program. He's used novel nerve agents, even in the
04:36United Kingdom, on individuals. So, there is this tendency to weaponize biology that still exists in
04:43Russia, just as it existed in the Soviet Union. And while this might not turn out to be that,
04:48it's important to run that down and to raise that question, because I think it's an underappreciated
04:52threat that many people don't actually take cognizance on. So, the World Health Organization,
04:58we heard the representative there saying they're asking Russia for more information. Does Russia
05:04have to comply? They don't have to comply. It's a global norm that you would comply when the WHO
05:12makes a request, because Russia is a part of the World Health Organization, so they're subject to
05:17the International Health Regulations. So, when the WHO is making a request, we would expect them to
05:22be as transparent and open as possible. We know that doesn't always happen. You can go back to
05:27COVID in China and the WHO in the early days, so that doesn't necessarily always happen. There's no
05:33teeth to what the WHO can do, but it is a global norm to comply, and if they're going to
05:37be, you know,
05:38a member in good standing of the WHO, we would expect them to comply.
05:42Thank you so much for talking through that really rather scary scenario. Dr. Amish Adalja,
05:47from Johns Hopkins University.
05:50Thanks.
