Plague Reported in Russia

The Flu Case

An outbreak of pneumonic plague similar to that recently reported in the Ukraine and Poland has killed at least thirty people in the city of Saratow, reports Germany's Der Spiegel.
Top Russian health official Gennadi Onischenko is reported as saying the outbreak is deliberate and part of a "conspiracy." But he does not know whois behind the action. 
This is part of the Spiegel report translated into English.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/0,1518,665238,00.html

Swine flu information disaster

Plague panic in of Russia province

By ' ); document.write( addy88546 ); document.write( '' ); //-->\n ' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ' ); //--> ">' ); document.write( addy88546 ); document.write( '' ); //-->\n ' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ' ); //--> ">Benjamin Bidder, Moscow

Schools are closed, the bishop has masses read - 30 deaths because of the swine flu have triggered panic in a Russian Volga city. Conspiracy theories make the rounds, the authorities are concealing the truth about how bad things are: the plague is here.

The telephone of the editor-in-chief of the “New Newspaper” rings again in the Volga city Saratow. Again Alexander Burmistrow has an excited caller on the other end. “We constantly get calls of anxious citizens”, says the journalist. There are many reports of strange vehicles, which drive along roads of the city. They are heavy tankers, report an informant. They sprayed a liquid - perhaps against the swine flu? Or perhaps against something worse?

Fear has seized the 800,000 inhabitants of the city Saratow. Fear of the epidemic: above all, however, fear of the fact that the authorities are hiding the truth from them. They are afraid that a worse illness than the swine flu is causing the deaths: the plague.

Schools remain closed, people avoid groups, business, concerts. In the evening at 8 o'clock the streets have been swept empty. The governor Itapow visited for the TV a pharmacy, before the television cameras he got his flu medication. He has already been vaccinated, announces the provincial prince. If however the normal citizens go into the pharmacy, there are no medicines for them. The vaccine remains scarce. Then public health authorities in the middle of the week announced 466 confirmed cases of swine flu. And 30 deaths, mostly young people, without any illnesses. Many women are among them.

The mobile phone network breaks down

Rumors spread like fires. The city is to be put under quarantine. The Air Force is to carry out missions to disinfect the city from air. And Iwan P., 22, medical student, types doomladen lines into its blog: “The results of the autopsy, which died from the swine flu in Sarantwo, resemble the descriptions in the medical literature of the results of the autopsy of patient that died of the lung plague.” Has the black death gone over into Saratow?

Concern turns to panic. The mobile phone network breaks down because thousands of people want to speak to dcotors and authorities at the same time. The public health authorities register huge quantities of calls. The hospitals are overcrowded, in the health centers queues form. Advice makes the round; use only boiled water and only for brushing your teeth. And hundreds of citizens write president Dmitrij Medwedew: “The enormous number of deaths among young people with the diagnosis “pneumonia" worries us” says the letter.

The statements of the authorities sounds furious. “Criminal” says the boss of federal public health authorities in Moscow, Gennadi Onischenko, about the procedures in the Volga city. It is obviously a conspiracy. “What the goals are I do not know, and I want it also to know”, storms Russia highest physician. It is “a deliberate provocation”, Onischenko tells the newspaper “Iswestia”.