Hacker News Reader

Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

So breaks a test tube of live bacteria at an “anti-plague institute”, possible infects 100 colleagues, then when she developed plague like symptoms is taken to hospital and possibly infects 100 patients.

I think they need to investigate their safety protocols

> She reportedly told medical staff that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria while collecting samples for testing.

> At least 197 people who may have had contact with her were reportedly placed under medical isolation, including more than 100 in hospital wards.

View on HN

Was this a glass test tube? I understand why glass is probably the best material for the inner lining of containers that hold biological material, but I'm surprised that there aren't better solutions for hazardous material (e.g. an unbreakable, transparent polymer outer coating).

I believe the biggest reason to use glass is that it doesn't react with much stuff, but I've yet to see an explanation for why your idea wouldn't work. I imagine there could be problems with autoclaves (i.e. degradation of the polymer) and fear of chemical leaching.

Polymer coated glass is commonplace in chemistry labs for large containers of hazardous reagents held in storage. There's no chemical leaching concern because it's on the outside.

If anything, disposable plastic test tubes are the norm in microbiology labs at this point. No need to autoclave because they come sterile and you throw them away after a single use.

Plenty of plastic that's designed for it goes through the autoclave. For example micropipette tips. Nearly all of it is disposable single use so it only has to withstand a single cycle.

Not sure that throwing away plastic tubes with samples of plague bacteria is a good idea

Disposing of and throwing away are two different things. Throwing away is a subclass of 'disposing of' and there are many other such subclasses including safe destruction, for instance by incineration.

That’s what the autoclave is for.

I'm pretty sure that it goes into a biohazard container that is then sterilized and probably incinerated.

There is regular soda-lime glass and there is borosilicate glass.

Or a double wall - one glass one polymer

My guess would be cost. Glass is cheaper and with sanctions and the economic strain of war I'm sure everyone in Russia is trying to cut corners

Why on earth would she have contact with 197 people after she got exposed to bacteria? She should have immediately triggered safety protocols

I don't think there is any actual evidence that it was a broken test tube because she would have started on prophylactic antibiotic treatment immediately.

Luckily you need to be in close contact with someone already very sick to catch it. It's not silent transmission like COVID. But maybe there is something different about this outbreak?

> I don't think there is any actual evidence that it was a broken test tube

What does this mean? The article we’re discussing says the woman who died told colleagues she broke a test tube.

>The article we’re discussing says the woman who died told colleagues she broke a test tube.

The article links to a telegram post [1] as source, which links to another telegram post [2], which now has an update:

>It is not known exactly how Darya Shipilova contracted the plague. Currently, the theory involving a broken test tube is the leading one, but there is no official confirmation or independent verification of this information.

(Google-translated)

[1] https://t.me/Govorit_NeMoskva/70406

[2] https://t.me/Baikal_People/16629

That's Russia we're talking about. You can have 1000 protocols and people will ignore them anyway. You can ask a ton of questions, like was she immunized before working with plague (Russia has pretty effective vaccines against all types) and if not why the heck not, why they use easily breakable test tubes to hold dangerous pathogens, how the incident with live biomaterial was not immediately reported and caused a lockdown, but they allowed waiting for symptoms and then going to a general hospital, etc., etc. - but the answer for all of that, I suspect, is: "it's Russia". For an American, it's hard to appreciate to what measure Russia is not a "safety culture" country.

> That's Russia we're talking about. You can have 1000 protocols and people will ignore them anyway.

Speaking as someone who has a part of their job convincing people to follow safety processes, this isn't a Russia thing, it's a human thing.

This is a human thing, of course, but in different cultures the emphasis on following the rules and taking safety measures is different. In Russia, there isn't one.

Imagine if someone said something like this of a brown country. They would be banned right away.

I say it all the time.

which country?

You sound like a proper Russia kremlinology expert. How many stints in Russia did you do?

Not sure what you mean by "stints" but I grew up there and experienced a lot of this myself. It has nothing to do with Kremlin, btw, Kremlin is not Russia. Kremlin rules Russia, but these are two completely different worlds. I know nothing about the former, but quite a bunch about the latter.

According to aquaintances in a few different industries where some of their competition is Russian: They basically work for vodka, then their equipment breaks down, they can't fix it and the customer has to call a western company. They apparently have no consistent maintenance or service protocol whatsoever, and in some rather safety critical areas.

According to my third cousin twice removed who once spelled the word "industry" (mostly correctly) - Americans basically work for McDonalds burgers. That's why they had to outsource high-precision manufacturing to Taiwan; they tried to make GPUs and phone chipsets in the US, but the 'muricans just kept getting their greasy fingers all over everything.

You are losing the topic. We aren't talking about manufacturing capability - which Russia still has a lot - but about safety culture. US and Russia are almost polar opposites here. While there are countries more safetyist than the US, not a lot of them. In current US culture, something "unsafe" just can't be done, and there are a myriad regulations which ensure everything is as "safe" as possible in a thousands of meanings of it. Of course, there are exceptions, there are crazy people everywhere, but the dominant culture is very safety-oriented. In Russia, this culture just does not exist. It doesn't mean there are no rules and regulations - but the cultural space they occupy are completely different. Sometimes it could be a huge advantage - you can move much faster if you don't have to pass 27 inspections each time you retighten a bolt - sometimes it could have very high costs.

Irregardless of the claim of correlation, between Russia and a lack of safety culture, it is currently a country in a war economy with populace shortages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com