Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his regular weekly segment, Liedtke’s Got a Take!
Jon Liedtke discusses reports of a lab accident at a Siberian plague research institute. He addresses exaggerated bio-weapon rumors and social media panic, emphasizing that plague is treatable, urging listeners to stop doomscrolling over Russia and focus on real local health risks like measles.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: Time for Liedtke’s Got a Take. Good morning, Jon Liedtke.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Well, this is interesting. I find this story very, very fascinating. We talked with Dave Trafford a little bit about it; I want to continue the conversation. There is a plague research institute in Siberia. And I want to find out what really happened in Russia. Reports out of Siberia about a lab worker dying after dropping dropping a test tube concern me, especially when our health minister says, “Oh, there’s no risk for Canada.” To me, that’s a red flag. So, what actually happened, and what are Russian health authorities saying about it?
Jon Liedtke: Well, let me tell you what happened, Gene. It’s the literal opening scene of a B-list horror flick. The Siberian Plague Research Institute? I mean, come on, the writers have just been phoning it in, quite frankly. We’ve got a broken vial, hospital lockdowns, air airplane security checks and temperature checks, and now local quarantines. First, it was reported by media that she died of plague, but then Moscow chimed in and was like, “No, no, no, she died of pneumonia of unknown origin.” Well, you know, there’s actually this thing that’s called plague pneumonia. It’s a real thing! So, I’ve seen this movie before. It’s bad cinema, but it’s even worse public communications. So, we can separate the horror movie tropes from reality, because you and I know both know, fear spreads faster than any bug, quite frankly. We saw this collective brain rot when people started hoarding toilet paper during COVID. Before everyone loses their minds online over a single lab accident, though, we should probably just dive into some of the facts.
Gene Valaitis: All right. Okay, so when people hear the word “plague,” they immediately think of things like Black Death or March 2020. What are we actually dealing with here, and how does modern medicine handle a bacterial infection compared to COVID and the novel virus?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, you know, I—I’m not a doctor, so be clear about that, but you don’t need a medical degree to get this. This is not a brand new mystery virus like COVID was in 2020 that we had no idea about. We’ve known about plague for 2,000 years. This is a bacterial infection, and we’ve actually had simple everyday antibiotics that knock it out dead for decades. The reason this is trending on social media is because the word “plague” brings up images of the Middle Ages. But in reality, a bacterial bug with a simple, proven cure is way easier for health officials to be able to isolate and wipe out than a brand new airborne virus. But the rub is, of course, it’s not necessarily the bug that’s the issue; it’s typically the people that are the issue.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, I think we learned a lot during COVID, and one thing I learned was not to trust people who you believed were trustworthy. Now, Russian officials insist this was just what they call “pneumonia of an unknown origin,” and they deny any lab leak. But at the same time, as you mentioned, they’ve quarantined nearly 200 people, they’ve put local hospitals on lockdown, and as you mentioned, there are videos emerging on social media of airplane passengers undergoing temperature checks. So, what’s your take on all of this? It makes me nervous.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, you know, listen, if Health Canada or the CDC came out with a story that had this many holes in it, we’d laugh them off the air. But this is the Kremlin. I mean, covering things up is what they do. Admitting that someone dropped a vial in a high-security lab is embarrassing, so we’re getting word games out of them. And I’m not saying that there’s nothing to fear; I’m just saying that right now, I think we should just wait and see until more fact points are put onto the dartboard, if you will. But look at what they’re actually doing, right? Locking down hospitals, they’re quarantining, sending in some security forces—that tells you the real story. They’re taking it seriously. But there’s a Dr. Jha who is a bio-researcher, and he pointed out on X that Moscow’s actually done this before. They actually covered up an anthrax leak leak back in 1979, and it took decades to find out about it publicly. So, this is—could be classic Russian spin, but at this point, it’s still no reason for anyone in Niagara or in Windsor, where I am, to panic.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, I’m a news junkie, so I watch all the news channels, and we’ve seen political figures like Adam Kinzinger and commentators on social media jumping straight to claims that Russia was secretly developing antibiotic-resistant plague bioweapons. Now, that sounds like a real horror show right there, or a science fiction movie. Now, is there any actual evidence for that, or is just this classic internet hyperbole?
Jon Liedtke: You know, Adam Kinzinger, he’s—he’s got a big platform, and he’s got a military background, so I’m not going to brush him off out of hand. But I—I do think what we should call it what it is, which is, you know, cable news theater. Sensationalism can get you clicks, and it’ll get you the TV hits, and I haven’t seen him on C—CNN that recently, so maybe this is a way to get on. Is Russia testing weird biological stuff? Prob—probably. I mean, big powers always do that stuff. But I’m not going to jump straight to “they’re building a super plague” without one single shred of evidence. That’s just irresponsible. That lab actually sits right in a part of Siberia where wild animals naturally carry the plague anyway. So, turning a messy lab accident into a sci-fi bioweapon movie plot makes people trust the news even less. So, I like to temper my expectations right now. Um, and especially just because of COVID as well. I mean, things were amped up so much, and we saw that they didn’t necessarily go the way that they were billed to us. So, you know, I think it’s in everyone’s interest just to take a beat.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, you know, as we’re paying a lot of attention to this—I mean, you know, we’re doing a whole segment here on the show this morning—New York State, right below us, has just declared a statewide emergency over a surging measles outbreak! You know, measles was dead and gone up until a couple of years ago, when this new generation of parents decided that the measles vaccine was, “Oh, can’t give that to my kid.” So, are we ignoring real health threats in our own backyard just to chase virile headlines out of Siberia, of all places?
Jon Liedtke: 100%, Gene. This is classic outrage-chasing. After years of COVID mandates, confusing public health advice, and political fighting, people simply don’t trust the experts anymore. I saw that firsthand when I covered the Ambassador Bridge blockade in Windsor. That public trust completely broke down, and it shut down international trade as well with it. And now, we’re actually seeing the fallout of it years later. Measles, a disease that we practically wiped out decades ago, is spreading across, you know, America, but we can’t be letting our laurels be lost—tears or be sitting on them, rather. Canada has lost our official status for eliminating measles from the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, though, politicians across the border are feeding directly into anti-vaccine theories, and we’re ignoring a real, preventable health crisis that’s going on in our house, on our doorstep, just to be doomscrolling about Siberia.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, listen, with Health Canada confirming—or or at least they believe—there’s no health health risk to Canadians, and all isolated contacts in Russia are testing negatively so far, what’s the big takeaway here for listeners who might be seeing alarming headlines on their feeds?
Jon Liedtke: I think the biggest takeaway for everyone is simple, Gene: Stop letting internet panic think for you. The facts are in now. Official testing has confirmed all nearly 200 contacts have tested completely negative for plague—that’s a positive. The only thing they did turn up were two cases of COVID and a couple of common colds. The Siberian incident, though, it was isolated, and it was an accident, as we know right now, at least, in a remote lab that was quickly locked down, and there was the quarantines and whatnot. And the real public health crisis, though, as we just said, it’s not thousands of miles away in Russia; it’s here at home. It’s on our doorstep in the United States, where people have stopped trusting basic, proven medicine. So, I’m not saying to blindly believe everything that you hear, but I would also say turn off the doomscrolling, ignore the online bioweapon plots, put on a movie instead, quite frankly—it’s got better production value—and pay attention to what’s actually going on in our own communities. Because when we all actually decide to make our communities better, we can actually achieve that.
Gene Valaitis: All right, great take. Thank you.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Liedtke’s Got a Take, Jon Liedtke. He’ll be with us later on this week as well.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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