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Notes -
The best guess is a common, regular, run of the mill Russian fuckup. A low-paid under-trained lab worker, in a lab neglecting basic safety protocols because nobody's got time for that elaborate shit, breaks a vial with live pathogen. Not wanting to get chewed up by the superiors, cause trouble, and maybe get docked some pay for causing trouble, she never reports it. When she feels bad, she goes to the regular local hospital. In the hospital, nobody has any idea about who she is and why she's there, so she is treated as anybody who'd show up with respiratory symptoms in the beginning of the flu season. Except it doesn't go like flu at all, instead she dies quickly and horribly. People start checking and find out where she'd been working. Major "oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck" flags start going up, and people start bouncing it up the chain of command, which automatically engages "lie, deny and hide" strategy, but it's obviously too big to be handled like that now. So the real containment protocols - which existed in Russia since the Tsar's times, it's not their first rodeo by far - start activating, and that's where everybody learns about it.
The plague control labs have existed in Russia since forever, and not only for plague, for other diseases too. Those labs deal with monitoring, defending against, etc. various pathogens occurring naturally, including the plague. There were also weaponization efforts, including in Russia, but as far as it is known, Irkutsk lab hasn't been any part of that system. Of course, there's always possibility of something that we don't know coming up, but so far the best guess is the lab fuckup, followed by multiple chained safety protocol fuckups.
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