iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

That’s the thing that’s antithetical to the mission to make sure we’re increasing knowledge rather than noise. More rare than misguided speculation.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

The thing that gets me is not genuinely caring enough to revisit a topic he speculated on when he’s proven wrong.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

The article also includes continued speculation about a “second case” — speculation that wouldn’t have been in the article had @drtedros.who.int fixed his mistake and told everyone he goofed and spread information that was plainly and obviously false.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

In this article, David Relman baselessly speculates that a specific person might’ve been developing bioweapons. Grass is green. www.tabletmag.com/sections/new...

tabletmag.com

What Is Russia Hiding in Its Plague Labs? - Tablet Magazine

A researcher’s mysterious death in Siberia has revived questions about Moscow’s biological weapons program

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Ironically, the cost of a dumpster fire has also risen the last 2 years.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Anyone want TrumpsterFires dot com? Free to a good home for anyone who will put it to use the next couple weeks and beyond. The original idea was a place to document consequences of incompetent leadership disinterested in functional government.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

There’s a real lack of humanity over at NYT in not seeing the issue with repurposing real things that happened to real people to write made-for-TV “zombie-movie riots.”

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Apart from the factual errors, the book is a bizarre use of the Forest Gump device of repurposing and fictionalizing historical events. Except Jacobsen’s work is more transmogrifying than sugar coating history.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Or about how Ebola victims die with “blood pouring from their skin, eyes, and ears.” She just stole that, and an entire fictional scene aboard an airplane, from The Hot Zone.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

So many dumb things in the book that are just wrong eg that USA vaccinated during Vietnam with EV76 before stopping after seeing adverse effects. Wrong about both the vaccine used and when its use in USA stopped.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Jacobsen also writes "This is because Russia no longer operates a World Health Organization country office in Moscow, as it had been doing since 1998." This isn't true. Amazingly, Jacobsen has been sharing her, uh, expertise with the media on the current situation in Russia.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

My hypothesis: Jacobsen misread the Wikipedia entry on Mary Mallon, which discusses how Tony Labella "was responsible for eighty-seven cases of typhoid ... after he evaded the Department of Health's restrictions on his activities he caused an additional thirty-five cases." [87+35=122]

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

In Biological War, Annie Jacobsen writes, "Typhoid Mary infected at least 122 people." The text she references for this says, "The total number of typhoid cases traced to Mary Mallon was fifty three." How could this mistake have happened?

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

This includes historical factual details about the subject at hand and isn't just limited to the cultural color that Jacobsen invented. She wrote that the suspected index case on the Diamond Princess got off in Hong Kong on the ship's doctor's advice. No truth to this at all.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

All in all, interesting stuff I'd never known anything about at all. It's unfortunate that the Jacobsens' laziness means that people will come away from reading the book knowing less than they did going into it.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I didn't read the petapixel post down to the end to see where it says some photos are from Yakutsk (coldest city on earth) rather than Oymyakon (coldest vilage) and this looks exactly like the Yakutsk meat market in winter. Notably not a wet market because the only animals unfrozen are humans.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

It would be great to see some transparency about how in the world "a purported second case" was a concern when the only reports the WHO had were obviously false statements from two tabloids.

On 3 October, 5 October, 6 October and 7 October, WHO contacted the Russian Federation health authorities to verify the information reported by media including a purported second case and in accordance with Articles 9 and 10 of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), WHO also asked for further information to assess the potential international public health implications in accordance with Article 6 of the IHR.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Jacobsen also writes that this person "was advised by the ship’s doctor to disembark in Hong Kong" which is simply false. It's unclear why Jacobsen would make this up, but it does happen to strengthen the parallels with her fictional outbreak.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Also, when Jacobsen does first describe the historical Diamond Princess outbreak, she gets the facts wrong. She writes "a single passenger infected 712 others on the Diamond Princess." In reality, that passenger was in Hong Kong when the vast majority of those infections happened.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"Weaponized" plague is whatever Jacobsen wants it to be, because she's writing fiction to sell to make TV. There are ways to write cheap pseudoscientific thrillers that don't exploit the real people who were on the Diamond Princess.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Here's the true story of the likely COVID-19 index case on the Diamond Princess -- academic.oup.com/jtm/article/... -- he recovered and left the hospital in February. In Jacobsen's book, his German doppelgänger dies at sea.

academic.oup.com

Presumed COVID-19 index case on diamond princess cruise ship and evacuees to Hong Kong

We read with great interest the paper by Rocklöv J, et al on ‘COVID-19 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship: estimating the epidemic potential and

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is that Jacobsen also borrows personal details about the first COVID-19 patient on the ship and his two daughters, transmogrifying their stories for dramatic effect.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Dwight Garner @nytimes.com found the made-for-TV montage of the fake consequences of a fake outbreak so compelling that he forgot to put "bubbly pink sputum" in quotation marks—it's another bit of imagery from Jacobsen's Diamond Princess.

Later, the suffering begins. Bubbly pink sputum, hacked up bits of lung, “bestial noises,” stenches on airplanes mistaken for dirty diapers. This pathogen is engineered to destroy trust in medicine. If a patient is given antibiotics — these would barely help anyway — the disease mutates into a form of deadly encephalitis. There’s no beating this devil.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

@michaelmechanic.bsky.social -- you noticed this and asked Jacobsen about it. Isn't "borrowed some details" is an odd way to characterize how Jacobsen invents "rust-colored froth around her mouth and bloody mucus pooling on the floor" and much more aboard the ship?

You also borrowed some details from Covid, including the outbreak aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, except your pathogen is way deadlier.

Yes. And when I was researching Glade X, I was stunned to learn that the government is deeply concerned with a mass exodus—in that scenario it was people from Venezuela making their way to Puerto Rico in boats. And what would happen if the US Navy had to open fire on infected persons in vessels just storming into the Caribbean. It seems apocryphal until you’re reading that these pandemic planning scenarios are being thought through by the government.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The scenes that play out aboard Jacobsen’s fictional Diamond Princess are a gross and unrealistic montage of violent illnesses. It’s obviously written with an eye on the TV adaptation and it’s one of the most pointlessly disgusting things I’ve read.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Even stranger, the reason this logo appears in Jacobsen’s book is because she sets a fictional outbreak on the Diamond Princess, literally. Did any reviews of the book note how deeply weird this is? Or how cruel it is to the people who lived through the actual outbreak on that ship?

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I mailed the book reps to ask and asked Jett Jacobsen if he had any comment.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Beautiful pictures and I hope that he (and Artur K on TripAdvisor) get paid for their work.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The Jacobsens' fictional image didn't manage to eliminate "ЧИР" that appears in a few of the signs in the image from Oymyakon. It's fish, not baguettes: uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%...

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

@angierasmussen.bsky.social regarding "Are those baguettes? Baguettes???" Perhaps the picture this is modified from, taken by Amos Chapple in Oymyakon thousands of kilometers away from Novosibirsk will help answer the question. petapixel.com/2014/12/21/p...

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Since this one isn't ripped off of someone else, I will only reproduce the part of it that shows the hallucinated version of the Diamond Princess logo

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

That wikipedia image is free to use, but maybe "artur k" on tripadvisor would want some compensation for this one

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

this other one in the book is both weirdly unneeded (caption: "in the ancient world, a chimera...") and demonstrates how strongly the model the Jacbonsens used is influenced by wikipedia imagery: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera...

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Ze zeggen vaak 'waar rook is, is vuur', maar soms verkoopt iemand gewoon gebakken lucht. (h/t robot translation)

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It's not as if they're unique in their calculus about how to talk about these things, concluding it's best to always say that, who knows, anything is possible.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Neither this story nor the Daily Mail story that referenced it without naming the source have been corrected. That's why you don't blast out demands to answer rumors you read in tabloids!

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Here's a google translation of the beginning of the story to see why it was obviously false. The second paragraph of the story quoted a statement from the government agency Rospotrebnadzor, and erroneously wrote that it described a second death.

A 28-year-old employee of the Anti-Plague Institute died recently in Irkutsk. According to preliminary reports, Darya Sh. accidentally broke a test tube containing the deadly virus. She was immediately hospitalized, but her life could not be saved. As a reminder, both her initial and repeat tests for plague were positive.

But the horrific story has taken a turn, casting doubt on the diagnosis of Daria's death. It has been reported that another employee of the Anti-Plague Institute in the Irkutsk Region has been diagnosed with "pneumonia of unknown etiology," according to Rospotrebnadzor.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The starhit story was *obviously* false and it was easy to see why. The detailed process for vetting open source information that was described at the press conference yesterday obviously was not done in this case.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Reuter's followed up on this today, and what I'd inferred was exactly what happened: "The WHO based its request on two reports - one by Russian outlet starhit, which mostly covers celebrity news, and ⁠the other on a story citing unnamed Russian media from a British newspaper, the Daily Mail."

reuters.com

Russia says reports of second case linked to Siberian plague lab are false

Russia's health regulator denied on Thursday that someone had fallen ill after coming into contact with a worker at a plague research ‌laboratory in Siberia who died last week.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The folks at the press conference appear to have reasoned that the best thing to do in this situation was to dissemble rather than just say "oops -- here's what happened and here's what we'll do to try not to repeat the mistake."

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

@drtedros.who.int addresses the question at 41:50 -- youtu.be/JN9dlRNcPEA?... -- and he argues that "we cannot ignore" stories from tabloids. In this case, that was absolutely not true. The story falsely attributed the report of a second death to an official report from Rospotrebnadzor.

youtu.be

LIVE: Media briefing on global health issues with Dr Tedros

YouTube video by World Health Organization (WHO)

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

youtu.be/JN9dlRNcPEA?... here's a link to this point in the press conference; it was also the very first question asked earlier in the press conference.

youtu.be

LIVE: Media briefing on global health issues with Dr Tedros

YouTube video by World Health Organization (WHO)

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The media was all over this at the press conference today. Jennifer Rigby @reuters.com asks about it at 22:50. @mvankerkhove.bsky.social reiterated that it was based on a single media source. Was it this false story from a tabloid?

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Yes. Unfortunately, for some reasons people exploit distrust of official information from China and Russia to fill the vacuum with total BS, and folks rarely learn to be more skeptical the next time it happens.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Please don't spread stuff you read in tabloids. I guess you didn't reflect on making the same mistake 3 years ago? bsky.app/profile/zach...

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Addendum: More important context here bsky.app/profile/devo... -- extremely similar story in 2009; very different coverage.

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Zach Hensel @zachhensel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Here's a review of that case -- www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview... -- I don't recall people in Russia plastering his photo online and grotesque speculation to get attention on the Internet back then.

cdc.gov

Fatal Laboratory-Acquired Infection with an Attenuated Yersinia pestis Strain --- Chicago, Illinois, 2009

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