Jacqueline Munis

In a world on edge still from the last pandemic, rumors of a deadly disease that could have escaped from a lab can cause some understandable distress—however speculative they might be. Late last week, reports emerged that a woman who died in a Siberian hospital may have contracted plague, or even that she had seeded a plague outbreak.

If you could look down at the Pacific Ocean right now, you’d see three hurricanes spinning in a row, between 15 and 20 degrees north. Furthest east is Polo, an unusually strong hurricane that has been churning off the southern coast of Mexico for nearly a week. To its west, Odalys, once a Category 4 hurricane, is slowly weakening in the open ocean.