A fatal plague exposure in a Russian lab leads David Pakman's day
Behind the vague title is a laboratory worker's death, and the comment section quickly turned to how such an outbreak would be handled in the United States.
David Pakman ShowStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 1,386,817 views a day, 28 times a normal first day on this channel (48,825).
This CANNOT be happening
Seven hours after it went up, "This CANNOT be happening" had been watched more than half a million times. The title gives nothing away. The description does: a laboratory worker in Russia has died after accidental exposure to a dangerous strain of pneumonic plague.
That is an unusual lead story for the David Pakman Show. The channel's titles and tags revolve around Donald Trump and Washington, and the uploads around this one stay there. They cover Karoline Leavitt's household stock holdings, Jacob Rees-Mogg correcting Tucker Carlson on NATO history, and Trump turning on Fox News for not airing his Ohio rally. A new video on the channel usually ends its whole first day near 50,000 views. This one passed that within its first hours.
The same day brought a second strong start, this one closer to the show's usual ground. In that clip, Trump singles out CNN's Kaitlan Collins at a live rally and urges the crowd to boo her. It moved quickly as well, though at less than half the pace of the plague story.
The comments on the plague video came in even faster than the views. In seven hours there were already several times as many as a typical video here collects in a full day. Most of them say little about Russia. Viewers set the news beside their memories of the COVID years and ask how an American government would handle an outbreak, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s name comes up again and again. Others focus on the laboratory itself: the most liked comment questions what kind of work was really being done there.
Published on Trari
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- Channel
- David Pakman Show
- Subscribers
- 3,670,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 18,290,516
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,379,090 (on a normal day: 2,076,773)
- Video published
- October 5, 2026
- Video views so far
- 578,444 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 1,386,817
The numbers
The plague video's first hours, the Kaitlan Collins clip beside it and the channel's usual first day are shown below.
