Pandemic’s Harm to Russians’ Health of Russians ‘Comparable’ to Impact of USSR’s Demise, Belenkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – Yury Belenkov, a cardiologist at Sechenov University, says that the impact on Russians of the coronavirus pandemic both short term and longer is “comparable” to the harm that the demise of the USSR inflicted on them and will cause heightened morbidity and mortality even after the epidemic is declared over (capost.media/news/obshchestvo/pandemic-coronavirus-in-health-damage-comparable-to-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/).

            This is one of the more depressing reports to come out of the Russian Federation during the pandemic. Seven other stories which surfaced today are worthy of note:

1.      Officer who refused to use force against Vladikavkaz protesters was a local policeman and not a member of the Russian Guard as was reported yesterday. Also incorrect were reports that there had been a mass dismissal of Russian Guards in North Ossetia (capost.media/news/mainhotnews/in-north-ossetia-confirmed-the-mass-dismissal-of-asguardian-after-the-rally/).

2.      Moscow demographers say that predicting the impact of the pandemic on the population of the Russian Federation is still impossible because the quality of data is so poor and fragmentary (iq.hse.ru/news/357825378.html).

3.      To help Muslims get through Ramadan while on lockdown, the Association of Psychological Help for Muslims has established a hotline in Russia to provide answers and guidance to the faithful there (islamsng.com/rus/news/15676).

4.      Remote oil and gas fields in the Russian North are becoming hotbeds of the pandemic because workers from a variety of places come and go there regularly. Now, the problems of some of them have become worse because airports have been closed and so the worst cases cannot be evacuated (thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2020/04/coronavirus-spreads-across-russian-arctic-tundra-puts-petroleum).

5.      Russians are not thrilled with distant learning for school children. Only 1.1 percent tell a Higher School of Economics poll that they would like to see such arrangements continue after the coronavirus pandemic ends (thinktanks.by/publication/2020/04/28/vshe-lish-1-rossiyan-hochet-ostatsya-i-dalshe-na-udalenke.html).

6.      Social workers and lawyers expect a sharp uptick in the number of Russians seeking divorces after they can leave their homes and seek legal assistance (russian.eurasianet.org/россия-ученые-и-юристы-ждут-всплеска-разводов-после-снятия-карантина).

7.      Thirteen percent of Russians tell the Romir polling agency that they consider the current isolation rules in place in Russia to be “excessive”(kommersant.ru/doc/4333937?from=main_4).