Some Pandemic Chemical Cleaners Now Banned Because Russians are Drinking Them for the Alcohol They Contain

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 22 – One of the saddest pandemic stories to come out of Russia in recent days is that officials are now being forced to ban the sale of chemical cleaners intended to guard against the spread of the coronavirus because Russians are drinking them for the alcohol they contain.

            Not only are some beginning to die from doing so, but the ban on these cleaners means the pandemic is likely to spread further, infecting and leading to the death of others (14.rospotrebnadzor.ru/news/-/asset_publisher/mk9O/content/ постановление-главного-государственного-санитарного-врача-по-республике-саха-якутия-от-21-11-2020-года-о-снятии-с-реализации-антисептических-средств).

            The current tolls are bad enough. Today, Russian officials reported registering 24,851 new cases of infection and 401 new deaths, upping those figures for the pandemic as a whole to 2,089,329 and 36,179 respectively (t.me/COVID2019_official/2031). The pandemic is intensifying almost everywhere across Russia (regnum.ru/news/society/3116623.html).

            Officials promised to set a price soon for the Sputnik-5 vaccine but promised that it would be lower than any Western alternative (regnum.ru/news/3121817.html and regnum.ru/news/3121848.html). Vladimir Putin continued to boost the Russian vaccine both to increase sales abroad and to get more Russians to take it (ura.news/articles/1036281495).

            In his online remarks to the G-20 meeting, the Kremlin leader said that despite some improvement in the state of the pandemic, the risk remains that it will lead to “so-called stagnation unemployment, a growth in poverty and social unrest” (znak.com/2020-11-21/putin_nazval_zastoynuyu_massovuyu_bezraboticu_glavnym_riskom_pandemii_covid_19).

            One especially worrisome sign is that small businesses in Russia are being forced to shut down because their owner-managers have contracted the virus and cannot continue to lead them (regnum.ru/news/3121746.html).

            Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,

·         One financial analyst said that Moscow would be cutting healthcare spending next year by 40 percent, and a left-wing politician called for bringing criminal charges against those behind this “optimization” of the healthcare system (echo.msk.ru/blog/udaltsov/2746018-echo/ and ura.news/news/1052459663).

·         Covid dissidence or better pandemic dissidence has a long history in Russia and should not be viewed as something new (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5FB823F48D692).

·         Analysts are warning officials  that they must not only balance health concerns and economic ones but also success in fighting the coronavirus with and the danger of negative psychological developments in the population (svpressa.ru/society/article/282317/).