Paul Goble
Staunton, December 4 – Margarita Simonyan, head of Moscow’s RT propaganda outlet, was responsible for naming the Russian vaccine Sputnik-5 because she said it was “the only Russian word with a positive connotation” abroad and would help boost attention and sales (ej.ru/?a=note&id=35645 and snob.ru/entry/201210/).
This report comes as foreign firms which are producing competitors to the Russian vaccine are being subjected to hacker attacks, quite likely from Russia. These attacks may slow or even stop for some time the production of other vaccines and thus give Sputnik-5 a competitive advantage (echo.msk.ru/news/2752918-echo.html).
Russian officials registered 27,403 new cases of infection and 569 new coronavirus deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the pandemic cumulative totals to 2,402,949 and 42,176 respectively (t.me/COVID2019_official/2111), as the pandemic continued to spread across the country, hitting areas far from Moscow hardest (regnum.ru/news/society/3132609.html).
In many locations, officials are expanding or extending current restrictions in anticipation of crowds during the upcoming holidays (ura.news/news/1052461604), sparking protests again far from the capital (ovdinfo.org/express-news/2020/12/04/v-novokuznecke-snyavshih-video-protiv-distancionnogo-obucheniya-budut-sudit and 72.ru/text/gorod/2020/12/03/69598841/).
In most cases, the pandemic has led only to the suspension of the activities of cultural institutions. But now it has claimed one: Moscow’s Chekhov Theater announced today that it was closing for good because of pandemic-related losses (echo.msk.ru/news/2753054-echo.html).
Russia began its public vaccination campaign, but three problems immediately surfaced: first, Russia has only two million doses for a population of 140 million; second, its pharmaceutical companies do not have enough of one component of the vaccine to produce massive quantities more; and third, fewer than 10 percent of Russians are said to want the vaccine (ehorussia.com/new/node/22278, meduza.io/feature/2020/12/04/putin-ob-yavil-o-nachale-massovoy-vaktsinatsii-ot-kovida-v-rossii-no-est-problema-farmkompanii-mogut-stabilno-vypuskat-lish-odin-ee-komponent-iz-neobhodimyh-dvuh and charter97.org/ru/news/2020/12/4/402886/).
Moscow can do little about the first two in the short term, but it is working to conceal the last at least in Moscow by reportedly forcing state employees to get vaccinated (znak.com/2020-12-05/reuters_moskovskih_byudzhetnikov_zastavlyayut_privivatsya_ot_koronavirusa_sputnikom_v).
On the economic front, there were two disturbing news reports. Economists report that inflation for the goods the poorest Russians must buy are more than three times higher than the government’s overall inflation claims (ehorussia.com/new/node/22279). And regional governments have exhausted their ability to borrow given spending on unfunded mandates to fight the pandemic (regnum.ru/news/society/3131294.html).
Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,
· Moscow prosecutors have opened criminal cases against underground firms selling false certificates to individuals who must show they don’t have the virus (regnum.ru/news/3133371.html).
· Polls show that the pandemic is making Russians even more socially isolated than earlier, with one in four reporting fewer contacts with his or her neighbors (echo.msk.ru/news/2752830-echo.html).
· And in anticipation of need for hospice care next year for those dying of the disease, the Duma plans to consider new laws that will make it less likely that those institutions will be closed for any violations of health rules (dailystorm.ru/vlast/v-rossii-smyagchat-pravila-ucheta-obezbolivayushchih-dlya-meduchrezhdeniy).
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