75 Percent of Russian Anti-Vaxxers Say They have No Fears of New Wave of Covid Infections

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 27 – Russian officials have tried to boost sagging vaccination rates by playing up the horrors of the illness from the coronavirus, but a new Superjob poll finds that 75 percent of Russia’s anti-vaxxers have no fear of a new wave of the pandemic, an indication that scare tactics are unlikely to be effective (superjob.ru/research/articles/113080/chetvertoj-volny-koronavirusa-moskvichi-boyatsya-bolshe-peterburzhcev/).

            For Russians as a whole, 31 percent said they feared a new wave of the pandemic but 66 percent said they did not. Women were slightly more fearful than men, older people than young, and Muscovites than Peterburgers.   People in Novosibirsk, Kazan and Yekaterinburg showed figures between those of the two capitals.

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 22,236 new cases of infection and 779 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours. Officials also reported that total infections in the armed forces have now passed 40,000 and now stand at 40,200 (t.me/COVID2019_official/3599  and regnum.ru/news/3382657.html).

            The pandemic continued to ebb and flow across Russia with deteriorating epidemiological situations outnumbering improving ones, including in the Russian capitals (regnum.ru/news/society/3379238.html and regnum.ru/news/3382405.html). More schools shifted to distance learning, sparking more anger among parents and politicians (regnum.ru/news/3381804.html and regnum.ru/news/3381927.html).

            Moscow refuses to order a shift to distance learning in the country’s higher educational institutions, with officials at the center insisting that such decisions must be made at the local and regional level, a shift in responsibility that means more anger will focus on what regional officials do than on what Moscow does (regnum.ru/news/3382012.html).

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

·         The US government announced new rules governing vaccinations among foreign visitors to the US. The rules, slated to go into effect on November 1, will not consider those inoculated with the Russian vaccines to have been vaccinated, a rule certain to infuriate many in Moscow (washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/27/us-travellers-sputnik-russia/).

·         An elderly Sakha woman has conducted a ritual designed to protect people from the pandemic. She took this step after a local pregnant women died from the coronavirus (regnum.ru/news/3381587.html).