Two Out of Three Vaccinated Russians Oppose Penalizing Those Who Aren’t

Paul Goble

Staunton, Sept. 9 – Sixty-seven percent of Russians who have been vaccinated say they oppose penalizing those who haven’t been including those to refuse to be inoculated, according to a new SuperJob survey (superjob.ru/research/articles/113049/2-iz-3-vakcinirovannyh-ot-koronavirusa-protiv-sankcij-po-otnosheniyu-k-neprivitym/).

Such attitudes may simultaneously prevent the kind of tensions that have arisen in other countries and help to explain why some business leaders now say that whatever happens with the pandemic, the Russian economy will be able to weather the storm and continue to recover (regnum.ru/news/3365820.html).

Today, Russian officials reported registering 18,380 new cases of infection and 794 new deaths from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours. They also said that “about 700” medical personnel have died since the start of 2021 from covid (t.me/COVID2019_official/3530 and  tass.ru/proisshestviya/12333253).

The pandemic continued to ebb and flow across the Russian Federation with many of the hardest hit places far from Moscow. There, officials are closing schools and talking about introducing mandatory vaccination regimes, albeit in the latter case mostly only after the elections (regnum.ru/news/society/3361504.html, ng.ru/economics/2021-09-08/1_8246_school.html, sovross.ru/news/53570 and ura.news/news/1052503992).

In seeking to promote vaccinations, officials are pointing out that only two percent of people now hospitalized with covid infections were vaccinated. The remaining 98 percent did not have their shots and thus remained at far higher risk (https://regnum.ru/news/3365068.html).

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

·         Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia has not been invited to the COVID-19 summit slated to take place during the UN General Assembly session (regnum.ru/news/3365819.html).

·         Novosibirsk officials say they are planning to open vaccination stations at polling places during the upcoming elections September 17,18 and 19 (regnum.ru/news/3364808.html).

·         And Volgograd cemetery operators are now offering online funerals so that people who want to attend won’t have to travel with all the risks of coronavirus infection involved (hznak.com/2021-09-09/v_volgograde_proshli_pervye_onlayn_pohorony).