Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 4 – For the second
day in a row, the number of coronavirus cases in Russia rose by more than
10,000. The total has now reached 145,000 and some models experts are using
suggest it will ultimately reach 450,000 (newsru.com/russia/04may2020/10581.html,
snob.ru/news/192427/ and topcor.ru/14473-evropejskij-put-koronavirus-v-rossii-priobretaet-ugrozhajuschie-masshtaby.html).
Russian officials are correctly
noting that the increase in numbers at least in part reflects the spread of
testing, especially in Moscow and other major cities which are becoming
hotspots (meduza.io/news/2020/05/04/v-moskve-tretiy-den-podryad-fiksiruyut-bolee-5-tysyach-sluchaev-covid-19-meriya-ob-yasnyaet-eto-uvelicheniem-testirovaniya).
Other pandemic stories from Russia
worthy of note include:
·
Russian officials insist there is no shortage of
protective equipment like masks, despite the evidence in hospitals that even
medical workers don’t have what they need and the increasing rationing by price
in stores as a result of speculation (echo.msk.ru/blog/boris_vis/2636787-echo/ and vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2020/05/04/829569-spekulyanti-podnyali-tseni-sirya-na-sredstva-zaschiti).
·
Russia is
increasingly becoming feudal during the pandemic with individual bureaucracies
issuing their own orders and imposing them on Russians even if other agencies
are employing different rules, El Murid says (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5EAFAB90BD2E0).
·
The longer Russians are kept in
self-isolation, the more inclined they are to come up with or accept conspiracy
theories, according to Anna Kirzyuk, a Russian social anthropologist (vz.ru/society/2020/5/2/1037540.html).
·
Those
Russians who are homeless don’t have that problem, but they do have many
others. The Russian government is doing nothing for them in the pandemic, and
private charitable groups are overwhelmed by their numbers and needs (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/193881?fcc).
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