Paul Goble
Staunton, May 5 – Andrey Fursov, a Moscow historian and commentator, says that Western governments are exploiting the pandemic to impose a common approach to social and political issues around the world and thus to protect their current power and reimpose their control over other countries (business-gazeta.ru/article/508139).
Such arguments are increasingly heard among Russians who view all developments as being the result of the movement of dark forces behind the scenes, but they are likely to be especially dangerous now because they will only reinforce anti-vaxxer attitudes in that country, reducing the likelihood that Russia will be able to overcome the pandemic anytime soon.
Today, Russian officials reported registering 7975 new cases of infection and 360 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours as the pandemic continued to ebb and flow across the country. Many places are showing improvements but others aren’t, often because vaccination rates in them remain low, far lower than the eight percent Moscow claims for the country (t.me/COVID2019_official/2893 and regnum.ru/news/society/3258922.html).
Meanwhile, as a single-dose vaccine approaches final approval, a debate has broken out over whether Russians need two or even three doses. Most epidemiologists say that at least two doses are needed but that with the growing number of strains, a third is likely to be required in the future (regnum.ru/news/3261494.html and regnum.ru/news/3261120.html).
One intriguing development was a report today by Russian researchers that polio vaccines give some immunity to the coronavirus, a finding that unfortunately may lead some who have been vaccinated for that disease to assume they are safe from the coronavirus and need not get the new shots (regnum.ru/news/3261873.html).
Also today, Vladimir Putin issued a decree giving awards to Russian medical personnel who have been involved in the fight against the pandemic (regnum.ru/news/3261020.html).
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