Just Russia Party Organizes Anti-Distance Learning Conference

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 16 – The Just Russia-For Truth Party organized an interregional conference on distance learning in Nizhny Novogord in which all the participants, including parents and experts, condemned the practice as harmful to children and their education (apn-nn.com/news/konferentsiya_o_vrede_distanta_dlya_zdorovya_detey_proshla_v_nizhnem_novgorode/).

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 20,765 new cases of infection and 806 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours, the former figure down but the latter at the current high plateau as the pandemic continues to ebb and flow across the Russian Federation (t.me/stopcoronavirusrussia/5589 and regnum.ru/news/society/3344522.html).

            In response to the spread of the coronavirus, schools in Russia are closing district by district rather than region by region, making it far more difficult to say how many have gone over to distance learning or mixed arrangements (regnum.ru/news/3344964.html).

            The Moscow International Book Fair has delayed its opening from the beginning to the end of September, and Russia has renewed international flights without limitations to the Dominican Republic, South Korea and the Czech Republic (regnum.ru/news/3345144.html and regnum.ru/news/3345248.html).

            On the vaccine front, Russian medical experts said that there is no danger of “over-dosing” on the covid vaccines (regnum.ru/news/3345244.html). The education ministry announced that it would not make vaccinations compulsory for teachers and other school employees (regnum.ru/news/3345419.html).

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

·         Russians told Superjob that they were more likely to get into arguments about the vaccine at the workplace than anywhere else (regnum.ru/news/3345420.html).

·         The covid pandemic has been followed by a loneliness one, but psychologists say that unlike the virus, this state is likely to become the new normal in most countries for a long time to come (sovsekretno.ru/articles/pandemiya-odinochestva/).

·         A conspiracy theory making the rounds in Russia is that the authorities have introduced the mass mandate in order to be in a position to take away gun licenses from people caught not wearing the masks and thus disarm the population (7x7-journal.ru/posts/2021/08/16/--1629128751).