Monday, August 2, 2021

Low Vaccination Rates, Not Election Campaign, Behind Increases in Covid Casualties, Kremlin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – The failure of Russians to get vaccinated in larger numbers and not any relaxation of restrictions as the result of the approaching Duma elections is to blame for the increases in the number of those getting infected with the coronavirus, according  to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov (regnum.ru/news/3330525.html and regnum.ru/news/3330527.html).

            But as the pandemic continues, other Russians are trying to come up with explanations for why, despite all the government’s efforts, the numbers have gone in the wrong direction. Andrey Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid, has come up with a most original one (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=60FF790E1C586).

            He argues that the government’s propaganda campaign about the pandemic is to blame. That campaign is creating post-traumatic stress among the population, something that weakens the immune systems of Russians and makes them more likely to contract the virus or even to die. He says the powers that be must cut back on some of their most threatening messaging.

            Today, the Russian authorities reported registering 23,032 new cases of infection and 779 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours, as the pandemic continued to ebb and flow across the country and with it the level of restrictions (t.me/COVID2019_official/3369, regnum.ru/news/society/3324376.html and regnum.ru/news/society/3330437.html).

            Outside of Moscow, ever more federal subjects are making vaccinations mandatory for an increasingly large number of categories of the population. In the North Caucasus, for example, three republics – Chechnya, Daghestan and Kabardino-Balkaria – have all taken that step (doshdu.com/v-chechne-vveli-objazatelnuju-vakcinaciju-ot-koronavirusa/).

            Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church reported that the spiritual advisor to Patriarch Kirill is among those who have come down with a covid infection, although the hierarchy said that his case was a mild one (https://regnum.ru/news/3330543.html).

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