Russia Now Facing Pandemic Disaster Across the Board

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 7 – Rarely has any 24-hour period since the start of the pandemic brought so many reports that point to disaster for Russia on the pandemic front. Here are the top five:

·         The pandemic in Russia is now so severe in 24 regions that the governments in them are on the brink of imposing new lockdowns even though Moscow keeps promising that it won’t move in that direction (ura.news/articles/1036282797).

·         The Russian medical system can’t cope or save the lives of many who become infected. According to epidemiologist Mikhail Favorov, three percent of all Russians hospitalized for covid infections die, three times more than is the case in developed countries (business-gazeta.ru/article/518326 ).

·         Health Ministry Mikhail Murashko says that the third wave of the pandemic is far more aggressive and is mutating at a rapid rate among populations like Russia’s with low levels of vaccination (regnum.ru/news/3339550.html).

·         A new Mediazone analysis finds that excess deaths in Russia since the pandemic begun number more than 630,000, more than 100,000 more than government media have acknowledged (zona.media/news/2021/08/06/mortality).

·         Analysts say the failure of more Russians to get vaccinated reflects a disturbing fact: anti-vaxxer groups are quite active on all media platforms while the government has completely failed to carry out a concerted propaganda campaign to convince people to get the shots (newizv.ru/article/general/07-08-2021/kovidnye-strahi-lozh-i-vydumki-uchenye-razvenchivayut-mify-o-vaktsinatsii ).

Today, the Russian government reported registering 22,320 new cases of infection and 793 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours as the pandemic continued to spread throughout the country. Even where infections have ebbed, deaths remain high (t.me/COVID2019_official/3416 and regnum.ru/news/society/3337040.html).

Meanwhile, the story attracting perhaps the most attention in Russia was about none of these things. Instead, the press and the Internet were telling the story of a single Russian who has been identified as having infected 1500 others with the virus (znak.com/2021-08-07/nayden_rossiyanin_kotoryy_zarazil_koronavirusom_1_5_tys_chelovek).