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fromStefan Scholl
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In Russia, the pandemic is constantly setting new anti-records. But despite a thousand deaths a day, the majority of Russians do not want to be vaccinated.
Moscow – We are sitting in a Moscow café, my acquaintance Pasha, a senior doctor friend of his and I. Pasha asks whether it is not possible to certify that he has been vaccinated, but to shoot the syringe down the sink. “Unfortunately that doesn’t work,” says the doctor and smiles evasively. “The vaccination doses are sealed and have a barcode.” What else could he have answered with a stranger at the table.
Pasha’s reluctance to be vaccinated against Corona is not an isolated case. Jelena Spiridonova, a Moscow pharmacist, reports how she was vaccinated with Sputnik V in her polyclinic. “The vaccination team consisted of medical students. They told me indignantly that many patients would offer bribes so that they could inject the vaccine into the sink. ”One would have offered the equivalent of more than 120 euros.
Thousands of corona deaths a day in Russia: people crowd close together in the metro
Covid-19 is raging in Russia like nowhere else in Europe. For months. On August 12, the daily death rate rose to over 800 victims for the first time, and last Friday over 1000. The rate is 55 percent higher than the worst death rate ever – the Indian one. The operational staff of the Russian government has so far counted a good 226,000 Covid deaths. The state statistics office, however, reported more than 417,000 victims from January 2020 to August 2021 alone. According to the independent statistician Aleksei Rakscha, the corona-related excess mortality is approaching the 800,000 mark. 96 percent of the Covid hospital beds are occupied. Yesterday, 34,073 newly infected people and 1,028 deaths were reported, again a new anti-record.
And yesterday the Kremlin responded. Vladimir Putin declared “non-working days” for the whole country from October 30th to November 7th. Those willing to vaccinate should be given two more days off. If necessary, the regions can send the people on vacation earlier; and restrict access to the workplace to vaccinated and convalescent people. According to the Bloomberg agency, the Moscow city administration is considering closing all businesses except pharmacies, grocery stores and gas stations. But where there will be a real lockdown in Russia is still unclear.
In Moscow’s metro you can see more masks again. In a subway car in the direction of the city center, 14 of the 26 inmates wear masks, but three only over their chins. Most Russians must wear a mask and take other protective measures. “Absolutely stupid formalities,” says journalist Maxim Shevchenko, who is by no means a Covid denier after a serious illness. What use are such measures in Moscow’s metro with seven million passengers a day, the rush hour transforms the wagons into sardine cans with up to 259 passengers, the distance between the airways melts down to centimeters and with it the belief in face masks or social distance.
Covid deaths in Russia: only a third of people are vaccinated against the corona virus
Pasha has also been lying in bed for weeks with Covid-19, fever and cough, but rejects masks such as vaccinations. The “best way to fight Corona is to get sick and get well again,” he says. And Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, for a long time Russia’s most vocal lockdown advocate, is an agent of the World Economic Forum. That wanted to achieve global capitalism with the help of the pandemic, but failed because China, Russia, Europe and the USA all maneuvered in different ways. A moderate conspiracy story compared to those of many German lateral thinkers.
Pascha is a web designer, successful, not one that Covid upsets. “Corona”, he grins, “is a Mexican type of beer.” People make jokes about the virus and argue about it, but Covid is neither the main topic nor the subject of hatred in Russia.
After the first curfews due to the pandemic in spring 2020, unemployment rose by 20 percent compared to the previous year, after which the Kremlin waived further tough protective measures and instead announced a major vaccination campaign. The state media praised the national vaccine Sputnik V as by far the best vaccine in the world. In vain.
Public employees and employees of state or large companies who refused to take the injection were threatened with firing. Even so, only 51 out of 154 million people got vaccinated in ten months. And according to official information.
In Russia, people refuse the corona vaccination – and systematically falsify medical certificates
Ella, a publishing editor from the North Caucasus, tells of a relative who bought her son the necessary vaccination certificate before his honeymoon in Turkey. “The boy is supposed to beget children,” she said. Irina, a sales manager from a Moscow suburb, says that all colleagues who got vaccinated got sick. “I was scared.” But Sputnik was a must, behind the screen of the vaccination center, Irina tried to bribe a paramedic with the equivalent of 24 euros, spontaneously and successfully.
There is systematic lubrication elsewhere. It was not until Monday that the police arrested eight suspected fraudsters in Elektrostal near Moscow, including two doctors who issued digital forged certificates.
Thousands of corona deaths per day in Russia: people refuse vaccination out of suspicion
In Germany two thirds of the population got vaccinated, in Russia two thirds did not. According to a survey by the independent Levada research center, 44 percent of people in Russia were ready to do so or had already been vaccinated. But Lev Gudkow, Lewada’s chief sociologist, believes that many of the positive responses are announcements. “People are not rushing to vaccinate.” Gudkow justifies this with distrust of the authorities and the lack of alternative foreign vaccines. Above all, educated young women who otherwise took great care of their health blocked themselves.
Many people suspect that the vaccination campaign of the top civil servants to snatch household money under the nail. “For 30 years the people have not seen a moment in which the officials did something for their own good and not for their own pockets,” says Maxim Shevchenko. “Even without Corona, our population will shrink by a million people every year.”
“All people are dying”: Russians distrust corona vaccination – despite thousands of deaths a day
There are certainly people who see Covid as a deadly danger. Roman Popow, editor-in-chief of the tabloid “Tajny Svjosd”, lay in bed for several weeks in 2020, his wife was hospitalized with severe pneumonia. She was then vaccinated twice with Sputnik V, he three times, both recently in Croatia again with Johnson & Johnson. Roman sees the virus as a destroyer with very measurable impact. “My wife is a freediver. Before the disease, she reached a depth of almost twenty feet. Now it’s still 21 meters. “
It almost seems as if more intellectuals and liberals are being vaccinated in Moscow than patriots: inside or Putin fans. No wonder, the president announced that he had had Sputnik V injected twice, but had neither videos nor photos published of it. No signal of departure for the indecisive nation.
Irina doesn’t feel guilty about her fake vaccination. Although she does not know anyone who died of Sputnik V but who is related to a Covid death. “All people die,” she says.
Russia: People see Corona as part of fate despite thousands of Covid deaths a day
People are used to death: there are many traffic deaths, schnapps deaths and drug deaths. Poor people in particular priced human lives very low, says sociologist Gudkow, including his own. And when Russians take a critical look at their own mentality, they usually talk about their “pofigism” – lack of feeling and apathy, which one could describe as a shit mood.
“Anyone who is over 40 and wakes up without pain is dead,” says the vernacular. Corona is only a fraction of the often increasing adversity that the Russians call fate.
Once we came out of the cinema with Pascha and his wife, lost in thought I put on my face mask, Pascha grinned ironically. “Take off your mask, the war is over!” But if the war against Covid-19 is really over, then Russia has lost it. (Stefan Scholl)
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