Posted 12 мая 2020,, 14:52

Published 12 мая 2020,, 14:52

Modified 25 декабря 2022,, 20:56

Updated 25 декабря 2022,, 20:56

The lack of intellectual sovereignty is worse than a pandemic

12 мая 2020, 14:52
Григорий Колюцкий
In the fight against the pandemic in Russia, we are witnessing chaos from the Chinese and Western measures, with a lag of one month in the execution of domestic grief managers.

Grigory Koliuytsky, activist

Unlike the coronavirus epidemic, whose internal logic of development is still incomprehensible by specialists, the situation with infodemia (an epidemic of fear) is becoming clearer.

The other day with a scandal, the British quack Ferguson, who was one of the initiators of intimidation of the population and the "most extreme measures", quit. At the same time, WHO recognized the Swedish strategy as successful and worthy of emulation.

Personally, I want fear traders from the ruling bureaucracies and media owners to be taken to clean water as they are now investigating the leak from Shi Zhengli’s laboratory in Wuhan.

Now many in Russia are wondering, what is going on?

Unfortunately, the striking discrepancy between the reality given to us in sensations and propaganda pictures (both official and alarmist picked up by some oppositionists promoted by the left bureaucracies of the West) pushes many fellow citizens to conspiracy, in particular, to burn a cell tower in Ossetia (5G in Russia is still only in the draft, to burn them is the cargo cult of Western conspiracy theology).

The problem is that we, in Russian society, lack intellectual sovereignty regarding the challenges of a pandemic (and infoodemia). Therefore, we are witnessing chaos from Chinese and Western measures, with a lag of one month in the execution of domestic grief managers.

And I believe that Russian society needs to understand what is happening on its own, to pose questions and find answers to them that are adequate to our situation.

Let’s imagine that the submarines and planes of some country of the “probable enemy” approached the borders of the Fatherland - then decisions will be made very quickly: the General Staff, Security Council and Commander-in-Chief have unambiguous protocols on this subject.

With the epidemic, we see that Russia noticed her a month later than Thailand.

Moreover, the measures taken by Russia are not only belated, but often useless, ineffective and even harmful.

Well, let’s take a look at the chronology of what happened in order.

To put it simply, the epidemic has 3 stages:

1) Infiltration (there are few cases, it is difficult to catch them, there are super-distributors who manage to infect dozens of people in a week). Only at this point can the flash be suppressed. Some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, have succeeded. The Russian authorities began testing and closing the borders so late (first with China, then with Italy, Austria, etc.), at least in quarantine, that Russia had no chance to defeat the epidemic at this stage. So to discuss what exactly the South Korean strategy was good at this stage for a long time is no longer relevant. (A rhetorical question: where did the GRU and SVR residences in China look? What did they report in January?)

2) Abrupt growth, massive outbreak. It is already impossible to suppress at this stage, it remains only to smooth out the peak in order to distribute the load on resuscitators. How manageable the situation is at this stage is unclear. In my opinion, the majority of quarantine measures around the world are the security theater, i.e. psychotherapy for the masses, giving the illusion of control. After tens of thousands have already fallen ill, there are no alternatives to collective immunity. The only question is how long it will take and what percentage will have to be vaccinated when the vaccines appear.

3) Slow and sad attenuation. This process was most expressively observed in those towns in northern Italy where quarantine was introduced when more than half of the population became sick / ill.

At what stage is Russia now?

According to Skolkov, in Moscow antibodies were found in 10%. For comparison: in Stockholm, according to Gieseke, 20% have. New York and Los Angeles are slightly smaller.

Many are trying to extract something from the dynamics of those diagnosed. But it is so hard. The fact is that when hundreds of thousands get sick, these numbers speak more about the scope of testing than about anything else. Therefore, wise Swedes do a minimum of tests.

In my estimation, Russia goes to collective immunity at a good pace, a couple of weeks behind Sweden, but ahead of Germany. Great Britain and the USA also go to collective immunity. But countries that have abruptly dampened, but did not suppress the outbreak, are waiting for the second waves, in particular, the stupidly delayed mortality of the same risk groups. To quarantine a vaccine is realistic only for island states and Israel, roughly speaking.

I want to state clearly: if it was not possible to suppress the epidemic in small numbers, then it goes on at its (almost uncontrollable) pace. And the administrative measures taken by many governments, in many ways, only throw dust in the eyes of a frightened population.

Many people ask, why with such a large number of people diagnosed in Russia, such a low death rate from covid? Naturally, doubts arise about the quality of the data. On the one hand, there is an incentive to underestimate the number of patients and hide mortality in order to show a “successful fight” against the epidemic. On the other hand, more federal money was promised to covid patients. For the poor domestic medicine - this is a serious argument. Including in order to diagnose covid retroactively ((

According to pessimistic estimates, the attribution error of mortality from covid in Moscow is approximately three times. Moreover, the systematic error of attribution does not distort the dynamics, and the error is not an order of magnitude.

How so?

In my opinion, the battle of copies around IFR is a methodological error. You need to go from a qualitative description of risk groups.

So, what signs correlate with covide mortality?

1. Nursing homes, about half of all mortality in Western Europe. In Russia, as in all of Eastern Europe, there are few of them. And in Sweden, for example, nursing homes are noticeably smaller than in Belgium, but they are larger than in Norway.

Here we must honestly admit that it’s impossible to protect in large enough nursing homes, like ghettos / favelas / barracks / construction sites / prisons, when tens of thousands of sick people are already sick, in principle.

2. Overweight (and related diabetes, heart disease). This is a very relevant story for the United States, but not for Russia at all.

3. Migrant ghettos (places where people live very crowded and communicate a lot). Again, in Norway there are no such people (a strict migration policy), in Stockholm there are the main outbreaks (except for nursing homes), in Belgium this is all very bad ((

4. And finally, in Russia there are fewer people at risk of age than in Italy, and our pensioners have low social activity even compared to the Scandinavians, not to mention the Italians.

Let's be honest: Russia is wilderly lucky!

Despite the inadequacy of the local authorities, mortality from covid in Russia is very low. Optimize medicine, of course, was a crime. But by some miracle, according to the number of hospital beds, Russia is still among the world leaders and during the epidemic in Russia there are still free beds (as in Germany, Sweden and Belarus). Lombardy and New York were deprived of such luxury.

Apparently, the dynamics of hospitalizations in Moscow has stabilized. At the same time, people with weak immunity get sick first. And the epidemic in Russia has been going on for quite some time. Of the delayed effects, we are waiting for a large percentage of mortality of those who are kept on ventilation machines (there are still enough of them, which I personally did not expect, I admit). Different regions of Russia are several weeks behind Moscow.

Conclusions: at the current stage, the overwhelming majority of restrictions can and should be lifted, money will be distributed to those left without work and savings, and tax holidays should be announced for small and medium-sized businesses. In short, save the economy. Of course, masks should be given out at metro and other public transport stations, and for doctors it is urgent to buy PPE in the world market. In August, you need to hold the exam, and from September to open schools and universities. The borders of the Russian Federation can be opened safely: there are already enough infected in our country so as not to be afraid of infection from outside..."

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