Once again on supermortality in Russia: readers' opinions and expert assessments

According to experts, Russians refuse to be vaccinated and die. One of the main reasons is mistrust of the authorities.

Yelena Ivanova, Natalia Seibil

Mortality rate?

As Novye Izvestia wrote the other day, Russia accounts for 25% to almost 50% of the world's death rate for covid. People in 222 countries are sick, and for some reason die in one, which occupies only 9th place in the world in terms of population, while all the first 8 countries on the list, including China, India, the United States, show mortality at the moment either zero or orders of magnitude less. When asked why so many people in Russia die from covid, more than half of the readers - 55% - said that low vaccination rates, lack of protective measures and destroyed medicine were to blame. 12% are sure that the country was overtaken by God's punishment for the sins of Russians. Every fourth person is sure that there is no reasonable explanation for the high mortality rate. Novye Izvestia talked to experts and learned from them why the covid mows down our compatriots.

Now in the country there is a very alarming situation with mortality. She's growing despite being vaccinated. Last year, 27-30 thousand people were infected every day and 400 died, says sociologist Alexey Roshchin. Now 34-35 thousand are infected every day, and three times as many people die - in the region of 1200 per day. From what this happens, the sociologist has only one explanation:

- All statistics are drawn from the bulldozer. Back in September, I predicted that immediately after the elections, the death rate would start to grow, and it would stop at 1200. And so it turned out. The idea is this: there were 400. After the meeting between Putin and Biden, in a week they raised exactly twice - 800. And I figured that this is most likely a standard, it is not clear who invented it, 10 deaths per region. There were 5 deaths. We have only 80 regions. Now, I think, the standard has been increased to 15 deaths. It turned out 1200 deaths per day. Our statistics are completely manageable. And infection and death we have in a very narrow range. How this can be - no one really understands.

Mistrust in the authorities is becoming a mortal danger. Society as an anti-vaxxer

On the whole, the Russian society behaves like an anti-axer, says Maria Lagarkova, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, director of the Federal Scientific and Clinical Center for Physical and Chemical Medicine of the FMBA. Added to the problems of general mistrust is the problem of skeptical doctors.

- The distrust of medicine in general, which deceived them many times, is compensated by the trust in a particular doctor, who, due to his own inertia and ignorance, also sometimes advises people not to get vaccinated. In fact, there are very few contraindications to vaccination, but doctors sometimes warn that this should not be done. Even among highly educated people, there are those who are sure that vaccination can be replaced by eating garlic, Maria Lagarkova does not cease to be surprised.

Even in developed countries, the pandemic has placed maximum strain on health systems. In wealthy Germany, there are not enough places in intensive care, and covid patients are transported by Bundeswehr planes from Bavaria and Saxony to the north of the country, where hospitals are less full. But the mortality rate there is not comparable to that in Russia, and no one closed the hospitals there, as was the case in Russia. Political scientist Sergei Markov considers health care reform to be the cause of high mortality in the country:

- We have become the leaders in mortality due to a very erroneous policy to optimize the health care system. This was carried out five to six years ago and reduced the resources of medicine. And now, when resources were needed, everyone was transferred to the treatment of covid, which we are coping with, a huge amount of supermortality in other indicators.

But the citizens themselves are pulling to the last and do not seek medical help. The sick do not go to the doctor, the unvaccinated buy certificates. QR codes, which are being introduced by authorities everywhere, are easily bypassed with fake vaccination certificates. They can be easily purchased in any city in the country. Doctors themselves sell them, experts say with bitterness.

The high mortality rate is due to the low level of vaccination of the population. To date, 38 million people have been fully vaccinated in Russia. Of the three vaccines approved by the Ministry of Health, one - EpiVacCorona - does not work, and CoviVac also does not protect enough, says Maria Lagarkova. The only drug that provides the necessary protection at the world level is GamCovidVac, or the well-known Sputnik V. They are vaccinated about 20% of the country's citizens.

For herd immunity, that 20%, that 40% of the vaccinated is absolutely insufficient. You need 80%, at least 75%, then you can talk about the dependence of one result on another.

To all the rumors and stories on the Internet that the vaccinated die too, Maria Lagarkova answers as follows:

- Among people honestly vaccinated by Sputnik, I do not know of a single death in a hospital. There was no such thing. Sick - yes, some strains can break through the defense, but mortality - no. Citizens with demonstrative fatalism neglect the rules of hygiene. Masks are not worn by entire regions. Those who live or have been to Chechnya, for example, see with their own eyes that there are no masked people anywhere in public places at all. In big cities, a mask lowered to the chin on transport and in stores is a symbol of people's attitude to all calls from doctors and scientists to take care of themselves.

Doctors and scientists say that high mortality is not a question for them, but for psychologists, sociologists and political scientists.

Post-communist syndrome in the presence of coronavirus

No need to look at the official statistics, look at the excess mortality, says independent demographer Alexey Raksha . Low rates of vaccination, lack of lockdowns and restrictions - this applies to the whole of Eastern Europe, although in Russia this is manifested extremely. Indeed, in Macedonia and Kosovo, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, excess mortality rates are higher, but the level of development in them is not comparable to that in Russia.

"Russia has a very large excess mortality for a country of this level of development. And Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan, and Kosovo and Macedonia are poorer than Russia. Both Colombia and Ecuador, all countries ahead of Russia in mortality, are poorer than us. For a country with such a level of income and development in Russia, excess mortality is maximum. This suggests that, in addition to the post-socialist syndrome, we have a particularly deceitful policy, mistrust of the government and the beginning collapse of the state", - says Alexey Raksha.

Propaganda, state and deep people

It is obvious that the Russian authorities turned out to be unprepared for the mass rejection of citizens of vaccination. But they cannot admit that the refusal to get vaccinated is directly related to mistrust of the government. Although political scientist Sergei Markov admits that the state propaganda machine, which has always worked well, whether it be Crimea, the “bad” West, or “malicious” Ukraine, this time has failed. But the people still have confidence in the authorities, and others are to blame, the political scientist believes:

- This is a liberal and oppositional myth that it is related to trust in the government. They refute themselves: they have the least confidence in the government, and they are most instilled. Russia does not have general ignorance, but it has a destroyed institution of authority. In Russia, scientists and public figures are considered corrupt, and people do not believe them.

Georgy Satarov, political scientist, sociologist, professor at RANEPA, president of the INDEM Foundation for Applied Political Research , believes that what is happening now in the authorities is not confusion, but a terrible fear of his electorate. The obscurantism that has been implanted for the past twenty years has emerged, and a new social polarization is taking place along the cultural boundary:

- Vaccinated, for the most part, well-informed people who understand the problem due to their cultural contacts and personal education, and this is the main basis for the growth of dissatisfaction with Putin. And against vaccination, this was evident from the way they stormed the Chelyabinsk Duma - the obscurantism that they instilled through propaganda in order to maintain the electorate in the right tone. Here he revolts against Putin, against vaccinations and QR codes. It rises in a form that they did not expect, as they are accustomed to the relatively mild forms of the other camp.

People are not given the right to choose which vaccine against covid to inject

“Failure of state propaganda”, “hack”, “mediocrity” - what words still need to be heard in order to understand how the people evaluate the efforts of the authorities to vaccinate the population. Decades of no alternative in power have led to lack of choice in other situations as well. For example, the fact that the population is offered only Russian vaccines, says the academician of the Russian Academy of Education, head of the Department of Personality Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov Alexander Asmolov. For reasons of pharmacological patriotism, people are given only one solution, and people, protesting, refuse to be vaccinated. There is no detailed work with people, their motivation is ignored:

- The best intentions of the authorities are smashed against the resistance of the mass consciousness. When people do not understand that the proposed measures are the way out, they resist. And the point is not whether these are tough measures or not tough ones. The point is whether these measures are understood or not. The authorities, unfortunately, do not waste efforts to ensure that these measures are understood by people and take into account the motivation of completely different groups of the Russian population.

In countries where the percentage of those vaccinated exceeds 70, outbreaks of the disease are not accompanied by a rapid increase in mortality. In Russia, the mortality rate is growing.

Anna Bersenev, a writer and regular contributor to Novye Izvestia, explains the phenomenon of Russian mortality from her own perspective:

“The fact that Russia has a monstrously high mortality rate from covid, unfortunately, is beyond doubt. And whatever reason they call it - a massive refusal to vaccinate, fake certificates, the collapse of the healthcare system outside large cities - all this has, in my opinion, The most base views that are in people were officially legitimized about five years ago. the part of the population that is the bearer of all this. The pandemic has revealed this so clearly that it is shocking. The formula "die you today, and I tomorrow" guides the behavior of those who are not in a hurry to get vaccinated. Modern people seem to behave the same way as the dark masses during the cholera riots. The state of hospitals in the province is about the same as in those days. Yes, not all and not everywhere, but this is too widespread phenomenon that you can ignore it. And lies, lies, lies as a norm of life, as a way of behavior accepted by all. The tragic result is in the numbers of deaths".

Compulsory measures for vaccination do not work. Apparently, we will have to go again to explaining and creating alternatives for the population. And you can, without paying attention, continue to look for enemies. Only this time there are much more dissatisfied people.