COVID Day 50: Russian Leaders Capitulate

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Russia, along with Belarus, have denied having an issue with COVID since this crisis got going. However, if you pay attention to the bits and pieces of news that leak out, it’s obvious that was never true. For example, three weeks ago China closed its border with Russia because they worried about Russians infecting China’s northern regions.

Unable to posture against mounting evidence, Russia now admits to having 145,268 people infected and 1,356 who have died. Given Russia’s propensity to mislead in order to look good (i.e., shirtless Putin riding a tiger), we can assume the statistics are far more dire. For one thing, the official numbers suggest that the Russian death rate among those infected is only 0.93% while globally the rate is 7.04% and within the U.S. is 5.84%. Given the poor living conditions in Russia and the lack of quality health care, it’s hard to imagine their survival rate could be that low. That is of course unless Vodka is a COVID cure. Perhaps this is something we should distract Fauci and Brix with?

If these official numbers are to be believed, Russia now ranks seventh globally in terms of infections, but keep in mind, Russia is a large sparsely populated country with most citizens confined to only a few high density cities. This can be an indication that once the virus takes off, Russia could catch up to New York City in terms of impact. So far, half the cases in Russia are from Moscow.

After denying there was a problem for months, Putin was forced to concede on Saturday that the peak is not behind them. Indications are that the healthcare system has been overwhelmed and that soon Russia could be the global hotspot for both infections and deaths. We certainly hope that projection turns out to be as fantastically incorrect as so many others that the “experts” taut.

Notice in the upper left chart for the global daily deltas for infections that yesterday’s delta was almost as large the delta experienced in mid April when the world was supposed to be at it’s apex. Hopefully this is just a one day bump caused by adding Russian numbers into the fray and not a sign of a new trend.

There has been a theory bantered about that China has a vaccine, which is why they’ve had a fairly mild COVID consequence. However, it seems more likely that China is just lying because a) that’s what they do, and b) independent reports suggests a much higher death rate than reported. Also, given that Russia and China are close communist allies, if China had a vaccine, one would expect them to share it with Russia and indications are that Russians have not been given a vaccine.