Tag Archives: Mick Hart isolating In Kaliningrad

Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 460 [17 June 2021]

Published: 17 June 2021 ~ Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

My sister wrote to me today from England and at the close of her letter asked, and I quote, “Just to touch on the most current topic … How is the [vaccination] ‘roll-out’ going in Russia?”

The answer that immediately sprang to mind was, I don’t know.

Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

The reaction to and media coverage of coronavirus in the UK is world’s apart from its counterparts in Russia. Even making allowances for the fact that we do not have broadcast TV and that I rarely read the news on the internet, my wife is an inveterate Facebook twiddler so news filters through to me, whether I want it or not.

One thing is certain: There is less hysteria here in Russia, both in respect of media coverage and the reaction of the populace to coronavirus. True, my wife reads news clips on Facebook, but she is more concerned with the ambiguities, ambivalence, seeming double-talk, twists, U-turns and general, what might be scientifically referred to as, arse-about-face of it all than she is in who has had their first or their 55^th jab, the proclamations of new strains and dire warnings of further mutations. She is diehard ‘anti-maskee’ and is always quoting, whenever I mention the vaccine, that never in the history of the world have governments embarked upon a global vaccination programme such as the one they have launched in the name of addressing Covid-19, which she finds suspicious, and she is more concerned with the impact that never-ending social distancing, lockdowns, isolation and general fearmongering is having on the psychological health and wellbeing of millions of people robbed of their need of personal and social interconnection, which in her philosophy is both the essence and hub of human existence.

It was she who sent me the following video link (after twenty-one years of marriage communicating by email is more popular than you might think!), telling me to listen to “what your favourite person [Katie Hopkins] has to say”: https://youtu.be/qQV1Ww9QGmU

It is not that my good lady wife disbelieves the existence of coronavirus or the potential of it pernicious effects, simply that she like many others questions the efficacy of the measures imposed upon us by ‘those in the know’ and like a lot of us is none too comfortable with the gold-rush mentality to be injected with something that has not been tested according to the usual standard protocols. In discussions on the subject, she likes to remind me that I was one of those who casually opined that come the vaccine come the silver bullet, whereas we now know ~ or rather are now told ~ that nothing much has changed and possibly will not change until 2023/24 and perhaps not even ever.

An article published by Elsevier¹ supports my wife’s criticism of me, the commentary clearly stating that ‘Vaccines are not yet a silver bullet’. And yet, I quote from the same article [my emphasis], “In other words, to help societies avoid transmission vectors and start imagining the “new normal”, continued communication about the need for face masks, personal hygiene, and social distancing is of instrumental importance.”

As I understand it, however, in the UK the new normal is resulting in a great deal of new suffering ~ psychological, physical and emotional ~ by those whose livelihoods are threatened, whose businesses are going under and many more who, because of coronavirus prioritisation, are finding that they are unable to gain access to the vital healthcare that they need if they are to survive existing illnesses, regardless of whether they get coronavirus or not.

Whilst controversy over the fallout from coronavirus restriction rules is buzzing around on social media as if someone has kicked the hive, a large vacuous hole continues to exist both in media spaces and authoritative places. Without answers, there are only rules; and rules without answers are there to be questioned, challenged and even ignored.

Nevertheless, my sister’s comment about the ‘most current topic’ had left me feeling out of the loop, so I turned for the answer in the pages of The Moscow Times². Well, why not, for a change!

Accessed on the 17 June 2021, under the headline Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News | June 17, here is my update:

~ Russia has confirmed 5,264,047 cases of coronavirus and 127,992 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is around 475,000.

~ Russia on Thursday confirmed 14,057 new coronavirus cases and 416 deaths. Of today’s cases, 6,195 are in Moscow.

~ Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Wednesday announced mandatory vaccination for service sector workers, saying the measure is necessary as the city grapples with 12,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients and levels of illness equal to last year’s peaks.

And there is more about closing bars and restaurants early and working from home.

But that is Moscow. What of Kaliningrad, where we live (I last checked about 12 weeks ago!). Here is today’s update³:

~ In the Kaliningrad region, 80 new cases of coronavirus were detected. The total number of infected reached 34 694.

~ 56 patients were diagnosed with ARVI, 15 with pneumonia. Nine more had no symptoms.

~ During the day in the region, 73 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 33,525 people have recovered, 538 have died.

So there you have it!

I think that the ‘most current topic’, as my sister refers to coronavirus and the issue of vaccination, is, like a lot of other things, evaluated in a markedly different way by the Russian population compared to the mindset in the West.

As usual, would-be pundits in the West are seemingly confused about why the take-up of the Covid-19 vaccine is not steaming along at full tilt as it is in countries like the USA and UK. I say, ‘as usual, because the inability of western Europeans to understand anything Russian, or to assume that they do not, is not a new phenomenon (understatement intended). Take a look at the screenprint (you may have to magnify the image) that I have included in this post, which returns from the Google search ‘vaccination in Russia’ [accessed 16 June 2021]:

Vaccination statistics for Russia 16 June 2021

In the circles in which we move in Kaliningrad, there is a lot to be said for my wife’s theory that people tend to judge the coronavirus situation, and personally react to it, depending on what is happening closest to them. In other words, each individual weighs up the pros and cons of the restrictions and vaccine-taking depending on how many people they know who have had a mild attack of the virus, a serious attack, how many people they know who have died as a direct result of contracting coronavirus and how many people they know who have not been infected at all, and then they act accordingly. In the UK, mass opinion is mobilised, and large swathes of people motivated, by what politicians tell them to do and by the national media’s complicity to bring about a desired result by whatever means it has and whatever it takes ~ and it does not take much.

On the wearing of masks, for example, here I have heard it said that most people who wear them, wear them to avoid a fine rather than give credence to the unproven science of their latent life-saving properties, which is possibly why most people wear them with their nose poking out or as under-chin accessories. In the UK, however, whilst some people wear masks for the same reason and in the same way, the majority of mask wearers wear them purely because they are told to do so. In the UK, compliance is king.

On the slow take-up of vaccination in Russia, as you can see from the following screen grab (you may need to magnify), which returns from the Google search ‘vaccination in Russia’ [accessed 16 June 2021], western media is more than happy to tie Russian vaccination reluctance to their efforts to discredit the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, which resulted from a fit of pique when Russia won the ‘vaccine race’.

My take on the low uptake from people I have asked is that no such specificity exists. It is not that the Russian people are crying out for western vaccines, just that they are more individualistic and selective in their approach to the whole question of vaccination safety and efficacy. I mean after the latest revelations about the AtsraZeneca vaccine⁴ …

Let’s face it folks, life is a roulette wheel. Whether the vaccine is running around inside you or not, until they finish those vaccine trials, which will not happen before 2023 or 2024 earliest, it is still a game of chance. So, fingers crossed.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

References:
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354621000077?via%3Dihub [accessed 16 June 2017]
2. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/17/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-june-17-a69117 [accessed 17 June 2021]
3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/95599-za-sutki-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-vyyavili-77-sluchaev-koronavirusa [accessed 17 June 2021]
4. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2280446-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-may-hinder-blood-clotting-in-rare-cases/ [accessed 16 June 2021]

Photo credits:
Roulette wheel
Photo credit: PIRO4D (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/gambling-roulette-game-bank-2001128/)

Globe
Photo credit: Arek Socha (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/earth-world-planet-globe-1303628/)

Репетитор английского языка в Калининграде

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas ~ Cheer them up with a card and personal letter!

Published: 17 November 2020

So, what I have been doing for the past week? Did news that they had installed a Democrat in the White House appall me so much that I have not been able to focus and write? No, even stranger than that, I have been busy writing my Christmas cards ~ either a case of there’s forward planning for you, or its time he invested in a new calendar.

Nothing quite as spectacular. I have been writing cards to folks back home, to friends and family in the UK, and cognizant of the fact that the post from Kaliningrad to England is not exactly the 21^st centuries’ answer to a hypersonic version of Pony Express, I hope to have mailed them in good time.

Another reason for planning ahead is that every year I include a ‘brief’ note with my card. This has become as traditional as Christmas dinner, party hats, Christmas crackers and auntie Ivy turning Christmas day into a rugby scrum as she insists on clawing open everybody else’s presents.

Important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas

My Christmas letter has become such an important element of the annual Christmas ritual that its up there with seasonal sayings like ‘just what I always wanted’, when it is quite obvious that you didn’t (I mean, who in his right mind would wear a jumper like that, and when did your gran lust after a WWII German tin helmet (or even a WWII German in a tin helmet?)) ~ and ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!”, when you obviously didn’t: that’s the aftershave you were given by someone last year and which you personally would not touch with a barge pole and neither would anyone else. Mind you it makes the perfect Christmas present for social distancing.

The thing about my Christmas letters is that although you have to state out loud at UK post offices these days what you have in your ‘packet’ ~ and my letters are known for being rather bulky, so they always ask ~ they always get through, even though sometimes I cannot resist answering, at first in a whisper, “It’s an inflatable doll,” and then, in response to the lady behind the counter urging me to ‘speak up’, to call out stridently, “It’s an inflatable doll,” so that everyone can hear (you should try this sometime, it really is fun!).

No stopping those Christmas letters

Yes, my letters always get through. Like Reader’s Digest junk mail, electricity and gas bills, even if the Post Office had been sold to China (what’s that, oh, it has been) and my letters rerouted via the M25, carried in the pocket of a young thief travelling on a skateboard during rush-hour, my letters always get through.

They zip past defiled statues, hoody-wearing muggers on handbag-stealing mopeds and bearded men burning poppies. They cruise through ganja-stenched knife-secreted carnivals, through nice areas deprived by people. As slippery as Hope not Hate, they riot their way down Looting Street, defying all manner of social distancing, lockdowns and Tiers for fears and, before you can say Hoorah for Brexit or Joe Biden is as honest as Clinton, they sail up your drive, through your letter box and plummet onto your doormat quicker than the stink from a suspect scientific claim.

They are so popular, my Yuletide missives, that family and friends leave home for them, and come back after Christmas ~ a long while after Christmas. Some people board up their letter boxes, others disguise them as something intimate in such a way that were you to insert a letter through them, you’d have the neighbours shout ‘pervert!’. Some teach their dogs to savage them, and others, those with ‘Beware of the Cat’ on their doors, train their feline friends to hide them under the Christmas tree ~ and scrape the soil back over.

One year my brother shoved his letter under the mistletoe, prompting his gay friend to say that he would rather kiss his own arse. He is a lonely guy, but no worries, he is double-jointed and quite the contortionist.

Selfish people, those who stockpiled toilet rolls when they heard the word pandemic, convert them into paper hats and hide the Christmas crackers for pulling on their own when they think no one is looking. Ahh, but someone is always looking, especially in these days of essential travel only. Do they really think that they can get away with it?

“Where are you going in that Support Bubble Car?”

“I am a victim of self-isolation and social distancing, officer. I am shunning all that I have ever known and all those that know me, even those who have tried to lose me, give me away or pretend that I don’t exist, such as my mother. I am going somewhere where they can’t track and trace me, and there, in the privacy of somebody else’s Tier 1 home, I will hide from the world and pull my Christmas cracker.”

“Very well,” says the Social Distancing Marshall, “but no laughing at the joke inside the cracker, mind. This is no time to be enjoying life, and don’t forget to wear your mask.”

Sorry, that was uncalled for.

“Hello, I think I may have coronavirus. I have been trying to telephone the hospital for the past three hours and nobody has answered.”

“Sorry, the hospital is as full as boatload of migrants from France. Wait a moment. Oh, it is a boat load of migrants from France. Please hang yourself. I mean hang up and try the Samarlians.”

The Samarlians ~ a not-for-profit organization that will talk you out of the ‘easy way out’:

Answer machine: “Hello, you have reached the end of your tether. I am sorry, due to a high volume of excuses about coronavirus we are unable to take your call at the moment, please leave your name and telephone number and you will never hear from us again. You might like to waste what remains of your life by visiting our website, goingaroundincircles.con, where you can often never find what it is you want to know using our FAQ Offs ~ Frequently Asked Questions Offline ~ alternatively, you will find the end of the line at your nearest Midland Mainline Station.”

Once, all you had to do was press Button A to be connected and Button B to get your money back. Now ‘you have the following options’, more numbers than the National Lottery and about the same chance of winning.

What my coronavirus Christmas letters mean to the recipients

Rumour has it that carol singers have written songs based on the contents of my Christmas letters and sold the rights to Leonard Cohen.

Christmas vicars have read them out in their sermons and have been summarily excommunicated.

Edgar Allan Poe, who essentially travelled by TARDIS, was inspired to write The Masque of the Red Death having read my treatise ‘Lockdown ~ the most effective life saver since leaches’.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas
{See end of article for image credit*}

My letters have tweaked the ears of statesmen, tickled the underbelly of boat-owning philanthropists and have sunk a thousand ships, or would have if I had my way ~ where is my letter to Sir Francis Drake?

Napoleon stuck his arm up his vest after reading one of my letters, and what would Lord Nelson have asked Hardy to do for him had he read my letter before someone shot him first?

Thank heavens Adolf burnt his letter!

As for ordinary mortals, some wrap their present to auntie Joan in them and still others wrap them around uncle Martin’s chestnuts, who would otherwise lose them on Christmas morn as he struggles to adjust his mighty pendulums attached to his very large grandfather’s clock (thank the Lord for Spell Check!).

Looking forward to my letters

People look forward to my letters so much that they ‘wish it could be Christmas every day”. One day they will write a song about it and play it every year with depressing regularity.

This year they are all busy singing to, ‘So this is Christmas and what have you done. Sat in self-isolation it isn’t much fun.” I know, let’s open one of Mick’s Christmas letters and cheer ourselves up (gunshot off stage).

My letters have a sentimental and emotional appeal. They are up there, tugging at the heart strings like that old romantic Christmas Carol, who your mother caught your father with (also Christmas Connie, Christmas Christine and Christmas Cordelia, well, Christmas comes but once a year).

Ahh, the old ones are the best (Connie was 73).

Lovely old Christmas carols

What memories these well-known carols:

“Drug King Wenceslas looked out from his boat to Dover

When the snow is not found out we’ll roll the UK over

Brightly shone the hotel sign, the waiting bus was free

It was worth the trip through several countries and across the sea, He! He!”

And do you remember this one:

“Away in a 4-star I don’t pay for my bed, the tax-payer in England pays for it instead …”

And how could you possibly forget:

“Twinkle, Twinkle celeb star who the F..K do you think you are?

Pontificating up on high?

Spreading all those EU lies.

Twinkle, Twinkle talentless star paid too much, too much by far”

Dear old Christmas Carol, one of Charles Dickens’ favourites. This will be the one year that Ebenezer Scrooge will be looking forward to a visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, anything has to be better than Father Boris’s Christmas Present.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

Although it is very important to keep in touch during a coronavirus Christmas, I don’t as a rule send the prime minister a Christmas letter, besides he will be far too busy this year reading and listening to fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. Chris Witty and Sir Patrick Vallance, sorry I don’t know them ~ and neither do you, but there is a sort of chemistry there. It reminds me of that Chad Valley Junior Scientists set I was given at Christmas a long while ago. As I recall, it was a very disappointing present, all smoke and mirrors, bits missing, as incomplete as a Liberal manifesto and it had a very funny smell about it, something slightly fishy.

Send them a Christmas letter? I would not give them the steam off my turkey. What I do like to do, however, is spice up my Christmas offerings with the odd anecdote from Christmases past.

“Please, pretty please do tell us one.”

Well, all right, if you beg nicely.

Once upon a time, long ago, when England was really England, I worked part time as a waiter. I was young once, and in those days I was a teenager. These were the bad old days, before teenagers became entitled and were able to live at home with mum until their 45^th birthday (you can ~ could? ~ always take a loan).

Teenagers in those days were not deprived as they are today. They were lucky, in that they did not have the internet from which to plagiarise articles to pass their exams with and, without keyboards and computers, they had the fun of writing all of their essays out by hand, correcting them by hand and then rewriting them by hand for presentation. This meant that they had less time for anything else, which was good, because there were no smartphones in those days and nothing to twiddle on, no Twatter, Arsebook, Snapcrap and the like. Instead, after school teenagers went out and worked.

I worked at the Talbot Hotel in Oundleshire, a very prestigious establishment, with a long history dating back to Elizabethan times and with a staircase that was said to have come from Fotheringay Castle where Mary Queen of Scots lost her head and on which staircase I almost lost my job for telling two old ladies that Mary was always looking for it in the rooms that they had paid for.

It was a posh place, the Talbot of Oundle, and still is. Standards were high. We had to wear black trousers, white shirt, cummerbund, little white pointed tail jackets and a black dicky bow. We looked like clockwork penguins. We were always well turned out, apart from one person whose flies were never done up, as if, we suspected, by no fault of accident.

It was three days before Christmas, us well turned out and him with his flies undone, that we were called to wait upon a very important table, several tables in fact containing the governors and alumni from Oundle’s prestigious public schools.

I had two salvers: one with Christmas seasoning and the other containing peas on my arm.

Several of we waiters moved along in single file serving our guests of honour. And then it came to her.

She was gorgeous, stunning, wearing a low-cut dress. She had the most diaphanous orbs you could ever imagine ~ yes, her eyes were beautiful. Mesmerised by love, or something that starts with ‘L’ and has the same number of letters, I leant over her and with the seasoning in my hand, asked:

“Would you like stuffing madam?”

The timing could not have been more perfect. Hardly had I realised that I should have used the word ‘seasoning’ than my waiter friend at the side of me, my pal, my very good pal, gave a purposeful nudge to my elbow and off went a spoonful of peas straight down the lady’s cleavage.

Talk about Captain Kirk’s ‘Space, the final frontier’!

And really, what did it sound like: “Madam, can I help you?” As she is reaching down inside, red faced and all a fluster, for those penetrative peas.

Sounds like something out of a Carry On film? How about Carry on Down the Cleavage? Rather that than Carry on Down the Pandemic.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

But what has this got to do with it being very important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas? I confess, I have digressed, when my real intention for writing this piece was to say how nice, affectionate and charming Russian Christmas cards are. Different again to the crass and vulgar things that they churn out in the UK.

Every year in the UK, Christmas cards get bigger, which is a problem for my family and friends, for it means that instead of a ‘short’ letter I can really go to town and insert a tome like War & Peace. But British Christmas cards do not just get bigger they become more vulgar each year. In keeping with declining moral standards, smutty innuendo ~which is as traditional as laxatives on Boxing Day ~ has given way to images of a semi-pornographic nature and to captions laced with obscenity. It is enough to make you lie and say that Rubber Band has comedic talent!

How much nicer these traditional Russian cards are. They remind me of the sentimental cards that were produced in wartime England ~ soft, delicate, romantic and affectionate

Of course, they are not really Christmas cards as such, as this is an Orthodox Christian country, and Christmas is celebrated on 7^th January. No, these are, for the sake of accuracy, Happy New Year cards ~Snovam Gordams.

Snovam Gordam (Happy New Year!) I shouted that last year on the stroke of midnight. You did too? Really?

Hmmm, we’d better shout twice as loud this year, as I don’t think He was listening.

By the way, sorry if you did not receive my Christmas card and letter.

No, I shouldn’t think you are!

Leonard Cohen: Waiting for the Miracle ~ A song for 2021

Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death
(Image credit: Harry Clarke – Printed in Edgar Allan Poe'sTales of Mystery and Imagination, 1919., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2348546)

Coronavirus in Kaliningrad 25 June

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 98 [25 June 2020]

Published: 26 June 2020

After hiding out for what seems like forever and making a splendid job of it, even if I do say so myself, I had to see a doctor last week. We hypochondriacs have to, you know. We are a bit like train spotters. When the mood takes us, we are sat there outside the medical centre notebook in hand, recording the types and make of doctor as they come and go.

Although I instinctively feel that the majority of people are being lulled into a sense of coronavirus false security by the relaxing of this and that, I, for one, am not. So, I did not relish the thought of laying myself on the line (an old train spotter’s metaphor) by exposing myself (an old hypochondriac’s joke) to the greater risk of coronavirus-catching in one of Kaliningrad’s medical centres.

Whether it is better or whether it is worse, I have no idea, but the medical centres here ~ at least, the ones that I have been too ~ are nothing like the huge great rambling hospitals that we have in the UK. I realise that there are hospitals here as well, but my doctor-spotting experiences have so far, and thankfully, been limited to clinics or centres, all of which have certain things in common.

As with Kaliningrad’s dentists’ surgeries, before you cross over the threshold into the reception area it is mandatory that you don a little pair of light blue, transparent, elasticised protective-shoe thingies over your footwear.

The reception usually comprises a tall counter, divided into numbered sections with three or four receptionists behind it.

You say who you are, reference your appointment and off you go, Dr spotting. What you do not do is head off into a monstrous waiting room full of the world and its wife, and several others, of every ethnic extraction known to person.

No, you set off along a series of little narrow corridors with lots of numbered doors on one or either side. Once you find your allocated door, you take a seat. There are five or six opposite each door. Now, the corridors are rather tight, but there are very few people in them, and every two seats have the third one rendered void as indicated by the presence of a red strip of vertical tape, thus alerting you to the social distancing rule.

All in sundry are wearing masks, naturally ~ it is the New Normal, you know ~ but the nature and layout of the building means that folk are still quite close.

In UK hospitals, in the never-ending sized waiting rooms there is more space but, as we all know, lots and lots of people, so perhaps the two differences equal themselves out.

Coronavirus in Kaliningrad 25 June 2020

We did travel by taxi to the centre, with all windows open and masks on, but we walked back home. On the way we discovered an old German block of flats on its last historic legs and marveled at the existence of such things in a large modern city such as this, and the natural habitat in which it stood, which has to be for me one of the enduring joys of Kaliningrad’s character ~ this place of eclectic contrasts. I am so used to England, where every square foot of land has been built upon and every barn and factory requisitioned for residential housing, and every garden carved up for more housing, and every piece of city space gentrified beyond necessity that to find a large garden which is what it has always been and a leafy lane with a fence constructed out of old barn sides and doors, takes me back to the England of my youth, where Britons were Britons and things were real, not virtual.

As for this old German building, alas, its days are numbered. But we did pay homage to it by taking a couple of photos of the building and its surrounds.

Mick Hart celebrates the natural environment of Kaliningrad — Mick Hart celebrating Kaliningrad’s natural environment

Coronavirus in Kaliningrad 25 June Diary of a Self-isolator — Remains of a Königsberg building ~ Kaliningrad 25 June 2020

On our walk back home I also noticed, with a strange sense of alienation before relief, that there were people sitting eating and drinking in the outside area of one of the Britannica pubs, a phenomenon witnessed again and on the same street at another café bar.

It was grand to see these drinking establishments engaged again, although I am not quite ready myself to return to the café-bar circuit!

Coronavirus in Kaliningrad as at 25 June 2020**
👁2373 people have been infected in the region
👁Of these, 1356 recovered
👁38 coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic
👁17 cases of coronavirus infection identified today

Source (accessed 25 June 2020):
**https://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/briefs/community/23819274-v-oblasti-za-sutki-vyyavili-17-novykh-sluchaev-koronavirusa-vypisannykh-menshe.html

Isolation Restrictions Change in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 54 [12 May 2020]

Published: 12 May 2020

A round-up of coronavirus news in Kaliningrad

It is official: ‘universal self-isolation’ in the Kaliningrad region is no longer operational¹ and many people are back to work. Restrictions still apply for people over 65 years of age and those suffering from chronic diseases, and children under 14 years of age can only leave their homes when accompanied by an adult. These rules apply until 31 May 2020. Anybody arriving from outside the region is subject to quarantine.

The usual precautions, such as social distancing, should still be observed and it is now compulsory to wear masks in public places, shops etc, but wearing masks in the street is optional.

Shopping centres will be allowed to open, but for limited hours, but parks and sports grounds will remain closed and all large events with mass gatherings are prohibited.

At this point I am not quite sure whether cafes, bars and restaurants have been unshackled. My translation of the press report I am reading states ‘Some restrictions remain – for example, on the work of cafes and restaurants, hotels … ‘¹

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 54 [12 May 2020]

The official number of people infected with coronavirus in the Kaliningrad region has risen and today’s figure, at the time of writing (10.56am), is 772².

“In total, to date in Russia 232,243 cases of coronavirus have been detected in 85 regions. Over the entire period, 2116 deaths were recorded, 43 512 people recovered.” (Source: newkaliningrad.ru²)

“Officials attribute the increase [in numbers of cases detected] to mass testing and detecting asymptomatic cases not always counted in other countries.” (Source: the moscowtimes.com³)

It was also reported today that the construction of a multifunctional medical centre in Kaliningrad is scheduled for completion by the end of this week⁴.

My plans are much the same: a once-a-week trip to the local shop ~ oh, and wearing my mask as I do so …

References

1.)) https://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/briefs/community/23616406-v-kaliningradskoy-oblasti-so-vtornika-otmenyaetsya-rezhim-vseobshchey-samoizolyatsii.html

2.))https://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/briefs/community/23616455-v-kaliningradskoy-oblasti-vyyavili-19-novykh-sluchaev-koronavirusa.html

3.)) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/12/russias-coronavirus-cases-surge-past-230k-as-putin-eases-national-lockdown-a69710

4.))https://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/briefs/community/23616471-v-minoborony-poobeshchali-dostroit-medtsentr-v-kaliningrade-do-kontsa-nedeli.html

Staying At Home in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 10 [29 March 2020]

Published: 29 March 2020

‘People are people everywhere’ is an expression the meaning of which we can quite confidently assume is that, irrespective of country and culture, hopes, fears, joys, sorrows and other defining proclivities shared by human kind are more or less the same the world over. From this precept stems a universal truth, and one which I am sure a certain philosophical gentleman would ratify if his remains at the side of Königsberg Cathedral allowed, which is that among the common characteristics that we the people possess there lies in equal abundance attributes many of which we can be proud and, by default, flaws, shortcomings which, whilst they cannot promise to dismay some, those who are wanting in commonsense, will certainly dismay if not confound others.

Article 1: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 1 [20 March 2020]
Article 2: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 6 [25 March 2020]
Article 3: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 7 [26 March 2020]
Article 4: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 8 [28 March 2020]

Staying at Home Kaliningrad. Do not go to the coast! — (Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/ 😮[Sorry, silly sanction block ~ link removed] )

Staying at home in Kaliningrad

For example, events as they unfold in the new coronavirus age beg the question, what is it about the simple phrase ‘Stay at home’, that is not so easily understood? Is it so difficult, so impossible to comprehend? Perhaps it contains some encoded subliminal message, such that when uttered by governments, medical services and scientists it immediately translates, albeit to a minority, into ‘please hop into your car and sail off down to the seaside’.

Staying at home in Kaliningrad & everywhere else

Life, as they say, is too short (and is getting considerably shorter) to dwell too studiously on matters so abstruse, which is possibly why I have been whiling away my self-isolation time with place-name wordplay, taking the name of that well-known and popular British seaside resort Skegness, and integrating components of it with Svetlogorsk and Zelinogradsk. The result is not that bad: Skegogorsk still has a must-go there ring to it and Zelinogness is quite blissfully irresistible, whilst Skegness certainly increases its pulling power as Svetlogness, and Skegnogradsk is somewhere you would have to go to even if you didn’t and especially were told that you shouldn’t.