Tag Archives: Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive?

Great minds think alike and think for those who will not think

Published: 29 October 2021 ~ Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive?

In my pursuit of all things bright and beautiful, which is about as hopeful and hopeless as the quest for the Holy Grail, I read all sorts of things from all sorts of news media sources, some more dubious than others.

This was how I came across a media outlet of which before I was blissfully ignorant, in which the contributors continually refer to themselves and their ilk using the self-elevating term ‘progressive’.

Sounds like a bit of back-slapping aggrandisement to you? Yes, me too.

So, what is the definition of ‘progressive’?

The first definition I encountered was this: “happening or developing gradually or in stages”. And the example given was, “a progressive decline in popularity”.

This is interesting, because when we think of the term progressive in relation to the word progress, which I am sure is how ‘progressives’ use the term, we think of positive movement, of ‘forward’ and ‘up’, not, as in the example given, ‘negative’ and ‘down’.

However, if we allow ourselves a little latitude of thought, how many times have we heard the word ‘progress’ used ironically and/or pejoratively?

For example, a beautiful Victorian house is demolished to make way for a 1960s’ block of concrete flats: ‘That’s progress!’

Or an old church or chapel is converted into a cattle-market nightclub: ‘It’s called progress’.

From these examples alone, we can infer that ‘progress’ is like the small-print easily missed by the naive when entrusting their hard-earned cash to investments on the stock market ~ ‘The price of shares may change quickly, and they may go down as well as up’ ~ and that by extension, progressives, who see themselves wholly in a saintly and hallowed light, up there on a pedestal, can also belong to the twilight world, down there in the deluding shadows of fanatical devotion.

So, in simple, layman’s terms, what is this thing that calls itself progressive? In language other than complimentary, you or I would probably be tempted to say that progressive is just a fallacious synonym for the colloquialism ‘liberal-lefty’ and that the users of the misnomer have merely forgotten how the latter is spelt.

Are Progressives progressively less progressive?

The article that I chanced upon which goaded me to examine this aberration of linguistic etymology was published by an American online source, but there is no reason to suppose that the misapplication of the term ‘progressive’ is any less misapplied in Boris- as in Biden-land.

The article itself is not worth reading, so there is little point in referencing it, but the premise is a revealing one as it illustrates beautifully the way in which a progressive’s mind works, or does not work as the case may be, and the way that as a group, progressives have no option but to conform to an ideological status quo that is about as liberal as a straightjacket. Succinctly put, the presumption is that ‘good progressives’, ‘good liberals’, do what they are told to do, say what they are told to say and keep their minds shut whilst doing and saying it ~ although, as even the most cursory observation reveals, in average liberal circles (are there any others?) there is an awful lot more saying than actually doing.

What do you mean, you already know that!

Please, no heckling!

Are Progressives progressively less progressive?

The story starts like this: Once upon a time in America there was a progressive living out his life in the New Restrictive Coronavirus Age. This progressive was thoroughly adjusted. He believed in and followed unquestioningly every rule and regulation handed down to him from the neoliberal globalists on high. Lockdowns, mask-wearing and vaccination in perpetuity were things that he subscribed to and, as is the way with liberal dogma, if he subscribed to them than everyone else in the world, or at least his world, must subscribe to them too, or else!

Loyal, devoted and brainwashed, this progressive nevertheless recognised that there are and would be dissenters, but the last place, the very last place, that he thought that he would find them was in the progressive heartland of the town from whence he hailed.

Thus, when he discovered that a number, and quite a considerable number, of folk from the progressive place that he had once called home, contained people who, in spite of their ordainment, were ant-vaccine oriented, he was shocked to his liberal core.

Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive? Shock!

Unthinkable as it was, a faction of the party faithful had turned their backs on the official narrative and instead of baahhing like sheep, ‘Jab Today Pay-For-It Tomorrow’, were standing together in opposition to enforced mass vaccination. What were these people thinking of? Why were these liberals thinking?! Baaaahhhhh!

Devastated and confused, the author of this painful piece twists, writhes and hand wrings his way through something that is evidently quite beyond his comprehension. His fruitless journey takes him not in search of answers but in a desperate need to find an excuse, something, he hopes, which will look like a hook on which he can hang his confusion and leave it out to dry.

The decree handed down to loyal liberal subjects from the neoliberal globalists on high is as plain as the muzzle on your face: everyone should vaccinate and never cease vaccinating until either the word to halt is given or when common sense has been eclipsed and the Earth has frozen over, whichever happens first ~ and I think, children, we all know which of the two it will be!

The progressive author of this progressive article openly admits, as if he is pinning a badge of honour to his rompers, that he has severed ties with people from the blighted town to which he refers ‘because of their views on vaccines’. By which he means views that do not expressly conform to his views and the ideological credos in which his views are parroted. “Thanks for being my father, but I can no longer speak to or see you again because your views on enforced mass vaccination are different from mine. Your loveless, progressive son, A.W. Anchor.”

Well, throw my rattle out of my pram! A typical progressive reaction: do not agree with what you say, do not want to hear what you say, want to stick my fingers up, er, in my ears!

He then asks (and note how illuminating this is about progressives!), I paraphrase: how can ‘vaccine-hesitant progressives reconcile their decision not to vaccinate’, presumably with a dogmatic, unyielding, inflexible ideology that says that they must vaccinate. Here is the punch line: do they, progressives, ‘abandon progressivism and put personal choice first’?

So, there you have it in a nuthouse: an either/or situation. The implication is that personal choice is not something you can exercise if you want to be considered a good liberal and remain within the fold. (There are those sheep again!)

Back to the self-illuminating manuscript: With no ladders in his progressive mind, the author of this curious work continues to slide down the slippery snake, until eventually, with nothing else to appease himself with and nowhere else to go, he lands on square one, which is occupied by a female liberal journalist. Unfortunately, this female progressive does not provide him with the answer that he so desperately wants to hear, but the frustrated witch hunt ends with her.

Englishman in Kaliningrad sees liberal witch on broomstick

Poor, benighted, fallen-from-grace, gender-certain, female progressive ~ and you may all shake your heads sadly at this point ~ she does not see “any disconnect between” the progressive values she espouses and her willingness to lean towards the anti-vaccine lobby, which, as the media would have us believe, is a demoniacal cult that must be confined at all costs to the ghost town Conspiracy Theory, a town that they have conveniently buried many light years away in an arid socio-political wilderness, a town that bears, some say, more than a passing and chilling resemblance to Auschwitz, not least because of the motto raised high above the globalist gate: : ‘Mass Vaccination will set You Free’.

“Well, hello there! Aren’t you Enoch Powell?”

“Go! Hence from here, forthwith. This is no place for progressives!!”

{The sound of sheep can be heard in the background.}

This poor outcast of a woman becomes, in one fell swoop, the personification of the liberal paradox: a first-class liberal who yet possesses enough resilience and independence of mind not to cow-toe to stereotyping mandates.

To excuse, pardon and absolve this pathetic creature is more than clemency can brook. In Victorian times they would have had her committed. In days of yore they would have burnt her at the stake. But in 2021, the next best thing is to cast aspersions on her ideological credentials and curse her for eternity. Should she ever have the temerity to air her heresies again, she can be sure of falling foul of those juvenile snotty-nosed know-nothings who play at politics in university crèches, known as student unions ~ led in the UK, naturally, by Oxford ~ and, with the help of the ‘ban them, bar them, block them’ social media mafia, will suffer herself to be finally hanged on the public deplatform of her own making. And doesn’t it serve her right! The deviating Bitch

Thus for all their progressiveness, progressives, it would seem, are not so progressive as to eschew ritual or to emancipate themselves from thoughts and actions that repeatedly define them as tedious and predictable.

For example, when neoliberals, those saints, those Gods on high ~ you know who I am talking about, the billionaire philanthropists, technology tycoons and the super-rich banking families ~ throw crumbs from their banqueting table, their otherwise submerged progressive pets obediently rise from the depths where no thoughts of their own are allowed to exist and gobble up what’s tossed to them, hook, line and sinker. This is the liberal way.

Like fish in a fish farm they mindlessly swallow everything that is fed to them, mistaking the net that draws them in as their masters’ reward for loyalty rather than see it for what it is, and all the while the clock ticks down to the hour of harvest festival.

Progressive neoliberal hook for the less progressive

In conclusion, therefore, the article submitted by the angst-ridden progressive is nothing more than a touch of seismic disbelief: ‘How could this possibly be?’ ‘How dare they think out of the box?’ ‘How dare these liberals think?’ ‘How dare they?’ ‘Just how dare they?’ ‘How?’

Is this your last word on the subject?

Why not grant that privilege to Nigel Farage. He’s really rather good where last words are concerned, and if anyone can put a full stop to this, then surely he is the man!

Farage: Western leaders’ Covid policy pushing us to a two-tier society

Image attributions
Man stopped by giant hand: https://openclipart.org/download/168136/1329075888.svg
Shocked monkey: https://openclipart.org/download/236668/Shocked-Monkey.svg
Boat in clouds with hook: https://openclipart.org/download/263243/FishHook.svg
Go back to square one: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=278623&picture=back-to-square-one
Witch on broomstick: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Witch-with-broom/69518.html

A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 579 [14 October 2021]

Published: 14 October 2021 ~ A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

ON THE 9^thOF OCTOBER, the day after the QR code restrictions hit Kaliningrad, Olga and I walked through the atmospheric autumnal streets of Königsberg and then whizzed off by bus across the other side of town on an errand.

Having alighted from public transport, we decided to stop for a coffee. If we had attempted to enter a café, restaurant or bar today, we would have had to produce a QR code, but because we were buying refreshments from a pavement kiosk, we were, at least for the moment, QR exempt.

Subliminally, the advertising gimmick had worked. I saw a giant cup and a cup of coffee I wanted.

As I waited for my brew, I could not resist contemplating what it must be like to go to work each day not in an office, school, fire station, police station, on a building site or in a city bar but inside a giant coffee cup ~ and an orange one at that!

Through the little glass windowed serving hatch it did not look as if there was an awful lot of room inside the cup, and I began to imagine some of the more expansive people whom I knew in the UK working there. I concluded that they would not be so much inside the cup as wearing it.

Coffee can be bought from kiosks during a new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Joss, my brother, could live in it. I could see the place slowly converting before my eyes. It had a television arial on top, a satellite dish on the side and protruding from the roof a long metal chimney that was smoking like a volcano. Outside, there was a crate of empty beer bottles and a pair of old pants and socks, both with holes in them, hanging on a homemade line strung across the front of the cup, looking like last month’s tea towels.

If this coffee cup was for sale in London, it would be described by London estate agents as ‘a most desirable property’, well-appointed and almost offering commanding views over the road to the bus stop. You certainly would not get much change out of a million quid for it. Five miles outside of Dover, with a 5-star sign above it, the cup would be housing a boat load of migrants. Why Nigel Farage is gazing at it from a hilltop through his binoculars the British government will never know ~ and don’t want to! But this is hardly surprising, as Nigel has a reputation for waking up first and smelling the coffee!

With no one any the wiser as to whether we had a QR code, a bar code, a one-time code, a code that needed verifying or a code that was Top Secret, we took full advantage of our incognitoism by finding a spot in the autumnal sun in which to savour our brew.

Giant pavement-side coffee cups, even bright orange ones, do not as a rule run to tables outside, but just at the back of this one there happened to be an old, long, green Soviet bench, where one could drink one’s coffee whilst ruminating upon the good old days when the proletariat sitting here would have been comfortably unaware that the USSR when it folded would eventually be replaced with coronavirus QR codes. This long and sturdy bench also facilitated my admiration of the pretty and well-stocked flower bed and enabled me to keep an eye on the plums.

Plums! What plums? Whose plums were they? And how had these plums got there? They weren’t aloft growing on a tree these plums but scattered upon the ground. Someone, I conjectured, must have sworn bitterly, perhaps a bit stronger than blaher moohar, when the bottom of the bag that they had been carrying split, plummeting plums all over the paving slabs.

The who and the why of the plums, whilst inspiring at first, soon gave way to the far more exciting realisation that by observing people’s reactions to the plums, I could play the psychoanalyst and categorise them according to plum personalities. Of course, the way they approached and dealt with the plums would not help me to determine whether or not they were in full possession of their QR codes, were evading pricks or considering vaccination at any moment, possibly when they least expected it, but when all was said and done the experiment would be an interesting one, and, besides, I had a cup of coffee to drink.

Twenty sips or so into my coffee and a substantial cohort of pedestrians later, and I had been able to determine that there are basically four types of plum approachers.

1. Those that spotted the plums and walked around them, giving them a particularly wide berth. Any wider and they would have needed a visa, not to mention a coronavirus test or six, as they inadvertently crossed the Polish border.

2. Those who spotted the plums but carried on walking anyway, chatting casually to their companions as though they were no strangers to plums in public places, yet who picked their way through them gingerly as they would a minefield on their way to buying a Sunday newspaper.

3. Next came the sort of people that you would not want to walk across a minefield with, since, seemingly oblivious to their feet and where they were putting them, they inevitably stepped on one or two plums, immediately looking down in alarm at the squish beneath their shoes, no doubt fearing that the lack of fines for Fido’s indifferent owners had landed them in it yet again.

4. Finally, it was the turn of “I’ll give them plums on pavements!” This category was mostly comprised of manly men; you know the sort, either their arms don’t fit or they have gone and grown a beard, not knowing why they have done it and because, quite obviously, it certainly does not suit them, it was the last thing on Earth, next to deliberately stepping on plums, that they should have gone and done to themselves, unless it really was their intention to make themselves look like a bit of a dick.

This category saw the plums but chose to pay no heed to them. They juggernauted along as if plums grew on trees and these boots were made for walking. Unbeknown to them, however, plums can be slippery customers and more than once were the over-confident nearly sent arse overhead. They would step, squash, slip a little, look around really embarrassed, hoping no one had seen them, and then hurry on their way, leaving behind the priceless memory of a bright red face burning like a forest fire in a beard to which they were both ill suited, as well as a boot-imprinted trail of squishy-squashy plum juice.

So, what I had learnt from all this plum gazing? Not a lot. It had been a different way of occupying one’s mind whilst drinking a cup of coffee, although it had made me wish that I was 14 years’ old again, so that I could shout, “Watch out for the plums!” or simply “Plums!” But you can’t go around doing silly things like that when you are (ha! ha!) a ‘mature person’, especially not when you are in somebody else’s country. I bet Adolf Hitler never shouted “Plums!” when he was cruising about the streets of Paris. Boat migrants to England certainly don’t. They just shout, “Take me to your 5-star hotel and give me benefits!” And liberals, who always find something to shout about, would, on seeing the black shiny plums in their path, have been unable to resist the wokeness of going down on one knee whilst crying, “My white knees are in trousers, please forgive me, I am too privileged”.

Conkers on the day of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Young boy: They ain’t plums!
Me: I know. But I just wanted to show that in Kaliningrad at this time of year there are also a lot of horse-chestnut tree …
Young boy: You put those there because you ain’t got any pictures of plums …
Me: Why you cheeky little f …

I finished my coffee, wished the entertaining plums good day, and off we went to complete our errand.

On the way, on this second day of QR codes, giant cups and plums (plums, no less, my friends, which had fallen by the wayside), we overheard a lady at a bus stop complaining loudly to anyone who had a mind (or not) to listen.

It was quite evident by her excited, ruffled and animated manner that she had recently undergone a most traumatic experience. Apparently, she had ventured into a small café to buy some jam and was horrified to discover that not only were most of the people inside the shop not wearing masks but, as far as she could ascertain, none had been asked for their QR codes. “I shall report them! I shall report them!” she wailed, shouting so loud that had her mask been properly in place, which it wasn’t, it would have fallen from her nose, like plums from a wet paper bag, to end up uselessly wrapped around her chin. It was fortunate, therefore, that such a calamity could not occur, as that is where her mask was anyway ~ swaddled around her chin protecting it from coronavirus.

On completion of our errand (there has to be some mystery in this post somewhere!), whilst sitting on the bus with my mask strapped to my elbow, I drifted into contemplation of the feasibility of QR codes extended to encumber access to the city’s supermarkets.

I wondered: “Does it mean that if you do not want to get vaccinated you will have to buy your own shop?” And: “What is the going rate for one of those giant coffee cups?”

Mick Hart on Day 2 of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

If it does happen, if they do impose QR code restrictions on shops, I can see some astute entrepreneur, some Russian equivalent to Del Boy, quickly cashing in on the act. It is not difficult to imagine a fleet of shops on wheels whipping about the city from one estate to another, selling everything from buckwheat to outsize, wooly, babushka-made socks.

Alternatively, we could convert our garage into a Cash & Cart-it Off. Our garage stands at the end of the garden, some distance from the road, but in these coronavirus-challenged times what once might have been regarded as a commercial disadvantage could potentially be transposed into a positive marketing ploy.

All that was needed would be to install large glass windows in the sides of the garage, stack shelves behind them full of sundry goods, position two telescopes on the side of the pavement, preferably coin operated so as to make a few extra kopeks and, Boris your uncle, Svetlana your aunt, you’re in business!

Potential buyers viewing our wares through the telescopes provided could place their orders by Arsebook messenger. On receipt of their orders we would select the goods, load them on the conveyor belt and ship them from store to roadside before you could say, who’s making millions out of the sales of coronavirus masks? What could be better than that? Accessible shops, you say?

Come to think of it, there are probably not a lot more inconvenient places than shops where QR codes could be implemented, except, of course, for public lavs.

Imagine getting jammed in the bog turnstile unable to get your mobile phone from your pocket to display your QR code whilst the call of Nature grows ever more shrill!

This situation, difficult though not insurmountable, would stretch both the imagination and the resources of even the brightest entrepreneur, who would be faced with the daunting prospect of rigging up some curious contraption or other, consisting of a series of pipes, funnels and retractable poes on sticks.

On a less grand but no less adventurous scale, my wife has suggested that we plough up the lawn at our dacha and use it for growing potatoes, which is not such a bad idea, as it would mean no longer having to mow the lawn. But would it mean that we would have to get a statutory dog that never stops barking as a deterrent to potato thieves and to ensure that our neighbours are completely deprived of peace? “What is the use of having a dog that don’t bark? An intelligent lady once said to us. Answer: about as much use as one that never stops barking! Or about as much use as a dog owner who allows its dog to incessantly bark.

Whilst a constant supply of beer and vodka would not be a problem as we could always convert our Soviet garage back to what it was obviously used for when it was first constructed, alas ploughed up lawns will not grow washing sponges or cultivate tins of baked beans. And the last thing that I would want, even if my potato patch was the best thing since Hungary stood up to bullying EU bureaucrats, was to own something so useless that all it does is shite on pavements and bark as if a potato thief has thrust a firework up its arse before leaving the garden with a sack on his back.

Of course, all things considered, it would be far easier and, perhaps, far wiser, certainly less embarrassing, just to go and get vaccinated. But if you do that, will you be tempted to go out every night to the city’s bars and restaurants, just to say that you can? And if so, can you or any of us for that matter, be 100% sure that, even after vaccination and thirty years of boosters, whichever vaccine it is and from wherever the vaccine comes from, will we, the little ordinary people, be guaranteed at some point, preferably sooner than later, a return to the life that we had before? Er, or any life, for that matter. >>‘This statement is false!!!! (See G Soros’ Fact Checker). You will now be redirected to the neoliberal globalist version, which is as honest as philanthropy and almost twice as honest as the EU parliament ~ which is not exactly difficult (Source: An Open Borders Publication}’<<

Plough a straight furrow or walk a taut tightrope, whichever path you choose to take, do ‘Watch out for those plums!’

ON TOPIC>
A trilogy of games by that renowned board-game maker John Wankinson: the perfect way to unlock, unwind and vaccinate whilst taking your mind off coronavirus and the interminable elusiveness of returning to normality:
UK Lockdown New Board Game
Exit Strategy Board Game
Clueless ~ a World Health Board Game

Image attributions:
Yapping dog: https://www.clipartmax.com/download/m2i8Z5H7G6A0N4H7_barking-dog-animal-free-black-white-clipart-images-yap-clipart/
Plums: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/539028.htm

Is the Vaccine now Mandatory in Russia?

Vaccines & the curious effect of the word Mandatory

Published: 29 June 2021 ~ Is the Vaccine now Mandatory in Russia?

{*image attribution at end of article}

To learn on the same day Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte vowed that he would track down all those who refused the vaccine and inject them in the arse that the word ‘mandatory’ had emerged in Russia relating to the vaccine was arguably not the most auspicious timing possible.

Whilst I have no difficulty imagining these measures being adopted in the UK without much, if any, opposition ~ picture hordes (yes, I said, hordes) of young men dressed only in rainbow underpants skipping, not very fast, through Nob-butts Garden Centre, hotly pursued by several masked and white-coated gentlemen (two looking suspiciously like Matt Hancock and Fauci) with their syringes in their hands ~ the thought of something similar happening here, in Russia, just does not bare arsing about!

Imagine being chased through the tangled undergrowth of the lonely Russian countryside (where, incidentally, the lupins are gorgeous at this time of year) by five burly Russian men in paramilitary uniforms; chased until you cannot go on anymore (you can, but you won’t!); and then it happens ~ one of them brings you to the ground with a rugby tackle and, before you can say Bill Gates, its pants down, vaccination administered!

Well, it probably won’t come to this after all, as, according to The Moscow Times¹, the term ‘mandatory’ is defined like this:

“Though vaccination remains voluntary for Russians, service workers face losing their jobs if they decide not to have the jab.”

The same article states:

“From June 28, all Moscow cafes and restaurants will only serve customers who have been vaccinated, had Covid-19 in the past six months or present a negative test taken within the past 78 hours.”

AP News²reported that 18 Russian regions had made vaccinations mandatory for employees in certain sectors and listed government offices, retail, health care, education, restaurants and other service industries.

Meanwhile in Kaliningrad, a local news report today states that

“in the Kaliningrad region, mandatory vaccination was announced for officials and workers in several areas – trade, catering, transport services, education. By August 20, at least 60% of employees must be vaccinated. Now in the region more than 140 thousand people have been vaccinated with the first component.”³

So, it does look like being chased around the House of Soviets is not an option. Perhaps it is time to put away those running shoes and roll your sleeves up after all!

How & Where to Get Vaccinated in Kaliningrad³

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Image attribution

Image attribution [‘We Can Do It!’]: <a href=”https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/we-can-do-it”>We Can Do It Vectors by Vecteezy</a> [https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/98839-vector-poster-we-can-do-it]

Image attribution [pointing finger]: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/1667119.htm

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References
1. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/24/muscovites-flock-to-vaccination-centers-amid-mandatory-jab-push-a74325 [accessed 28 June 2021]
2. https://apnews.com/article/europe-russia-health-coronavirus-pandemic-business-42d0c14f0545371e16a360b677cb4c38 [accessed 28 June 2021]
3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/95771-v-centre-kaliningrada-vystroilas-ogromnaya-ochered-v-mobilnyj-punkt-vakcinacii-ot-koronavirusa

Further reading:
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer

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/)