Russian x-risks newsletter summer 2021
There were not many x-risk-related events in this period in Russia.
Covid mortality reached all times high in Russia, despite obvious lies about the number of deaths: they are almost always 799 a day. This is mostly due to the delta variant and failure to vaccinate most people. As a friend said: “My organisation is making up all numbers. Why I should believe the numbers from the other Russian organisation about vaccine efficiency?” However, citizen scientists showed that only the Sputnik vaccine actually works, and two other Russian vaccines, Covivak and Epivak, have near-zero efficiency. No foreign vaccines are allowed in Russia.
I have revaccinated with Astrazeneca in Montenegro and had some small peripheral neuropathy in the leg as a side effect. Revaccination with Sputnik is also open in Russia, but Russian vaccination certificates are not accepted in most countries.
Smoke from large forest fires in Yakutia region reached the North Pole. Russia has one of the largest forest reserves in the world and it was suggested decades ago that artificial fires in them could cause an effect similar to nuclear winter and be used as a climatic weapon.
As it typically happens, aeroplane accidents peaked in August, with 8 different aircraft crashed, all Russian made, but no large ones. This is due to the peak in tourism and tests as well as the peak of hot weather.
Can you link to the source for this? For some reason Google really wants me to find articles about Sputnik’s efficacy or safety concerns about the other two vaccines (lack of phase 3 trial), but not anything about their efficacies.
Meduza.io did some research on epivac and find signs of corruption: controllers had a stake in production company, no antibodies found by independent tests, data was collected by e-mail and result were published in small Russian journal. You can start here and then check links below the article: https://meduza.io/news/2021/06/17/u-poloviny-dobrovoltsev-privivshihsya-epivakkoronoy-cherez-9-mesyatsev-ne-obnaruzhili-antitel-k-koronavirusu
There were FB and telegram publications about covivak with similar finding: high morality rates, low level of antibodies. This is especially disappointing as many people waited for covivak, whole-virus)based vaccine as more traditional alternative to vector vaccine. See. eg here: https://www.facebook.com/khaltourina/posts/10226515400017272
Thanks for the report.
Is there anywhere we can find more or less reliable statistics on Covid deaths?
More reliable is data from statistical agency Rosstat, which shows population changes. In general it shows that excess deaths due to covid are around two times higher than daily reported deaths. More here: https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-58359675
Some critics said that even Rosstat data could be underreporting. In some regions undereporting is 10 times, as discussed in https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-58189039