Third wave in Russia: was it avoidable?
Unlike in most European countries, there were hardly any coronavirus restrictions in Russia for months. However less than 10 percent of the population has been vaccinated so far, and now the number of cases is rapidly rising. This has prompted a debate about compulsory vaccination (in Moscow regulations have already been introduced obliging companies to ensure that 60 percent of their employees are vaccinated) - and above all about the reasons for the debacle.
The West was cleverer
For a change, the state news agency Ria Novosti praises the West for its actions:
“All our citizens had to do was show a sense of responsibility and get vaccinated. However, the vast majority utterly blew it, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of liberal policies and unjustified trust in common sense in crisis situations. At the same time, it was confirmed that the Western states were right. From the beginning they had no illusions about large parts of their populations acting on common sense and therefore squeezed their societies into a narrow corridor of action.”
Stripped of all sense of responsibility
For Radio Kommersant FM, the failure of the vaccination campaign is
“not surprising but the result of the state's decades-long paternalistic attitude towards its citizens, in whom the idea was inculcated that individual voices or actions decide nothing, and that everything is settled for us somewhere in the corridors of state power. That's why people believe that the personal decision to be vaccinated has no influence on overall developments: Let others get vaccinated, we'll wait and see. Because if it were really necessary we'd be forced to do it, period. Apparently, that's exactly what it comes down to now.”