Russia pandemic update: Looking for herd immunity and becoming less affected
In the past two weeks, the daily number of confirmed cases has fluctuated between 8K and 10K, and its rate of growth decelerated from over 4% closer to 2%. The disease spread has seemingly stabilized in Russia. It cannot be ruled out that the new “generation” of viruses is now less aggressive than its ancestors from early in the year, as most of those stronger viruses that killed people also ceased to exist together with their hosts. In some sense, viruses and humans are learning how to co-exist as the former cannot exist without the latter, while the latter cannot stay in lockdown indefinitely and obey all the imposed rules and restrictions. Ability to compromise is a basic law of nature as killing others often means eventually being killed as well.
The co-existence of humans and microorganisms, such as various viruses and bacteria (microflora), some of which can be harmful, neutral, and even useful for human bodies, to some extent resembles the co-existence of ordinary people and politicians. The latter cannot simply exist without the former, while the former needs some governance, i.e., the latter. Russia’s ruling elite has a certain credit of trust from the country’s population, and if the economic situation improves over the rest of the year, which has gradually been the case already as occasional reports from retailers and bankers suggest, the Russian economy will muddle through the current crisis in a similar fashion as in the past, i.e., “shaken, not stirred”.
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