“You can’t believe in anyone”: Hidden devastation of Covid in Russia is already an open secret

SAMARA, Russia.- The woman broke into the hospital morgue and saw bodies everywhere, more than a dozen, in black bags on the stretchers. He went straight to the autopsy room and begged the guard in the black jacket: “May I speak to the doctor who opened my father’s body?”.

Olga Kagarlitskaya’s father had been hospitalized a few weeks earlier in a Covid-19 neighborhood. Now he was dead, and the cause was “non-specific viral pneumonia”. Kagarlitskaya was recording the scene on her cell phone, because she wanted to know the truth. But the guard, without taking his hands out of his pockets, threw it away.

According to statistics from the government itself, thousands of similar cases occurred in Russia last year. In 2020, during the pandemic, at least 300,000 more people died than what is recorded in the most cited official statistics in Russia.

Not all of these deaths were necessarily caused by the virus. But they deny President Vladimir Putin’s claim that the country has handled the pandemic better than most countries. In fact, an analysis of mortality data by the journal The New York Times shows that last year, during the pandemic, deaths in Russia were 28% higher than normal, representing a larger increase in mortality than in the United States and most European countries.

“People did not objectively know the situation,” Kagarlitskaya says. “And if you don’t know how the situation is objectively, you are not afraid.”

For much of 2020, Russia appeared to be more focused on public relations and the economics of the pandemic than on actually fighting the virus. After a hard two-month lockdown in the Russian Spring last year, the government fully relaxed restrictions over the summer, a boon to public opinion and the economy, but the disease has started to spread further quickly.

In the fall, Russian scientists had already developed a vaccine against Covid which is now considered one of the best in the world, but the Kremlin did more to use Sputnik V to advance a few boxes on the geopolitical table rather than immunize their own population.

But perhaps the pinnacle of the Kremlin’s top priorities is the underreporting of coronavirus deaths, a move that many critics say has caused much of the population to overlook the dangers of the disease and the importance of it. to get vaccinated.

Until last Saturday, the official death toll in Russia – reported on public television and broadcast to the World Health Organization (WHO) – was 102,649 deaths, a figure much lower compared to the country’s population. European countries.

However, Russia’s national statistical agency, Rosstat, which counts deaths from all causes, paints a whole different picture. Based on an analysis of historical data by The New York Times, between April and December of last year, there were some 360,000 above normal deaths in Russia. Rosstat figures for January and February of this year reveal that this indicator has passed 400,000 deaths.

In the United States, which has more than double the population of Russia, those “excess deaths” have reached 574,000 since the start of the pandemic. Based on this indicator, which for many demographers is the most accurate way to measure the overall impact, the pandemic has killed 1 in 400 people in Russia, compared to 1 in 600 in the United States.

“It’s hard to find a country with worse numbers when it comes to Covid mortality,” says Aleksei Raksha, a freelance demographer in Moscow. “The government is doing everything possible to hide the data.”

The Russian government says its official register only counts deaths confirmed to be directly caused by the coronavirus. The additional cases, confirmed by autopsy, are part of a separate tally published monthly by Rosstat: 162,429 deaths at the end of last year and more than 225,000 in February of this year.

But the large regional disparities cast doubt on the idea that the low official figures are due to a purely methodological reason.

According to Rosstat figures, in 2020 in Moscow there were 28,233 more deaths than usual, and in its official registry it reported 11,209 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus. The Samara region – a relatively wealthy area where the Volga winds past oil fields and auto factories as Kazakhstan approaches – has recorded 10,596 excess deaths, a 25% increase from the 2019 fatality rate. But last year, the region reported just 606 official deaths. of the coronavirus.

“The official figures are reliable,” said Armen Benyan, Samara’s health minister. “And they are what they are.” Benyan acknowledged that most of the additional deaths in his region were in fact due to the pandemic. A heart attack in a patient with coronavirus, for example, does not appear in the official tally.

The low number of reported deaths has enabled Russians in some cases to avoid the dangers of the disease, and in others, they have received government messages with deep suspicion. Last October, a survey found that the majority of Russians did not believe the government-released count of Covid-19 cases: half of those who did not believe the official numbers thought it was too high, while the other half thought it was too low.

In February, another poll showed that 60% of Russians said they did not plan to be vaccinated with Sputnik V and that the majority believed the coronavirus was a biological weapon.

In the Samara region, the mother of Inna Pogozheva, who was an obstetrician-gynecologist, died in November after being hospitalized after undergoing a CT scan whose report mentioned Covid. Funeral home workers, dressed in rubber boots and protective suits, carried their mother from the morgue to the hearse in a sealed casket, then doused themselves with disinfectant.

But not once did the word Covid-19 appear on the death certificate. Pogozheva says she doesn’t know what to believe anymore when it comes to the pandemic, such as whether it was spread by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as many conspiracy theories claim. But Pogozheva is sure of one thing: she will not be vaccinated, even after seeing the devastation of the Covid up close. After all, if you can’t trust your mother’s state-issued death certificate, why should you believe in the safety of the vaccine that the Russian government is touting so much?

“Who knows what’s inside!” Said Pogozheva. “You can’t trust anyone.”

Pogozheva calls for the cause of his mother’s death to be reexamined. Relatives of a deceased health worker who prove his death was due to Covid infection in the workplace are entitled to special compensation from the state. Kagarlitskaya’s father was a paramedic and she changed the cause of death to Covid-19, after her outrage went viral on Instagram and the governor of Samara personally intervened.

Despite the deaths, there has been minimal opposition in Russia –Even among Putin’s critics– the government’s decision to keep the stores open this past winter and fall. Some associate it with a certain Russian stoicism or fatalism, or explain it by the lack of alternative to keep the economy running, due to almost insignificant state aid.

According to statistics on the increase in deaths, in the Samara region, the pandemic has claimed the lives of 1 in 250 people. Viktor Dolonko, editor-in-chief of a cultural daily in the city of Samara, says that around 50 of his acquaintances – many of whom are members of the region’s burgeoning arts scene – lost their lives during the pandemic. But Dolonko believes Samara has done well not to shut down its theaters – they are currently operating at 50% capacity – to stop the spread of the disease.

Dolonko says deaths from the pandemic have been tragic, but those who have died are mostly very old or had other health issues, and not all of those deaths are related to the virus. Dolonko is 62 and says she always wears a chin strap in crowded places and washes her hands frequently. But he does not hesitate to go to trade fairs and vernissages.

“You can choose to continue living your life wisely or to isolate yourself and stop living,” he says. “Unlike Westerners, Russians know what it’s like to live in extreme conditions.”

Translation of Jaime Arrambide

The New York Times