@lnxw48a1 @sims03@pleroma.site

It seemed interesting that Russia has not been in the news, I now know why.

Russia Belatedly Begins to Awaken to the Coronavirus
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/18/fortress-russia-coronavirus-spread-covid-pandemic/

>MOSCOW—As the coronavirus pandemic has spread, bringing nations to a halt and killing over 8,000 people in recent weeks around the globe, Russia emerged as a rare spot of calm—or perhaps indifference.
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>Daily life largely continued as normal, with shops, workplaces, and schools still operating, while the authorities exuded confidence, pointing to only 147 confirmed cases and zero deaths, out of more than 116,000 tests for COVID-19 in the country of about 145 million people—one of the lowest ratios among infected nations in the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, started an oil price war with Saudi Arabia, the global economy be damned.
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>However, in less than 48 hours, that image has begun to crumble as the Russian government has kicked its response to COVID-19 into overdrive: shutting down its borders, limiting air travel, closing schools, and launching a large economic stimulus as medical experts have begun to question Russia’s official coronavirus statistics and the true efficacy of the response to limit its spread.
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>Should the true scope of the virus prove to be higher than shown in official statistics, it would mean that the Russian government has missed its chance to slow the pandemic, leaving an already overstretched health care system and weakened economy to deal with the burden of a new national crisis.
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>“Because the government now understands that infections could jump rapidly, we see new measures being employed to try and contain things very quickly,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “The key concern is that the medical system doesn’t have the capacity to deal with the coming uptick in cases.”
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>On Tuesday, Putin toured a new coronavirus information center in Moscow that is pulling together high-tech resources, including surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence, to monitor social media for disinformation about the spread of the disease, properly enforce quarantines, and identify empty supermarket shelves, which have recently been emptied in major cities as Russians have begun stockpiling goods. After the visit, Putin said that he judged the situation in the country to be “under control.”
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>“We were able to contain the mass penetration and spread” of the pandemic, Putin said during a government meeting of ministers and top officials in Moscow. “The situation is generally under control despite high risk levels.”

Where have I heard that before…