According to Delyagin, the adoption of a nationwide digital \u201chealth\u201d pass\u2014which is\u00a0expected to occur<\/a>\u00a0in the coming weeks\u2014would in essence transfer external management of Russia to Big Pharma and Big Tech.<\/p>\n His provocative analysis was promptly scrubbed from YouTube.<\/p>\n In truth, the imminent \u201ccoup d\u2019\u00e9tat\u201d described by the Duma deputy has all but taken place. All 85 federal subjects of the Russian Federation have\u00a0issued decrees<\/a>\u00a0tying vaccination status to certain types of employment\u2014with some regions even demanding that all state, municipal and private organizations ensure\u00a0100% of employees are fully vaccinated<\/a>\u00a0or have medical exemptions.<\/p>\n Public health apartheid is alive and well in Russia.\u00a0Region-specific rules<\/a>\u00a0requiring QR codes for various aspects of what was once considered normal life have been accentuated by local flavors of vaccine sadism. The governor of the Novgorod region recently announced that children whose parents have not been injected will be\u00a0banned<\/a> from after-school clubs and other extracurricular activities.<\/p>\n How did a\u00a0nationwide \u201cnon-working week\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in March 2020 become a nationwide vaccine caste system in less than two years?<\/p>\n Excluding a knee-jerk lockdown at the start of the pandemic, Russia had largely avoided the spirit-crushing restrictions embraced by much of the developed world. The turning point came in mid-June, when the country\u2019s first compulsory vaccination policy was introduced in the capital. At the time, authorities were growing increasingly frustrated by the lack of local enthusiasm for Russia\u2019s flagship vaccine, Sputnik V, developed by the health ministry\u2019s Gamaleya Center.<\/p>\n On June 15\u2014a day before Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin\u00a0announced a decree<\/a> ordering businesses in various sectors to vaccinate 60% of their employees\u2014Alexander Gintsburg, Gamaelya\u2019s director, warned Russia\u2019s capital might be under attack from a distinctive and possibly uniquely dangerous \u201cMoscow\u201d strain of coronavirus.<\/p>\n Gintsburg\u00a0told<\/a> RIA Novosti:<\/p>\n \u201cAt present, a study of the Moscow strain and the effectiveness of Sputnik V against it is underway. We think the vaccine will be effective, but we must wait for the results of the study.\u201d<\/p>\n A week later, the Moscow strain disappeared into the ether. Russia\u2019s State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology\u00a0issued a brief statement<\/a>\u00a0on June 23 explaining that the ominous mutation was \u201cfor the most part a conditional and hypothetical phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, coercive vaccination policies began to spread to other parts of Russia. Hailed by the Russian government as\u00a0a \u201cnew tool,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0compulsory vaccination hit a very brief bump in the road after Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov argued it would be\u00a0unlawful<\/a>\u00a0for employers to fire workers who refused the shot. He\u00a0corrected himself<\/a> several hours later, noting it would be perfectly legal for unvaccinated employees to be \u201csuspended indefinitely\u201d without pay.<\/p>\n None of this is to suggest that people weren\u2019t becoming seriously ill. Moscow saw a worrying spike in COVID-related hospitalizations in June and early July. But as the city\u2019s own health department quietly acknowledged, the increase in excess bed occupancy was\u00a0largely due<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0nosocomial infections<\/a>\u2014patients who were hospitalized for other reasons who later tested positive for coronavirus.<\/p>\n In fact, Moscow\u2019s best-known COVID ward was once described as a hotbed of hospital-transmitted super infections.<\/p>\n Denis Protsenko, who oversees the \u201cred zone\u201d at Moscow\u2019s Kommunarka hospital, acknowledged in autumn 2020 that a huge number of \u201cCOVID\u201d deaths were actually caused by sepsis stemming from hospital-transmitted infections.<\/p>\n \u201cCOVID-19 is not as bad as sepsis,\u201d one Russian media outlet\u00a0dryly remarked<\/a>\u00a0at the time.<\/p>\n On June 15, Protsenko told state-run RT that mandatory vaccination was\u00a0the only way<\/a> to defeat coronavirus. A day later\u2014as we mentioned earlier\u2014compulsory vaccination for certain business sectors was announced in the capital.<\/p>\n Coincidentally, on June 19 Protsenko was nominated for a seat in the State Duma. He\u00a0accepted the honor<\/a>\u00a0after receiving a telephone call from Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s current trajectory is at least partly guided by the government\u2019s insistence that Sputnik V\u2019s safety and efficacy are unassailable.<\/p>\n Sputnik V is based on Gamaleya\u2019s human adenovirus vector platform (Ad26 and Ad5), which is designed to\u00a0transport<\/a>\u00a0genetic material into cells. If you\u00a0examine<\/a>\u00a0the 2012 patent application for Gamaleya\u2019s influenza shot (which is\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0on Sputnik V\u2019s official website), the technology now being used for Sputnik V is openly referred to as a \u201cgenetic vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly, Gamaleya\u2019s director, Alexander Gintsburg,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in a December 2020 interview that there are no \u201csignificant\u201d differences between Sputnik V and AstraZeneca\u2019s vaccine\u2014which has been\u00a0plagued<\/a>\u00a0by safety concerns.<\/p>\n Those who point to the fact that expedited Phase III trials for Sputnik V are still\u00a0a year from completion<\/a>\u00a0have been reassured there is no reason to doubt the drug\u2019s\u00a0longer-term safety<\/a>. The Kremlin has batted away\u00a0criticism<\/a>\u00a0of Sputnik V\u2019s hypersonic development and rollout by highlighting the Gamaleya Center\u2019s previous successes with developing viral vector vaccines.<\/p>\n For example, Kirill Dmitriev, the\u00a0Harvard-educated ex-Goldman Sachs banker<\/a>\u00a0who heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (which provides financing for Sputnik V), claimed in a September 2020\u00a0op-ed<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cRussia has benefitted from modifying for COVID-19 an existing two-vector vaccine platform developed in 2015 for Ebola fever, which went through all phases of clinical trials and was used to help defeat the Ebola epidemic in Africa in 2017.\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, only about\u00a02,000 people in Guinea<\/a>\u00a0received Gamaleya\u2019s Ebola vaccine in 2017-18 as part of a Phase III clinical trial. Typically, Phase III trials involve tens of thousands of participants and often require\u00a0half a decade or more<\/a>\u00a0of meticulous data collection and monitoring. The modest scope of the trial was complemented by its very curious timing. Guinea was\u00a0declared Ebola-free in June 2016<\/a>\u00a0and remained that way for nearly five years. Contrary to Dmitriev\u2019s creative prose, there was no Ebola epidemic in need of \u201cdefeating\u201d when Gamaleya\u2019s scientists arrived in Guinea in 2017 to begin small-scale tests of their experimental shot.<\/p>\n Gamaleya\u2019s Ebola shot is currently only registered with Russia\u2019s health ministry\u2014which operates the institute. In a September\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Forbes Russia, Inna Dolzhikova, who helped develop Sputnik V, argued there was no reason to seek international approval for Gamaleya\u2019s Ebola vaccine because there have been no \u201clarge outbreaks\u201d requiring inoculation against the deadly virus.<\/p>\n Not quite. Ebola re-emerged in Guinea in February of this year, prompting the African nation to undergo an emergency\u00a0vaccination program<\/a>. Gamaleya\u2019s \u201cproven\u201d viral vector platform was conspicuously M.I.A.\u2014suggesting its Ebola shot had hit a dead-end.<\/p>\n Before launching Sputnik V into orbit, Gamaleya\u00a0repeatedly failed<\/a>\u00a0to send an approved drug beyond Russia\u2019s own borders. The institute\u2019s first attempt at a vector adenovirus vaccine, AdeVac-Flu,\u00a0resulted<\/a>\u00a0in a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scandal.<\/p>\n The institute\u2019s business dealings came under scrutiny, again, in November after a Russian media report\u2014based on open-source government documents\u2014revealed that Gamaleya\u00a0was outsourcing<\/a>\u00a0the production of its own \u201cbrand\u201d of Sputnik V, which it was supposed to be manufacturing itself. Gamaleya paid an unnamed third party, in both rubles and US dollars, for batches of its own drug that were later resold and distributed across Russia.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no wonder Gamaleya\u00a0crowned itself<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe world\u2019s leading research institution.\u201d<\/p>\n There was a brief lull in the introduction of new COVID-related measures for several weeks starting in August. It seemed the epidemiological situation had stabilized, sparing authorities from having to impose highly unpopular vaccine decrees ahead of the State Duma elections at the end of September.<\/p>\n On September 23, a day before the election results were announced, Annette Kyobe, the IMF representative in Moscow,\u00a0suggested<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cafter the parliamentary elections, perhaps a more unpopular measure, like mandatory vaccination, can be initiated as early as October-November\u201d in Russia.<\/p>\n A new wave of coronavirus had arrived in Russia just days before; in the weeks that followed, daily COVD cases soared while virus-attributed deaths\u00a0went<\/a>\u00a0up almost vertically. Authorities were forced to take decisive action. In less than a month, every region of Russia had introduced some form of mandatory vaccination; QR codes were also widely adopted.<\/p>\n In November, Anna Popova, the head of the federal service for consumer rights protection and human welfare (Rospotrebnadzor), gave a firm finger-wagging to Russians who questioned the rationale behind the tsunami of life-altering controls.<\/p>\n According to Popova\u2014whose agency recently\u00a0extended<\/a>\u00a0mask rules and other \u201csanitary\u201d measures until 2024\u2014from \u201cthe very first days\u201d of the pandemic, the Russian government had resolved to \u201cspeak only the truth.\u201d However, she acknowledged that she\u00a0needed to do a better job<\/a>\u00a0of explaining things \u201cin a way that is understandable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI attribute this to myself. I sometimes see that people who are not in my profession, they do not always understand. And this is my big task\u2014to speak so that everyone understands what I am saying,\u201d Popova said.<\/p>\n Russians have little choice but to take Popova at her word: the public has been left almost completely in the dark when it comes to COVID-related data that would help people assess the severity of the health crisis.<\/p>\n In Moscow, even basic information like COVID deaths by age group is nowhere to be found. There is not even a basic, regularly updated breakdown of virus-linked hospitalizations in the capital. Moscow\u2019s health department issues a daily press release\u00a0disclosing<\/a>\u00a0the number of new hospitalizations and the total number of patients on ventilators. That\u2019s basically it, hospital data-wise.<\/p>\n On the vaccine front there is even less transparency. There is no VAERS-like database for reporting suspected adverse events and the government is either withholding, or unwilling to collect, data on reported side effects. Recently, an advocacy group that sought information on vaccine safety monitoring in the country was treated to a Kafkaesque\u00a0bureaucratic merry-go-round<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to Putin, \u201cnot a single serious case of complications\u201d has\u00a0been registered <\/a>since the start of Russia\u2019s nationwide vaccine rollout nearly a year ago.<\/p>\n It would be unwise to challenge this bold assertion. The Russian government is reportedly\u00a0planning<\/a>\u00a0to threaten \u201cactive opponents of vaccination\u201d with exorbitant fines and prison time. Authorities will specifically target doctors and medical professionals who\u00a0pose a \u201cthreat to life\u201d<\/a>\u00a0by participating in \u201canti-vaccine\u201d activities.<\/p>\n With the Omicron variant now covering the Earth, one of Russia\u2019s entrenched public health bureaucrats has grabbed the mutation by its spike-protein horns. Veronika Skvortsova, chief of Russia\u2019s federal biomedical agency, announced at the end of November that she was days away from creating a test kit\u00a0specifically designed<\/a>\u00a0to detect Omicron infections.<\/p>\n Skvortsova, who previously served as Russia\u2019s health minister, sits on the Bill Gates-funded Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB). Fellow board members\u00a0include<\/a>\u00a0Dr. Chris Elias, President of the Bill & Melinda Gates\u2019 Global Development Program, and Anthony Fauci.<\/p>\n The GPMB, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in his new book on Fauci, is a global committee of technocrats that promotes \u201csubduing resistance, ruthlessly censoring dissent, isolating the healthy, collapsing economies, and compelling vaccination\u201d as necessary antidotes to worldwide health crises.<\/p>\n Like Fauci, Skvortsova has a long and colorful history of public service. As health minister, she presided over a\u00a0years-long data manipulation<\/a>\u00a0scandal involving the not-so-subtle airbrushing of mortality rates.<\/p>\n In October 2019, Russia\u2019s regional leaders were\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0by then-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev of cooking their books without the federal government\u2019s knowledge. Skvortsova\u2019s health ministry fervently denied any involvement in the hoax.<\/p>\n Six months later COVID arrived and many of the same authorities who had bungled years of mortality figures began issuing \u201cdata-driven\u201d public health decrees that \u201creset\u201d the social contract between the state and society.<\/p>\n As COVID-19 began spreading across the world in early 2020, Sberbank\u2014Russia\u2019s largest lender\u2014sprang into action.<\/p>\n On February 27, 2020, CEO Herman Gref\u00a0notified<\/a>\u00a0the government that his bank was ready to provide funding to Russian scientific institutions to help develop drugs to combat the virus. He also revealed that the company\u2014which is majority owned by the state\u2014was working on \u201cmasked face recognition technology\u201d similar to China\u2019s sophisticated biometric monitoring devices.<\/p>\n Both of these initiatives quickly produced fruitful results.<\/p>\n Sberbank played\u00a0a key role<\/a>\u00a0in the genesis of Sputnik V, developed and registered in a record-breaking six months.\u00a0According to Gref<\/a>, the company was \u201cincluded in the work on the creation of a vaccine\u201d\u2014what later became Russia\u2019s flagship COVID shot\u2014and helped \u201cto ensure the transfer of technology to production sites.\u201d<\/p>\n A \u201csecret government order\u201d reportedly\u00a0issued<\/a>\u00a0by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in December 2020 designated a Sberbank subsidiary as the sole supplier of Sputnik V to Russia\u2019s regions. The Sberbank subsidiary shipped the first 9 million doses of the vaccine before transferring supply and delivery logistics to state conglomerate Rostec in March of this year.<\/p>\n Gref himself was one of the first people in the world to be injected with the vaccine. The head of Russia\u2019s largest bank claims he got the shot sometime in April 2020\u2014meaning he\u00a0was likely part<\/a>\u00a0of controversial \u201cinformal trials\u201d in which Gamaleya Center scientists injected themselves and family members with the experimental drug. \u201cFormal\u201d Phase I testing\u00a0began<\/a>\u00a0two months later, on June 18.<\/p>\n Sberbank also succeeded in rapidly developing sophisticated facial recognition technology.<\/p>\n In May 2020, the bank announced it was ready to install video surveillance systems\u00a0in Russian schools and universities<\/a>\u00a0that would be capable of recognizing masked faces and measuring a person\u2019s temperature.<\/p>\n Moscow authorities recently announced they plan to introduce the technology in city schools\u00a0by the end of 2022<\/a>. Actually, the technology can hardly be called \u201cnew\u201d: Russia began experimenting with biometric school ID systems\u00a0several years ago<\/a>. In 2019, the ministry of education said that all Russian schools will have facial recognition systems by 2024.<\/p>\n Today, Sberbank is far more than just a financial institution. Rebranded as \u201cSber\u201d in September 2020, the company now offers \u201ca whole universe of services for human life and businesses\u201d: SberMarket, SberHealth, SberID, SberFood, SberSound. SberAI\u2014among many others.<\/p>\n In partnership with Visa, Sberbank\u00a0is working<\/a>\u00a0on a \u201cbiometric solution\u201d for making payments. The company is also testing a QR code-based payment system. Such a system would certainty come in handy with the introduction of QR code-based \u201chealth\u201d passes\u2014and could potentially dovetail with Gref\u2019s dream of teaming up with JP Morgan to create a \u201cSbercoin\u201d crypto currency.<\/p>\n According to Gref, Sber\u2019s rather conventional logo\u2014a checkmark inside of a circle\u2014is meant to represent the company\u2019s focus on what\u2019s \u201cgood for the person.\u201d<\/p>\n Amid growing social, political and economic uncertainty, many Russians have started to speculate about what lies ahead. The Russian government appears to already have a roadmap in mind.<\/p>\n As part of a\u00a0comprehensive re-envisioning<\/a>\u00a0of the Russian capital recently released by the mayor\u2019s office, by 2030, residents of Moscow will have \u201cgenetic passports\u201d used for administering \u201cgene therapies.\u201d Russians will also wear \u201cimplantable devices\u201d that will calculate health insurance payments.<\/p>\n The\u00a0\u201csmart city\u201d blueprint<\/a>\u00a0suggests Moscow is open for business\u2014and is especially interested in attracting investment from pharmaceuticals. In fact, the Russian government has already signaled its eagerness to partner with Big Pharma.<\/p>\n In October, the Gamaleya Center began joint research with Pfizer. The Kremlin-Big Pharma partnership\u00a0aims to create<\/a>\u00a0a \u201cvery successful\u201d Sputnik\/Pfizer cocktail, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said at the time. One of Sputnik V\u2019s own developers recently voiced\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0for mixing Sputnik with mRNA vaccines, claiming that combining the Russian vaccine with \u201cdifferent technologies\u201d would provide clear benefits.<\/p>\n Where is Russia going and why has it embraced such dubious, civilization-transforming COVID measures, in near-lockstep with its so-called Western rivals?<\/p>\n Perhaps Duma Deputy Delyagin was onto something.<\/p>\n Originally published by the Edward Slavsquat’s substack<\/a> and republished by\u00a0Brownstone Institute<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One can\u2019t help but feel a certain kinship with Mikhail Delyagin, the State Duma deputy who perfectly captured the zeitgeist of our era while sizing up the omnipotent sanitary doctors and thespian technocrats lording over Russia. \u201cThe state now speaks so boorishly to the people. This is how they talk to the population of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":955,"featured_media":212940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[97,297],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[982],"class_list":["post-212461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-russia","category-vaccine-passports","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\tA \u2018hypothetical phenomenon\u2019 attacks Moscow<\/h2>\n
The world\u2019s leading research institution<\/h2>\n
\u2018We speak only the truth\u2019<\/h2>\n
Russia\u2019s Fauci?<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/skvortsova.png\")
\u2018Good for the person\u2019<\/h2>\n
Brave New Russia<\/h2>\n
\n