re: #173 Dr Lizardo

Yep….I was right.

The number of recorded coronavirus cases in Russia reached 658 on Wednesday, a day after the mayor of Moscow told President Vladimir Putin that the real scale of the problem in the Russian capital far exceeded official figures.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, a close Putin ally, told the Russian leader on Tuesday that a serious situation was unfolding in the capital and that the real number of cases was unclear but was increasing quickly.

Testing for the virus was scarce, said Sobyanin, and many Muscovites returning from abroad were self-isolating at home or in holiday cottages in the countryside, and not being tested.

Reuters reported earlier this month that a reported sharp increase in pneumonia cases in Moscow and contradictory information around the issue was fuelling fears about the accuracy of official coronavirus data which remains much lower than many European countries.

reuters.com

A recipe for disaster - a tanking economy owing to low oil prices and a badly underfunded healthcare system…and now a highly-contagious respiratory disease circulating in the capital (and probably the other big metro areas as well).

Putin’s got his hands full now.