Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
American author, Truman Capote:
…was once approached by a very drunk man in a Key West bar. The man, apparently vexed because his wife wanted Capote’s autograph, followed her to his table and whipped out his manhood. He said:
"Since you're autographing things, why don't you autograph this?"
To which Capote replied:
"I don't know if I can autograph it, but perhaps I can initial it."
China made "a threatening jab" at Taiwan recently. A large number of Chinese warplanes flew close to the island nation. Was I concerned? Was I fearing an invasion and a second Ukraine war? The answer is no. The reason is that a major Covid-19 outbreak is crippling China. An estimated 250 million people are infected. Health experts project one million Covid deaths in China within the next 90 days. Imagine how many Covid-19 deaths we will have one year from today in China.
Let us step back and look at the
big picture with respect to China. Elena and I spent several weeks in China in
2008. It was a wonderful trip. We got great treatment from the Chinese people.
While on a river cruise along
the Yangtze River, we made an amazing discovery. China is two countries. Along
the coastal areas where most of the big cities are, some 550,000,000 people
live. This part of China is a modern first-world country. With the right amount
of money, one could enjoy all the same creature comforts and technology, one
would find in the US, Canada, Europe, etc. In the interior lies a poor Third
World country with roughly 750,000,000 people. The average annual income per
family is in the range of $1,500 US. To the credit of the Communist Chinese
government, they have done a great job of lifting many of these destitute
people out of poverty.
We got a good
introduction to the Chinese healthcare system. There are two
parallel tracks here. You have traditional Chinese medicine that includes
acupuncture, herbs, and traditional remedies. (This is not completely
"voodoo medicine." Some of the remedies work.) On the other track,
you have what I would call a Western medical system similar to what one would
find in any advanced country. Unfortunately, the salaries of primary care
physicians are quite low in comparison to salaries in Western countries.
It is hard to attract good people into the medical profession. There is also no
emphasis on preventative care to treat health problems early before they
become chronic diseases.
China has another surprising
major healthcare challenge. Prosperity has brought better food to many people.
Just as in the US, China now has an obesity problem. It is estimated that
some 350,000,000 Chinese people are obese. Diabetes, hypertension, and other
problems associated with being overweight plague this society. These
people are always more vulnerable to bad outcomes if infected with
Covid-19.
When the Covid pandemic started,
I was always skeptical of the statistics that China was providing to the
World Health Organization. Elena said their form of totalitarian government
allowed them to quickly lock down people and stop the spread of the disease.
I pointed out to her the
750,000,000 people who lived in Third World China. My theory was and still is
that there were massive deaths in this part of China never reported to
international authorities.
Now we arrive at the Covid
situation in China now. As the old saying goes: "The cat is out of the
bag." The whole world knows that China has a massive Covid-19 problem that
is only going to get worse. They continue to rely on Chinese-produced vaccines
that do not have the efficacy of Western vaccines. There isn't an
aggressive vaccination program. The healthcare system does not have the
capacity to handle the massive number of infected people that will come.
There is going to be a
high level of death. It will be a humanitarian crisis. Factories will close
(The Tesla factory in Shanghai has already closed.) The Chinese economy will
suffer grievously. Supply chains will be disrupted. If you need parts made in China,
you might get a big shock. I will close with these prophetic words: "This
is not going to have a happy ending."
I am proud to be a lifetime member of the U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). To earn membership, one must have served honorably in the US armed services and been present in a war zone for at least 91 days. Their latest member magazine published some authoritative statistics on the Vietnam war that I wish to share with you now:
1) 9,087,000 served on active duty from
1964 to 1973.
2) 8,744,000 were on active duty from
August 5, 1964, to March 28, 1973.
3) 3,403,100 men and women including 514,300 offshore personnel
served in Vietnam.
4) 2,594,000 men and women served within the border of Vietnam
from January 1, 1965, to March 28, 1973. 50,000 US troops served in Vietnam
from 1960 to 1964.
5) Total deaths were 58,275. 47,528 men and women died due to
hostile action. 10,747 died due to non-hostile actions.
6) 303,704 were wounded. 153,329 required hospitalizations.
7) 75,000
were severely disabled. 23,214 were 100% disabled. 5,283 lost limbs. 1,081
sustained multiple amputations. These disability figures were much higher than
in World War II or Korea.
8) The
kill rate percentage was 58,275/3,403,100=1.712%. 58,275/2,594,000=2.246%.
9) The
wounded rate was 303,704/3,403,100=8.92%.
303,704/2,594,000=11.707%.
Combined statistics for dead and wounded:
58,275+303,704=361,979/3,403.100=10.63%
303,704/2,594,000=11.707%
361,979/2,594,000=13,954% This is not consistent with a
model of 5% killed and wounded. There are 5.2 wounded for each man or woman
killed. Please bear in mind that during this same time span some 3.25 million
Vietnamese military personnel and civilians were killed. Accurate statistics on
those wounded are hard to come by.
Now let us go forward to the current war in
Ukraine. Accurate statistics on military killed and wounded in battle are hard
to come by. Even elite US and European intelligence agencies have a difficult
time getting accurate numbers. One of our readers, Denys Davydov spends a lot
of time doing in-depth research to develop numbers. He goes to all sorts
of obscure sources to get information. A picture emerges as follows:
Ukraine armed forces size: 204,000. Deaths for the last 10
months are roughly 100,000.
Russian military personnel in Ukraine: 200,000. Deaths for
the last 10 months are roughly 100,000.
Casualties on both sides could range from 300,000 to
520,000. Massive replacements had to be found to take the place of those
lost.
These losses are like those suffered
during the Iran/Iraq war during the late 1980s and World War I.
In late October, two sewer pipes burst in the southern city of Volgograd, flooding several streets with feces and waste water, and leaving 200,000 of the 1 million residents without water or heating for several days.
Ilya Kravchenko, a local lawmaker who collected testimony from more than 1,000 victims of the incident and filed a lawsuit against the corporation that owns the sewer system, said the sight was “not pretty.”
“This is the worst year on record. The city has never had so many problems,” Kravchenko said.
A few weeks later, a similar, though less drastic sewage problem in the town of Pervouralsk, a small city west of Yekaterinburg, provoked residents to drag buckets of fecal water to the offices of the local water council in protest, claiming authorities had neglected the problem for years.
While disasters now raise suspicions of sabotage linked to the war in Ukraine, poorly maintained infrastructure is a long-standing and persistent problem in Russia — the result of old Soviet-era systems in need of repair and costly maintenance, decades of endemic corruption, and the government’s prioritization of defense and security budgets, as well as the development of major cities over regional towns.
“Not a day goes by that we don’t hear from one region or another in Russia about an accident in the housing and utilities sector,” declared a recent article in a local newspaper in the city of Perm.
“During the last heating season more than 7,300 accidents occurred in housing and utilities sector of the country, and, judging by the way the winter started in 2022, one should not expect the statistics to go down” the article said.
Meanwhile, a Russian senator, Andrei Shevchenko, said last year that utility infrastructure in Russia had depreciated by 60 percent and that the cost of needed repairs exceeded 4 trillion rubles, or about $58 billion. Shevchenko noted that in some regions, the state of public utilities was “of great concern,” and that in some cases the overall wear and tear had exceeded 70 percent.
Analysts say that infrastructure-related disruptions could soon multiply as Western sanctions start to bite, and that ongoing, preexisting problems are adding to growing popular discontent about the consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The frustrations some residents have expressed over deteriorating infrastructure in many Russian cities was summed up in a recent Instagram post by Omsk Ogo, a civil society group in the Siberian city of Omsk, where winter temperatures fall to minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit.
“On TV they say that Europe is freezing, but no one mentions that in Omsk 40,000 houses do not receive gas,” the post said, referring to a 2017 report that found that thousands of homes in the city still use coal or firewood for heating. “The rest of the homes have to regularly turn off the heating, because the infrastructure for utilities has been totally worn out.”
Daniil Chebykin, who founded the group, said that although Russia is regarded as a major oil and gas player, many Russians outside Moscow still live with rudimentary heating and experience regular utility accidents, such as exploding boilers.
Chebykin said that little has changed in the 23 years of Vladimir Putin’s tenure as the country’s political ruler, and that the disparity between the Russian capital and regions has widened. “Omsk can be a very hard place to live,” he said. “Meanwhile, in Moscow, there is a good infrastructure, excellent public transport, and everyone is investing a lot of money there.”
Right before he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been filming interviews in Siberia that highlighted construction problems and the dangerous living conditions of certain neighborhoods. In one such interview, Daniil Markelov, a local activist in Novosibirsk, showed Navalny around his home.
“Welcome to my district: endless identical panel high-rise buildings, without a trace of any amenities and construction that has gone on for years,” he said. “The biggest problem is that this new housing is literally dilapidated. It is extremely dangerous to live in it. People receive keys to apartments that do not have elevators, railings or electricity.”
In a phone interview, Markelov, who has since immigrated to the United States, said that although life in Novosibirsk had marginally improved in recent years, the center of the city was “a decoration that is hiding poor and dangerous buildings everywhere.”
“Money is flowing to the capital. As a result, small cities are disappearing,” he said.
Analysts said sweeping sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have disrupted supply chains in the country and may significantly curtail Russia’s ability to resolve its own infrastructure problems.
A particular obstacle is the inability to import spare parts and products because of sanctions. Russia has long relied on imported equipment and technology and does not yet have the domestic manufacturing capacity to fill this gap. Since the outbreak of the war, imports have dropped by up to 25 percent, according to Russia’s trading partners.
Ukrainians were shocked in the initial months of the war when Russian soldiers carried out large-scale looting of basic housing appliances in occupied towns and villages — an indication of the disparity in quality of life and access to affordable goods between the two countries.
Nikolai Petrov, a political scientist at the British think tank Chatham House, said that the issue of limited parts could effect “everything,” including aviation and traffic lights. “Without these parts, the whole system, which currently looks more or less reliable and effective, can fall apart very quickly,” Petrov said.
Russia’s infrastructure problems alone are unlikely to lead to popular unrest. The scale of the problems vary from place to place, and larger cities tend to be better maintained.
Several residents of Perm said in interviews that they had not experienced any recent problems with heat or electricity.
Kravchenko said the situation in Volgograd was not as bad as other places. “You can live an all right life in Volgograd, but life could be so much better,” he said. “It is the administration’s unwillingness to improve it that is killing Volgograd. The potential of the city is simply huge.”
However, public patience is potentially wearing thin, especially when outages are set against the backdrop of an unpopular military mobilization drive and a rising death toll on the front.
“Russia’s cup of patience is absolutely full, and each drop can lead to protests and unrest,” Petrov said, adding that since pension changes sparked angry demonstrations in 2018, regional discontent and a willingness to protest has spiked. “It’s important to understand that although we do not have intensive protests in Russia, the situation now is very different from what it used to be prior to 2018.”
Chebykin said only a few people in Omsk connected the local situation to the war but that the number was rising. “When a huge amount of money is spent on bombing the infrastructure of Ukraine, and with this money it is possible to gasify all housing in the city, of course discontent is growing,” Chebykin said.
Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister turned opposition politician, said infrastructure failures would not trigger protests but would contribute to an eventual uprising against the Kremlin.
“There will be a tipping point,” Milov said. “There is a wave of mounting negative impacts on different fronts: Russia’s economic isolation, sanctions and infrastructure problems. It will not spark protests by itself, but it adds to an overall feeling of unhappiness.”
The Kremlin, however, does not seem worried.
On Dec. 13, Putin presided via video link over the opening of a new highway connecting Moscow with major Eastern cities. And last week, with a drink in hand, Putin showed no remorse as he admitted that Russia was attacking Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. “There is a lot of noise about our attacks on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” he said. “Yes, we are doing this. But who started it?”
Milov said Putin had “a thousand-ruble mentality,” meaning that whenever discontent brews, the Kremlin announces small cash handouts (1,000 rubles is about $15) to citizens to stifle unrest. A similar strategy of offering financial benefits has been rolled to mollify the families of soldiers killed in Ukraine.
“Putin and his government are used to thinking that the Russian population are folks who will continue to suffer and tolerate all this negativity,” Milov said, “for as long as they rule.”
Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
