By
Michael Lord
Voice
of Europe
1
April 2020
The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko,has been suggesting
unconventional coronavirus (COVID-19) prevention techniques: hockey, saunas,
and vodka.
“I once mentioned that people
need to go to banya [sauna]to fight different viruses, this one included, since
COVID-19 doesn’t like high temperatures and dies at temperatures over 60
degrees Celsius, as the experts informed me,” Lukashenko said, according to a report by
CNN.
Lukashenko
has also recommended that people who don’t have hand sanitizer should simply
drink vodka. “When you get out of the sauna you shouldn’t just wash your hands,
down a shot of vodka,” he said. “I don’t drink myself, and I don’t advocate for
it, but I’ll be okay with, it’s tolerable at least until Victory Day on May 9.”
Lukashenko’s
views are not shared by any experts in the medical community.
Belarus
has yet to adopt any significant coronavirus prevention measures. Its borders
remain open, except that people coming from abroad have to submit to a two-week
quarantine upon entering. And public events, including sports, are going ahead
as planned. Lukashenko himself participated in a hockey match on Saturday to
show that things in his
“It’s better to die standing up
than to live on your knees,” he told state television while in full hockey gear
during the game. He also said that sports and ice were “good anti-viral
medicines.” Lukashenko voiced support for President Trump’s statements about
reopening national economies as soon as possible, saying that this is why he
hasn’t closed his own country’s factories.
To
date, Belarus, which has a population of 9.5 million, has only reported 94
cases of coronavirus infection and no deaths. Only time will tell if the
numbers will remain low or if the virus is just taking longer to take root
there.
Lukashenko
isn’t alone in downplaying the pandemic’s dangers. Tajikistan’s President,
Emomali Rahmon, is also continuing to make public appearances and is planning
to hold parliamentary sessions as usual.
And President Gurbanguly
Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan, an advocate of folk medicine who has published
books on the subject, has made no mention of the pandemic, but last month he
did offer a lecture on the benefits of burning yuzarlik (Peganum harmala) for
preventing infections, something which he says their ancestors had done to ward
off disease.
While the Swedish government
hasn’t offered any unusual advice for fighting the pandemic, like Belarus they
have chosen to impose few preventive measures on the public. Public places
remain open in Sweden, as previously reported by Voice of Europe.
It
remains to be seen whether Belarus and Sweden will remain outliers in Europe,
or whether they may come to regret their relaxed policies in the weeks to come.
(The
last paragraph is a wee bit of snarky, the writer unable to keep his own
opinion from a news story.)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.