Saunas and vodka – a presidential preventative
In Belarus, authoritarian leader President Alexander Lukashenko has famously scoffed at the coronavirus as a ‘‘frenzy and psychosis’’. His views also come with advice for citizens who don’t share his scorn: hit the sauna, down some vodka and get back to work.
As surrounding countries have closed their borders, shut down passenger transportation, banned mass events and effectively moved indoors, Belarus remains open and Lukashenko stays defiant.
The country of 9.5 million has reported
94 cases of coronavirus. Still, its football league plays on, the only one in Europe still on the field. Theatres are promoting premieres. Markets, shops, bars, restaurants and churches remain open, in the absence of any government order to the contrary.
The air force is conducting field exercises. A Christian Orthodox fair and exhibition, Easter Joy, will be held from
April 1-12 in the capital, Minsk, with events for families and children.
‘‘This psychosis has crippled national economies almost everywhere in the world," Lukashenko said yesterday. It is a theme he has hammered relentlessly in recent weeks, convinced that the unprecedented measures against the pandemic are designed to benefit some and harm others. On March 19, he slammed the border closures by Belarus’s neighbours as useless and ‘‘absolute and utter stupidity’’.
Several other populist leaders have poohpoohed the coronavirus, including US President Donald Trump, who initially called it a hoax. But Lukashenko seems to be in a league of his own with his disregard for the global strategies to contain the pandemic.
Yesterday, he cited Trump’s warnings that the cure should not be worse than the disease as justification for his own course of keeping factories and businesses open and refusing to close borders. ‘‘Life is going on. You cannot put it on hold,’’ he said, announcing that Belarus would not cancel May 9 Victory Day celebrations, a day when elderly war veterans from the Great Patriotic War (World War II) get together to celebrate.
Lukashenko has ordered the state security services to investigate anyone who falsely reports any coronavirus death. But the president, a former Soviet collective farm director, has also been poking fun at the idea of precautions and lockdowns.
On March 16, Lukashenko said that instead of worrying about the virus, it was time to work in the fields, sowing crops. ‘‘People are working in tractors. No-one is talking about the virus,’’ he said. ‘‘The tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone,’’ he added – sparking a social media meme around small red pills, shaped like tractors.
Lukashenko has cracked jokes about vodka, too, which was often touted in Soviet times as a cure for just about everything. He has recommended that people not only drink it, but wash their hands with it.
Vodka is not strong enough to kill Covid-19, with the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommending disinfectants that are at least 70 per cent alcohol. Most vodkas contain 40 per cent alcohol.
‘‘I don’t drink, but . . . people should not only wash their hands with vodka, but also poison the virus with it,’’ Lukashenko said on March 16. ‘‘You should drink the equivalent of 40 to 50 millilitres of rectified spirit daily – but not at work.’’
‘‘No-one is talking about the virus.’’ President Alexander Lukashenko
He also recommended that people ‘‘wash your hands more often, have breakfast on time, have lunch and dinner’’.
And, even as mythical cures fly around on social media, Lukashenko has suggested that taking a sauna frequently could help to combat the virus. ‘‘When you come [out] of the sauna, not only wash your hands, but also inside [with] 100 grams [of vodka],’’ he said.
He has predicted that the virus will have passed by Easter, which Orthodox churches will celebrate on April 19 this year.
It was only on Friday that Belarus imposed a requirement that arriving foreigners go into 14 days’ self-isolation.
Belarus has been carrying out targeted coronavirus tests – 24,000 so far, compared with almost 250,000 for Russia’s 145 million people – and contact tracing.
Lukashenko has also ordered increased production of ventilators. But he maintains that lockdowns and closures do not work.
This approach has not only provoked attacks from his political opponents. It also has worried Lukashenko’s powerful ally, Russia, which closed its border with Belarus, even though both countries signed a treaty on a unified state in 1999. Lukashenko said Russia’s move was ‘‘like starting a war’’.
Artyom Schraibman, a Minsk-based political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said Lukashenko was more worried about an impending economic crisis as a result of the coronavirus, than the virus itself.
‘‘Civil society and opposition groups are very critical of the handling of this crisis,’’ he said. ‘‘People look around them and see that all the other countries have resorted to a very different approach.’’
The World Health Organisation has endorsed the Belarus authorities’ approach of testing, contact tracing, and isolating Covid-19 cases and their contacts. Batyr Berdyklychev, the WHO representative in Belarus, did not directly criticise Lukashenko’s policies but emphasised that global closures were a key part of the battle against the virus.
There was no ‘‘one-size-fits-all’’ approach," Berdyklychev said. ‘‘Countries with small clusters should trace contacts, test suspected cases, isolate patients and guide people on the ways to protect themselves, thus limiting further spread.’’
Lukashenko has also warned companies to keep their workers, no matter what. Yesterday, he said private companies that laid off workers because of the global economic difficulties would be barred from operating in Belarus in future.