Climbing Out Onto The Skinny Branches

Those who have read my blog over the years know that at present I "own" two cats, and that the reason why these cats live with me is that a neighbor foisted them off on me.  (However, I now wouldn't trade them for the world.)  When they were kittens, they frequently got themselves stuck in some of the trees in my backyard as they indulged their impulse to climb things without having learned how to get themselves back down to the ground.  Therefore, from time to time, I had to get a ladder and fetch my cats out of some of the sticky situations they got themselves into.  Eventually they figured out that what goes up must also learn to get down, and they learned to get down out of and off of various high things.  So an evening came in which, as I was leaving my house to go to the store, I looked behind me and saw two cat heads on the roof staring down on me in the moonlight.  Rather spooky it was, but by then I was confident that they'd find their way safely back to earth.

Now a competent cat weighing a handful of kilograms can climb trees and traverse branches that a human weighing several dozen kilos would (or at least should) fear to tread.  And there's a reason why the phrase "going out on a limb" has metaphorical punch even after decades of use.  So it surprised me (and the world) to hear that Vladimir Putin had gone out on a rather skinny limb a few weeks ago with the announcement that Russia had developed the first coronavirus vaccine approved for widespread use.  In response, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up around 2,000 points, and other stock exchanges rose significantly.

An effective vaccine would be welcomed in many corners, and if Russia were the nation to discover such a vaccine, it would certainly boost Russian prospects of being regarded as the most awesomely cool nation on earth.  It would also help Putin's image not only as a physically robust national leader who goes hunting bare-chested in Siberia in the winter, but as a chess master, judoka, expert strategist, and totally awesome dude without equal in the world.  ("Who is like the beast?  Who is able to make war with him?")  But almost immediately, the branch onto which Putin had climbed (bringing his nation with him) began to show some signs of cracking.  For starters,

• The development of this vaccine has been horribly (and irresponsibly) rushed.  
• A number of sources state that the vaccine developers would only have been able to complete Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials within their stated timeframe of development.
• Some sources (such as this and this) state that the reality is that the Russian vaccine has not even yet passed Phase 1 trials.

Add to this the lack of transparency to date in Russian data on the trials of their vaccine, combined with the unfortunate tendency for bad things (falls from windows, poisonings by tea, etc.) to happen to Russians who provide information or criticism damaging to their country's prestige, and one can see why prudent people don't want to climb out onto the branch Putin is occupying.  And even Putin's government has slightly, ever so slightly, walked back some of its rhetoric lately, saying now that the Russian vaccine is now "ready for mass trials."  Some of those trials will take place on people who are not Russian and who don't want to climb onto any skinny branches, but who may find that they have no choice.  For instance, autocrat Philippine president (and Putin groupie) Rodrigo Duterte has stated that large-scale inoculations of his nation's people will begin in October, although Duterte himself won't volunteer for a shot until he sees how well his countrymen respond.  My, what courage!

From these events, we can see the following things:

• First, we see what world leaders and economic ecosystems Putin now has in his pocket.  With a net worth of $200 billion, Putin might have a surprising number of people in that pocket.  Some of those people might be behind the most recent stock market rallies - rallies which are by now completely divorced from the actual on-the-ground economies of the nations these markets are supposed to represent.  Watch also for national leaders who rush to volunteer their populations as guinea pigs for the Russian vaccine.
• Second, we see the harm that the damaging and toxic mix of malignant narcissism and unethical competition can produce.  I am reminded of YouTube videos of Margaret Heffernan discussing the damaging effects of competition on the creation of things of genuine economic value.  One of the reasons for the damage is the intense pressure felt by people in highly competitive environments to overstate their accomplishments, to plagiarize the work of others, and to outright fake results.

As you can tell, I am skeptical about Russian claims of awesomeness in any domain just about now.  But I am going to provide a caveat and thus position myself on the lowest possible skinny branch in case I am proven wrong.  So here it is: I am not a doctor or biologist.  But I can be persuaded by verifiable results.  Let's see how the Russian vaccine developers do when they are judged by a jury of their peers.  As for now, I am still wearing a mask.