Coronavirus on both sides of the border

“We are crazy in a one -room apartment with two children, because you can’t even go out into the courtyard,” our friends from Russian Karelia write. “And at night, when the children are sleeping and the police sleep, we make out in the forest (since it begins right under the window), so that there are no firmly in a fine, and now there are no fits and now.”

Friends have no car, there is also no cottage that could be left in the winter. And the work is from those that you have to go to (apparently lucky here). If our friends had not crawled into the forest at night, then without any coronavirus they would have earned some respiratory system during the quarantine. Because in their apartment in a completely old house, heating is not regulated, and although they are drowned all winter, the street is also a temperature inside +25 (after the Finnish +20-21, by default, it seems to me everywhere, but they, of course, do not notice). And quite high humidity, because no one canceled the washing for two children, and you have to dry linen in the same room. In general, a tropical climate in which any virus is expanse. Pah-pah.

Friends who with a larger or smaller number of children in a larger or smaller number of rooms with greater or lower temperature and humidity are many in our native Russian Karelia (and not only in Karelia). And there are parents and friends of parents, and even grandparents, and all of them, with rare exceptions, are also locked at home, in about the same conditions. Lucky for those who have dogs, or a cottage and a car on which you can leave for the country, with a dog. But there are few of them.

I feel sorry for all of them. I honestly do not understand why their own government punishes them so. No, I’m not a fool, and not the Crown-dissident, I am just trying to reason logically, looking, including other countries and regions. Why lock people in these four walls, most of which are not in the best way adapted for temporary stay, not for a long imprisonment? Why do everyone manpointed the Governor Parfenchikov, who was the first in Russia in Russia to put everyone home, abolished public transport and closed the camp site?

I think about my relatives and friends, when in the neighboring Finnish Karelia lead the child to the garden (yes, now there are not many children, because everyone who could leave the children at home). When I am going on a hike to the nearest school in order to take a weekly diet issued to all students for free (by the way, junior students have the right to go to school, but almost none of their parents use this right, and no, not because they left children with grandmothers). When I go to the nearest forest with my family to ride a sled from a hill (snow fell in April). When I am going to the store for groceries (not to the closest from the house, but to the one that I like more) and I do not see on the police street, watching me. When I go on Thursdays to play badminton (yes, we were lucky, our private sports complex left the fields for contactless sports). When I receive an invitation to a children's birthday (yes, we will eat ice cream and muffins on the street, and children will play in spring mud around the house so as not to violate the order about "more than 10 not to gather"). When I go to the neighboring pizzeria for pizza (it seems that they still violate something, because they still work not only “for removal”, although I only need this “removal”). When in the morning I go to stretch on street simulators (by the way, Karelian -made - MB Barbell, “Markelov simulators”). When I book the Easter weekend cottage near Savonlinna. Under normal conditions, I was unlikely to afford to remove the cottage near Savonlinn on Easter weekend, because it is cheaper to go to Tallinn or Stockholm on the weekend than to remove the cottage in a golf club. But now they have almost no clients, because no one from Russia could come, and they distribute these cottages almost free. When, in the end, I read the news that all entrepreneurs and freelancers, and not just hired workers, have the right to receive a 2000 euros and unemployment benefit, that interest on fixed-term loans will be reduced, taxes for March, April and May can be paid someday later, and contributions to the pension fund (including state-owned enterprises) will be reduced by the end pay later.

Looking at the general prohibitions on the other side of the border, I sometimes wonder why, with 15 cases in Finnish Karelia and more than two thousand in all Finland, no one wears masks. Moreover, no one recommends wearing masks to healthy people, because it is pointless. It is recommended to wash your hands at home more often and disinfect them if you are in a public place. Sanitizers, of course, immediately disappeared from the sale, but soon appeared again, and immediately in half -liter packaging. But at the entrance to any store, free disinfectors appeared, and somewhere even disposable gloves. Because in Finland they know that picking up a virus is easier through a touch. Therefore, the management company sent a letter that it is especially carefully wiping all the surfaces in the porches and that the common sauna (there are such in those apartment buildings where there are no saunas directly in apartments) for the quarantine period is closed - oh, horror! In other issues related to personal and public hygiene, the government counts on the consciousness of citizens: the Finns can keep the social distance like no one.

I understand that Russia is not Finland. Because in Finland there are human rights and there is a constitution, which is really the main law, and not “drawbar” (you can’t just take it, and prohibit leaving the house). Because in Finland there is no oil and gas, which at a crisis at the crisis resurrect the course of the national currency. Because the oligarchs - the president’s friends do not make a decision from which such a storm begins in the economy that the boat does not just swing, it floods it from all sides, you do not have time to pump out. Because in Finland there is no corruption that kills all living things in the economy, and in politics, and in culture, and in sports, and in ... Because in the Finnish parliament there is an opposition that controls and criticizes the work of the government even in such difficult times, and thereby keeps the political elite in tone. Because the Finnish government leads a completely “transparent” in the sense of its past, its income and his career, the Prime Minister, who is not afraid to go out to journalists every day and answer all questions on the air. Because the government coalition is a team of like -minded people, professional politicians. Because the governors and mayors are not “governor generals” and city managers set to rule on someone’s indication from above.

But even with all the above, it’s still difficult for me to understand why, on the one hand, the authorities think first of all on the time of the crisis of how to make people's life easier. And on the other hand, to ban everything as quickly and tougher as possible, for violation-punish, for criticism-to plant and at the same time take all responsibility.

Gleb Yarova - political scientist

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office