"In the role of experimental - we are all"

Why will Russia not be a “quiet harbor”, which the Covid-19 will not touch, whether the Russian regions will catch up with the capital and whether there will be a vaccine

About the current situation and the prospects of its development - Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Laboratory Head at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and at the Institute of Biology of the Gena RAS Konstantin Severinov.

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Konstantin Severinov is a molecular biologist, professor of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Ratger (USA). He heads the laboratories of the Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

- For a month, if not more, they said that in Russia there will be no such epidemic as in Europe, we have a “quiet harbor” and so on. But the development went according to another scenario: over the past day - two and a half thousand sick. Why does the epidemic develop in Russia in the same way as everywhere?

- Because viruses are not required to obey people. Yes, politicians said something, but, probably, they need to enter their position, they themselves are not specialists in this topic and depend on the experts who surrounded themselves. They must say at least something to calm people. Another thing is that such calm can lead to negative results: the people will not perceive what is happening with due seriousness. To some extent, the role was also played by what is always nice to say how bad the neighbors were.

“But not only politicians, but also virologists and epidemiologists reassured us.” There is, for example, the theory of Soviet BCG vaccination, which now saves everyone who received it.

- Well, you can’t talk about this at all. There are a lot of fools. And there are also many engaged fools. Or not even engaged-with some of their Freudian phantom pains about the prince of domestic medicine and science, our special path in everything and so on. On the one hand, there are no scientific ways to understand how everything will develop. All this fortune -telling on coffee grounds. On the other hand, everything that happens in neighboring countries shows:

We are no different from other people. For the virus, we are all just pieces of meat.

And what is happening now in Moscow goes to parallel with what is happening in New York. Another thing is that our mortality seems to be significantly lower. But this is a separate question - what is the reason.

- And what is the reason? We think differently - or is it really lower?

“We don’t know this yet.” Official data on mortality can fluctuate in different countries, differing several times. Maybe this is due to how the causes of death are determined. Judging by the fact that our viruses are no different from the European ones, and we are no different from Europeans and other people, it would be strange why this is such grace. You can probably assume that we have more effective medicine and a healthcare system.

- Yes?

- We have to some extent really effective medicine. She is such a mobilization type. Since Soviet times. But there are still no miracles, even though they really want to believe in them.

-How can we evaluate the effectiveness of our medicine in the fight against coronavirus, if there was still no peak load on it?

- We make a methodological mistake, comparing ourselves now with other countries. But it is still necessary to unscrew the time a month ago or even two-depending on when in which country the epidemic began. Then, probably, we could comprehend our numbers more correctly.

- How do you explain the “delay” of Russia?

- Apparently, the “patient No. 1” came to us later. This is an obvious reason. In addition, very long distances in Russia, fragmentation - in the sense with what speed people move from one point to another. Moscow is now an absolute leader - as the most European city and such a Russian passing court.

- And what explains such a difference between Moscow and the regions of Russia? Will it remain or regions will gradually catch up with Moscow in terms of incidence?

- Imagine that Moscow is such a closely related community of people. And Torzhok is also such a community, only much smaller in size. Inside the Torzhok and inside Moscow, people meet with each other, with members of their community, more often than beyond. In many countries, in particular in America, the smoothing of the number of cases is due to the fact that in different cities the infection began at different times. Somewhere-it just began, somewhere-a peak, but when you summarize all this and show statistics at the level of the whole country, there is a visibility of raising. I use this term in the value of the release of the number of cases and infected on the plateau. Today, Russian statistics are actually only Moscow statistics.

But the fact that the infection will spread everywhere, there is no doubt.

- Each region will get sick?

- I read that there are practically no “clean” regions, but ultimately the infection can cover most of the major cities. In small ones, she simply will not be diagnosed. We cannot completely forbid people to travel around the country, we cannot break the country into specific principalities. There is evidence that the so -called super -abstracts can be infections - infected people without symptoms.

If this is true, then it is enough for such a “healthy” person to come to some town-and the infection will appear there.

We cannot close the entire population with tests and on the basis of the results to control the movement.

- Is it possible to calculate when we have a peak and a plateau?

- You can make forecasts, predictions, but reality should not follow them at all. Effective quarantine measures will inevitably lead to the ravage of a curve in the place where they are used. Otherwise it cannot be. But different quarantine measures are applied differently to different countries, different cities, and different people. In China, a plateau has been reached due to very severe quarantine measures, there are practically no new sick people. But this does not mean that a new hearth cannot arise - not in Juan, but in another place. Each country should look for some kind of decision.

- What should this decision depend on?

- From a million things. It depends on the determination and the ability of the authorities to use more or less rigid quarantine measures, to use them earlier or later. That is - from the political system. It is believed that in China, hard quarantine measures that could not, at least in the early stages, were accepted in more democratic countries, were very effective. The solution depends on the level of development and the method of organizing a healthcare system in the country. It depends on how much people agree to take on all kinds of restrictive measures on themselves, how long they are able to hold out.

Therefore, the effectiveness of measures will depend on the fact that the authorities are ready to give people who are losing their livelihood.

- Boston Consulting Group has issued a report in which it predicts the development of an epidemic in different countries. For the United States and for Russia, and for Germany, they predict the peak in the first week of May, although epidemics in these countries began at different times. Why so?

-There are methods of mathematical modeling, which on the basis of the laid parameters can give some results. But all these models are similar to the weather forecast. The only thing that can be said for sure is that at some point it will end. And in different countries in different, apparently, time. And the date you can set any, often the one that the customer wants to hear.

- When will it all end?

- Well, everything is in the hand of God. Nobody can predict this. Imagine this is a game on the exchange. Do you know a person who knows exactly where the shares will go at what point? The only thing you can do is look at the regularly published data and see some trends, and then act at your own peril and risk.

-This is just one of the coronaviruses, scientists have known so many things about them since the 60s of the last century. Is this also not data for forecasts?

- At the genomic level, this virus refers to other coronaviruses in about the same way as the mouse - to you and me. And what is true for the mouse is not necessarily true for us. That is, really related viruses, but specifically the virus that caused the current pandemic, due to certain changes in the genome, obviously acquired new properties. The explanations of why and what changes in the genome have led to such new properties, we do not yet know.

- Watching, as you said, the trends, at what point should you be delighted that the improvement began?

- As soon as the significant and long -term rehabilitation begins. I really like the press conferences of Andrew Kuomo, the governor of New York: daily in an accessible language, he explains what is happening, what and why do the authorities, what this means for the population. At the same time, he constantly refers to experts. So he says: I am not an expert, but my experts are the best, and they say this and that. In this sense, he was really lucky: the scientists of the Colombian, New York universities, the Slan Keterring center are the best specialists, they are ready to advise him, and he is ready to listen and make decisions on the basis of their advice. And now they are now starting to notice good trends, see the relocation, and Kuomo tells the population about this.

“Why don't they explain to us every day?” Why do we all the time doubt even just in the number of cases? There are no such experts or do not consider it necessary to explain something?

- Well, you are now "swinging the boat."

The issues of trust in power and official statistics-they are not about coronavirus, this is about something else, another topic.

But if generally talking about science and life in Russia, about biomedicin, then our level, of course, is much lower than in America or in developed European countries, in Japan, and recently in China.

- From the very beginning, scientists said that in this virus there is nothing special, no worse than the flu.

- This is true. I also thought and said so. But still, they become smart in retroactively. Now there is a very large, planetary scale. So you said - one of the coronavirus. In fact, this virus is not known to us. And it was impossible to predict his behavior either with a mathematical model, or with the knowledge of virology. The situation is changing all the time because the virus is not obliged to follow our ideas about it. Over time, we get more and more knowledge that allow us to better judge what is happening. Now the whole world has ended up in a situation in which experimenter scientists are located every day. You study a black cat in a dark room, and it may not be there. You have some ideas about her, you conduct experiments, and then look at the result, put forward some hypotheses and put new experiments to check them. In the case of this virus, approximately the same thing occurs,

Only the experiment, unfortunately, does not go to the laboratory, but in the role of experimental we all act.

- Can I hope that the vaccine will appear soon?

- This cannot be guaranteed. It is impossible to guarantee that the vaccine will work. But many serious people are doing this, so we can hope that all the necessary work will be done well. Although if the optimistic expectations of Boston Consulting Group and others are correct and everything will calm down to the summer, then the vaccine will not be needed. Because there will not be what to vaccinate against. We will again find ourselves in the position of generals who are preparing for the past war.