By the way, my mom told me recently she was speaking with a friend from Russia. Her friend went to a clinic and tested positive for covid. Then they went again and tested negative. They asked what the deal was. They were told by a doctor in a very straightforward manner that: “the state tells us how many positive tests we can report per week.” There’s some chance that they don’t even do testing in some clinics, but just assign results randomly to people following the state’s prescription.
I’d assume that the state was saying there was a maximum number of positives rather than a target number? I don’t see any reason to assign false positives on purpose. So I’d assume, if the doctor is telling the truth (and I am guessing that he is) that what is happening is that they report true results except that they turn some positives to negative if they are hitting their limit, or the positive test isn’t a good use of a positive test, or something.
This type of bureaucratic malpractice is particularly common in autocracies. The regime (top leadership) regime wants to know the problem and provide good policies to protect from overthrow. Their desire to avoid embarrassment is a bit lower. The bureaucrats are different. They care much less about the regime being overthrown but want to avoid embarrassment and hard work. So for bureaucrat the incentives to non-comply are strong. Democratic systems have the same problem, but have independent judiciaries and legislatures to share in overseeing the bureaucracy. To conclude:
This narrative is highly plausible. Our prior that mass data faking happens should be high.
We cannot assume that the regime (Putin) is aware of this.
By the way, my mom told me recently she was speaking with a friend from Russia. Her friend went to a clinic and tested positive for covid. Then they went again and tested negative. They asked what the deal was. They were told by a doctor in a very straightforward manner that: “the state tells us how many positive tests we can report per week.” There’s some chance that they don’t even do testing in some clinics, but just assign results randomly to people following the state’s prescription.
I’d assume that the state was saying there was a maximum number of positives rather than a target number? I don’t see any reason to assign false positives on purpose. So I’d assume, if the doctor is telling the truth (and I am guessing that he is) that what is happening is that they report true results except that they turn some positives to negative if they are hitting their limit, or the positive test isn’t a good use of a positive test, or something.
Right.
Fun Autocracy Facts:
This type of bureaucratic malpractice is particularly common in autocracies. The regime (top leadership) regime wants to know the problem and provide good policies to protect from overthrow. Their desire to avoid embarrassment is a bit lower. The bureaucrats are different. They care much less about the regime being overthrown but want to avoid embarrassment and hard work. So for bureaucrat the incentives to non-comply are strong. Democratic systems have the same problem, but have independent judiciaries and legislatures to share in overseeing the bureaucracy. To conclude:
This narrative is highly plausible. Our prior that mass data faking happens should be high.
We cannot assume that the regime (Putin) is aware of this.
For a paper on similar problems in China see or my paper on Jordan