This Empire Wouldn't Voom If You Put 4,000 Volts Through It

Russia, quite literally the sick man of Europe:

So what’s killing the Russians? All the usual suspects — HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular and circulatory diseases, suicides, smoking, traffic accidents — but they occur in alarmingly large numbers, and Moscow has neither the resources nor the will to stem the tide. Consider this:

Three times as many Russians die from heart-related illnesses as do Americans or Europeans, per each 100,000 people.

Tuberculosis deaths in Russia are about triple the World Health Organization’s definition of an epidemic, which is based on a new-case rate of 50 cases per 100,000 people.

Average alcohol consumption per capita is double the rate the WHO considers dangerous to one’s health.

About 1 million people in Russia have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, according to WHO estimates.

Using mid-year figures, it’s estimated that 25 percent more new HIV/AIDS cases will be recorded this year than were logged in 2007.

And none of this is likely to get better any time soon.

This is a story I’ve been following on and off since we won the Cold War, when we finally started getting (mostly) honest and even (mostly) true health statistics out of what used to be the Soviet Union. And after almost 20 years, the numbers are getting worse, not better.

And the author of this piece, Murray Feshbach, barely touches on Russian fertility, which is far below replacement levels. Russia isn’t just shirking by almost a million people a year, but is becoming steadily less Russian. If you think Russia is desperate to hang on in the Caucasus now, just you wait until they’re practically outnumbered by Chechens, Ossetians, Avars, Azeris, Kazakhs and the like.