MINSK, 28 January (BelTA) – Some people have harnessed the coronavirus pandemic and started cashing in on it, President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he was delivering the annual Address to Belarusian People and the National Assembly on 28 January, BelTA has learned.
“In collaboration with our partners, we have already created an effective cooperation platform to respond to the challenges associated with the pandemic. Belarus is rapidly learning, gaining experience, and offering its own COVID-19 response strategy,” the head of state said.
The Belarusian leader condemned undisguised national egoism that emerged as early as during the first wave of the pandemic. “Coronavirus psychosis literally tore Europe to shreds,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. “Instead of joining forces, nations started acting spontaneously, chaotically, trying to survive on their own.”
“The coronavirus has already become a manageable thing, I told you that it would happen more than two years ago. Some people have started taking advantage of it. Billionaires around the world have significantly grown their wealth, the gap between the very rich and the rest of the population has noticeably increased. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. According to the Davos forum, tech giants and pharmaceutical companies benefited the most. Now these industries are linked. In other words, they fenced people in at home, gave them gadgets, replaced the reality by the metaverse and made people consume a lot of medicines. Will this mafia give up earning trillions in its profits? It continues to whip up panic, and vaccines are becoming a part of big politics,” the Belarusian leader said.
According to Aleksandr Lukashenko, the West has embarked on a full-fledged vaccine war. “They do not recognize Sputnik V, they treat Sinopharm with caution, and at the same time they tout their own product, Pfizer. In fact they divide the markets and sort people. The pandemic has laid bare that there is no alternative to a strong state in the fight against the crisis and its consequences. Belarus did not succumb to the artificially inflated mass hysteria, did not put the economy on hold, did not shut down the border, did not rely solely on external assistance,” the head of state said.
