Meet the Russian who walks around the city during the Coronavirus pandemic - dressed as a plague doctor

A man in the costume of a plague doctor walks along the Kaliningrad streets, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea. It is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania along the Baltic coast. The people look at the tall, thin figure in black with surprise. “Klops” found out who is hiding under a mask with a beak, and why he does it.
Vasily Lunev - 33, is married and works in his own workshop for sewing leather products. He wears a medieval doctor's costume to demonstrate his skills and surprise people.
“I am interested in history, I participate in reconstruction festivals. The“ plague doctor ”character attracts me for many reasons. Most of all, I like that you can hide your face behind a mask with a beak,” Lunev explained.
Vasily’s costume consists of a leather apron, a shirt with a collar, a spacious hood, a mask and gloves.
“Doctors carried cones, bottles, amulets that rang when walking. They also had a knife and scissors. They didn’t have a medical education, they hired them to clean up the bodies of the dead, take tests, and forgive sins,” the man says enthusiastically.
On the street, people have mixed reactions of my outfit. Sometimes passers-by shy away, sometimes laugh. Vasily complains that Kaliningrad is unfriendly to new things which are not the norm.
"Our people are more conservative than in St. Petersburg or Moscow. There, people notice me and my costume is expressing a healthy interest. However, when I walk on the streets of Kaliningrad, very often people advise, "to go to a psychologist or a priest," Vasily shares.
Lunev emphasizes that his outfit has nothing to do with the coronavirus epidemic. He began to wear and wear it a couple of years ago.
“Yes, this is the first chemical protection suit in history, but it won’t save you from COVID-19. A mask with a beak unreliably isolates. According to current realities, a gas mask is better,” he informs.
Bemorepanda is inviting you to see a collection of pictures taken by Mr Lunev:
Reported by Bemorepanda

What happened
Since the beginning of March, Russian banks and ATMs issued to customers about 1 trillion rubles ($ 13.6 billion) in cash, which is more than the amount that Russians withdrew from banks over the past year, the Central Bank said.
Bloomber was the first agency who noticed.
According to the them, the Russians began to actively withdraw money before the new anticoronavirus measures where introduced.
“People were afraid that banks would not be available during quarantine,” Denis Poryvay, an analyst at Raiffeisenbank in Moscow, explained to the agency the behavior of Russians. “They were withdrawing money for the same reason that others stocked up on food,” he added.
Bloomberg estimates that the daily increase in demand for cash came after key announcements made by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his televisions to citizens. So, the first leap occurred after the head of state announced a tax on bank deposits in excess of 1 million rubles. And the peak fell on March 3. The day before, the president declared that the entire month of April will be a non-working month,
Around the same period, in mid-March, Bloomberg notes with reference to retailers, demand for low-cost nutritious foods, such as buckwheat and canned meat, also increased. The Kremlin and the Central Bank have not yet commented on this news.
The fight against coronavirus
With television appeals in connection with the spread in Russia of a new type of coronavirus, Putin turned to the Russians twice. In the first, he postponed the date of voting on amendments to the Constitution and announced the measures prepared by the state to combat the epidemic.
Among them were not only support measures, but also new taxes, for example, on bank deposits in excess of 1 million rubles. In the second appeal, the president declared April a non-working month, but with the preservation of wages.
The authorities did not begin to introduce quarantines at the federal level in connection with the pandemic. For this Putin was criticized by leading Russian economists, including professor at the Paris University of Sciences Po Sergey Guriev, professor at the Paris School of Economics Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, professor of economics at Princeton University Oleg Itzhoki and others.
Later, they called the measures of state support for business and people under quarantine conditions short-sighted and called on the Russian authorities to distribute to each Russian at a fixed amount (for example, 10,000 rubles). The money for this, experts beleive, is in the National Welfare Fund.
But the Central Bank did not support such an initiative.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin expressed a similar point of view. He noted that with the implementation of such a measure, budgets will go bust.
Pay attention
According to the latest official information, more than 43,000 cases of coronavirus infection have been registered in Russia. More than 361 people who were diagnosed with COVID-19 have died. The most difficult epidemiological situation among all Russian regions is in Moscow and the Moscow region.

Residents of Moscow during quarantine will be able to visit the cemetery and monitor the cleaning of burial places online. This was reported in the press service of "Ritual".
“Citizens are provided with the opportunity to visit the burial site remotely, one-time cleaning at the burial site, laying flowers. These services include finding a burial place and a photo report, ”the press service told TASS.
For the duration of the quarantine in Moscow, employees of the institution continue to work on landscaping cemeteries as usual.
On May 9, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin signed a decree on a temporary procedure for visiting Moscow cemeteries for a period of self-isolation to combat coronavirus infection.
The mayor noted that he understood the desire of many citizens to visit cemeteries for religious holidays and to tidy up there. However, due to the current epidemiological quarantine, it will be impossible to visit the graves of deceased relatives.
In the Russian Orthodox Church, the decision of the Moscow authorities was called expected and reasonably justified.
From the evening of March 29 in the Moscow region, and later in many other parts of Russia, a mandatory self-isolation regime was introduced. You can leave your home when you see a doctor, to go to the store or pharmacy, and also to walk with your pet. Similar restrictions apply not only in Russia, but also in a number of other countries.
As of April 13, in Russia, the total number of virus infection cases was 15,770, out of which. 130 patients died and 1,291 recovered. Across the world, the number of people infected with coronavirus is heading to 2 million people, with over 1,792,766 confirmed cases and 109,785 deaths, according to Worldometers.info.

Russia will begin testing a covid vaccine on paid volunteers next week, writes The Moscow Times.
Vadim Tarasov, the director of the institute that will conduct the study, explained that 50 volunteers were selected, and those who will participate in the study until the end will be paid 100,000 rubles ($ 1,450). Those who participate only partially will be rewarded with 20,000 rubles ($ 288). The vaccine was developed by a state-owned research institute.
The study, which will begin on June 7, is open to "healthy women and men, aged 18-60," according to documents distributed earlier this week on social media by students at a medical university in Moscow. Tarasov confirmed the authenticity of the test guide and the online registration form.
In the first phase of the study, participants will be isolated at a medical unit in Zvenigorod, a city 50 km from Moscow, on June 9-22. The vaccine will be administered to participants only in the second phase, which will take place between June 23 and July 20, and the volunteers will be transferred to a research center in Moscow.
Russia ranks third in the world in the number of coronavirus cases, with more than 440,000 patients. On Thursday, 8,831 new cases and 169 deaths were confirmed.

The best comedy movies of all time are the ones that had the highest revenues, but which also remained in the charts on the highest positions.
The truth is that the best comedy movies never go out of style, and if you feel the need to watch a good comedy on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, we tried to make a list of the top 10 comedies that received the most good rating.
Big Momma’s House 3
Malcolm Turner and his stepson, Trent, go undercover to a girls' school to track down and expose a murderer.
The interview
The action of the comedy The Interview focuses on the presenter of a television show (James Franco) and its producer (Seth Rogen), who inadvertently gets involved in an ultra-secret plan to assassinate the North Korean prime minister.
Mr. Bean's Holiday
On a rainy afternoon in England, Mr. Bean is happy to have won the First Prize at a raffle at the local church. He won a trip to the south of France and a brand new video camera. It will be in Cannes during the famous festival.
Let’s Be Cops
It's the coolest comedy with cops, only… heroes are impostors! Two friends at the buckle (Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson) are seriously considering leaving the metropolis for their hometown and, in order to forget about their problems, they go to the hottest costume party. Dressed in police uniforms, the two friends become the sensation of the neighborhood, but they will get in your eyes to have trouble not only with gangsters all over, but with detectives sold to the mafia.
Bringing Down the House
What does a lonely and desperate man do? Join the chat. He talks to a stranger, he gets caught in the game, but when the time comes to see him first, he has a big surprise. She's not an intellectual, she's not even a lawyer, she's Charlene (Queen Latifah), a prison escapee who claims she was convicted by mistake and wants justice.
The Millers
David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) is a petty drug dealer who earns his living by selling grass to bored businessmen and housewives, but never to children. So what could go wrong? Many.
The Heat
Melissa McCarthy is Shannon, a dirty-mouthed cop who jumps so fast that no one wants to be her partner on the field. That's until Shannon is forced to team up with an FBI agent, sophisticated and arrogant Sarah (Sandra Bullock), to catch a dangerous drug dealer.
The Other Guys
Detectives Christopher Danson and P.K. Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson) are the worst and the nicest cops in the neighborhood. They leave behind only victims. Detective Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are standing behind two offices. You see them in the background with pictures of Danson and Highsmith, daydreaming. They are not heroes - they are just "backup agents."
Bad teacher
Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a teacher for whom there is simply no grade 4. She speaks nasty, unscrupulous and a little indecent. She gets drunk, takes drugs and can't wait to marry a rich man so she can say goodbye to her high school job. When her fiancé leaves, she plans to conquer the substitute teacher (Justin Timberlake), who, besides being beautiful, is also rich.
The Hangover
Two days before the wedding, Doug and three of his friends head to Las Vegas for a well-deserved bachelor party. After a good night, of which they can't remember anything, their friends find a tiger in the bathroom, and a six-month-old baby in the closet! With Doug gone, the three will have to resume last night's journey to figure out what happened and to get the bride and groom to arrive in time for the wedding.

Sometimes directors are real clairvoyants. It delights, and sometimes even scares.
Bemorepanda has compiled a list of top 10 movies you should watch that predicted in one way or another the existing pandemic, which affected the entire world not seen since the Great Depression.
Forbidden Planet
A rescue expedition flies to rescue a distant earthly colony, which was attacked by an unknown creature. By their arrival, only Dr. Morbius, his daughter Altair and the robotic servant Robbie survived.
2001: A Space Odyssey
In prehistoric times, the black monolith turned Australopithecus into people. After millions of years, humanity finds on the moon the same stone, sending a powerful signal somewhere in the region of Jupiter. The Discovery research ship is sent there. But on the way, the on-board computer HAL 9000 starts to behave very strangely.
Network
TV presenter Howard Beal fired due to low ratings. Then he decides on extravagant acts on the air: threatens to commit suicide, swears, makes revealing speeches. All this unexpectedly brings him breathtaking popularity.
Videodrome
Max, director of a small adult channel, in search of a new porno sensation, stumbles upon a video signal from a pirate satellite. The broadcast show, entitled “Videodrom,” contains horrific scenes of violence with bloody torture and murder. Max is trying to learn more, but soon the line between the real world and hallucination begins to blur.
Back to the Future Part II
In the second part of the franchise, the young Marty McFly goes from 1985 to 2015 to help his own children out of a very unpleasant situation. However, in the future, he and Professor Emmett Brown make a mistake, as a result of which the elderly Biff Tennen takes possession of the time machine and changes a lot in the fate of the heroes. McFly and Brown understand that everything needs to be fixed urgently, and are postponed to 1955.
Total Recall
Builder Douglas Quaid has obsessive dreams about Mars. In search of answers, he turns to a company that implants false memories into his brain. But everything is not going as planned, after which the hero suddenly discovers the capabilities of a super agent. Douglas realizes that his whole life until this moment was an illusion.
The Net
Programmer Angela Bennett accidentally crosses the path of the Praetorian hacker group. Then the attackers substitute information about her identity in the databases. And now the heroine is considered a dangerous criminal on the federal wanted list.
The Cable Guy
Stephen Kovacs moves to a new apartment and calls a cable man to set up a TV. The charming Chip Douglas comes to him, and they quickly become friends. But Chip is behaving more strangely, and Stephen decides to stop communicating. This is where the real nightmare begins.
The Truman Show
Truman Burbank considers himself the most ordinary person, but in fact he is a participant in a reality show involuntarily. Video cameras watch him around the clock, and his whole world - sets and actors. And once the hero begins to notice it.
Enemy of the State
In the hands of a successful lawyer Robert Dean is compromising evidence exposing an dishonest official. Very quickly, the life of the protagonist turns into a nightmare: American intelligence chases him everywhere, he becomes a universal enemy and outcast.