“...better educated than Americans.”
That’s really not a true statement. Russia, like most non-US nations, exercises a great deal more control over education... and not everyone goes to college/Univesity. Not everyone gets a “free” education, regardless of ability, desire, behavior, intellect... Lots of “merit” (or who you know and your bank account) in education beyond what we might consider “middle school”. Tracking of students is still a big thing there - the brightest are channeled one way, and the “labor-type” are funneled another.
Actual illiteracy is startlingly high in Russia (as a whole) for a supposed First-World nation.
“Russians are better educated than Americans. Even under communism they were better educated. I would not be surprised if the cure for cancer originates in Russia.”
No comment on this vaccine but I doubt even Russia’s lies can reach that of our own drug companies.
But this does remind me of a story where the Russians claimed that they inherited something like 150 rocket engines from the Soviet days which had technology that we were convinced was impossible (far better performance than we could build), and they wanted to sell those engines to the US. So we sent our rocket scientists to Russia to watch them test. The engines performed just as Russia promised.
So the skeptical rocket scientists said “How about we send our own test equipment and repeat the tests”, Russians said: “Fine, bring it over” - same results, engines did just as the Russians claimed.
So the skeptical rocket scientists said “How about you guys send some of those engines over here (to the US) and we’ll test them on OUR test stands”. “Fine, we’ll send them over” - same results, engines did just as the Russians claimed.
So, Orbital Sciences Corporation (US company) wound up buying them, and they engines performed just as the Russians had claimed, and many launches took place.
Moral of the story - when a country FAR BETTER educates their kids than our America-hating Leftists permit, don’t immediately discount their claims.