Suddenly I feel the Urge to Capture all my Thoughts on All sorts of Topics on a Daily Basis.
Hence this IMHO (In My Honest Opinion) Blog and it is just my Opinion. You do not have to agree or disagree
Don't ask me why I am doing this ? Perhaps on my Bucket List of Things to do :-)
MAY BE THE END IS NIGH :-) GOD ONLY KNOWS and CORONA could be lurking round the Corner
This is a MOTHER of My Blogs & has links to all my blogs including my own Obituary if you can find it :-)
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ONE ARTICLE A DAY, KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY. ALSO AN IDLE MIND IS A DEVILS WORKSHOP SO BEST TO KEEP THE MIND ENGAGED ALWAYS. "BEST VIEWED ON A COMPUTER"
Friday, 23 April 2021
239 - Woeful Covid Situation in India in April 2021,
This post is not for weaklings who buckle under pressure but for the strong ones willing to stand up and fight for themselves and their loved one's without losing hope. If you understand and assume nothing in life is permanent and are willing to accept all outcomes, it will help you stay strong.
Never ask the question why me ? as there is no answer for that in this life of ours. We just have to grin and bear whatever is thrown at us, mere mortals. Stay strong as warriors win battles
Cheers
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I am in tears today reading all whatsapp messages and news articles on the Covid situation in India, which has taken over as the :- "No.1 Most Affected Country in the World".
My son's note says: "ANAND BABU: Daddu - can you explain to me why COVID has become so bad in India once again? Record cases today - 320k in 24hrs.
In Sydney when we hear there are one or two more new cases mostly from people quarantined after arrival, we get so disturbed and it is very difficult to fathom the fear of people living in India today.
So So Sad.
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Here is a list of all news about Covid in India as received on 22nd April 2021: -
Beautifully written by a Doctor...
A conglomerate of fools, Unfettered by any rules Determined to make way For an early Doomsday. Politicians stand by Watching myriad people die! More concerned about rallies And their Assembly seats tallies. Priests their prayers chant, Their concern for humanity scant. Hordes dip into the river, Asking God to deliver? Pray where is good sense? Are we collectively so dense? Let our conscience awake, For our great country's sake. Else this virus will annihilate The pandemic will not abate.
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WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TAKE THE 2ND PHASE OF LOCKDOWN...
COVID-19 CRUCIAL INFORMATION
◉ Due to the collapse of the health system, we, the health professionals, have prepared this message for the people
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Good luck everyone!
It is better to keep these recommendations, prevention is never too much!
• Sit in the sun for 15-20 minutes
• Rest and sleep for at least 7-8 hours.
• Drink 1 and a half liters of water per day
• All food should be hot (not cold).
Keep in mind that the pH of the coronavirus ranges from 5.5 to 8.5.
So all we have to do to eliminate the virus is to eat more alkaline foods, above the acid level of the virus.
As;
◉ Bananas, Lime → 9.9 pH
◉ Yellow lemon → 8.2 pH
◉ Avocado - pH 15.6
◉ Garlic - pH 13.2
◉ Mango - pH 8.7
◉ Mandarin - pH 8.5
◉ Pineapple - 12.7 pH
◉ Watercress - 22.7 pH
◉ Oranges -
DO NOT keep this information just to yourself, give it to all your family and friends.
W E C A R E
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As received
Important Message for all
The hot water you drink is good for your throat. But this corona virus is hidden behind the paranasal sinus of your nose for 3 to 4 days. The hot water we drink does not reach there. After 4 to 5 days this virus that was hidden behind the paranasal sinus reaches your lungs. Then you have trouble breathing.
That's why it is very important to take steam, which reaches the back of your paranasal sinus. You have to kill this virus in the nose with steam.
At 50°C, this virus becomes disabled i.e. paralyzed. At 60°C this virus becomes so weak that any human immunity system can fight against it. At 70°C this virus dies completely.
This is what steam does.
One who stays at home should take steam once a day. If you go to the market to buy vegetables, take it twice a day. Anyone who meets some people or goes to office should take steam 3 times a day.
Forward this to all your loved ones.
🙏
Steam week
According to doctors, Covid -19 can be killed by inhaling steam from the nose and mouth, eliminating the Coronavirus. If all the people started a steam drive campaign for a week, the pandemic will soon end. So here is a suggestion:
* Start the process for a week morning and evening, for just 5 minutes each time, to inhale steam. If all adopt this practice for a week the deadly Covid-19 will be erased.
This practice has no side effects either.
So please send this message to all your relatives, friends and neighbours, so that we all can kill this corona virus together and live and walk freely in this beautiful world.
Thank you
You are most welcome to send this to your known groups / friends.
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Response on Steam Inhalation:
From my doctor cousin:
Not sure steam inhalation is effective in COVID 19. The virus is inactivated only at 50 degrees C and above. At 50 degrees C, the lining of the respiratory tract will be damaged.
Steam inhalation at lower effective temperatures, in general, can aid unblocking nose & sinuses with other infections.
Salt water gargling on the other hand, may help reduce viral load and reduce intensity and duration of sickness.
Studied in other corona viruses by an ex CMC virologist and in a small study in Brazil by ex CMC virologist's colleagues.
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A senior (ex) bureaucrat speaks:
Author : Amitabha Pande
My generation of civil servants went through the Indira Gandhi 'emergency' years and Sanjay Gandhi's goonda raj, the whimsical governance of Morarji Desai, the hopeful years of Rajiv Gandhi which quickly turned into a period of despair, the confused and politically turbulent VP Singh years, the highly forgettable tenures of Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral, the stable, occasionally sly but temperate years of Narsimha Rao, the mature and moderate years of Vajpayee and the slow but steady and modest professionalism of Man Mohan Singh.
We thought we had seen it all, but nothing could have prepared us for the viciousness, the malignancy, the insensitivity, the reckless disregard for Constitutional morality, the pettiness, the arrogance, the vaulting ambition, the ruthlessness and the cruelty towards the 'other', the cultural vulgarity, the intellectual vacuity and now the monumental administrative incompetence that we have seen in the last seven years.
Incidentally for those of you not in the know, Parakala Prabhakar is India's Finance Minister - Nirmala Sitaraman's husband
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Message from Family Member:
We are as a country going through tremendous crises.. no bed , tremendous oxygen scarcity, medicine unavailable ..people dying .. near and dear ones.. everybody is losing loved ones.. the rich and the poor .. same suffering , same fear, same depression, same desperate situations, same helplessness, same loss .....
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India is struggling to cope with the soaring numbers - it recorded some 314,835 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, while deaths rose by 2,104.
Oxygen supply has been a particular problem, with a number of hospitals in the capital Delhi running out entirely on Thursday, according to the city's Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sisodia.
A graph showing daily cases and deaths in India
Delhi's highest court on Wednesday publicly criticised the central government for its handling of the oxygen crisis in the city.
"This is ridiculous. We want to know what the centre is doing with regard to oxygen supply across India," the judges said while reading out the verdict in a petition by the owner of six private hospitals.
It ordered the government to ensure safe passage of oxygen supplies from factories to hospitals across India. Delhi state government approached the high court again on Thursday when two of the city's hospitals reported they had only a few hours' oxygen supply left.
The court ordered the federal government, which allocates oxygen quota to states, to ensure smooth supply of to Delhi. The federal government said it was ensuring free movement of oxygen tankers between states.
Nakuul Mehta has released a new poem, "Marghat ka Shehenshah". (Photo: Nakuul Mehta/Youtube)
Television star Nakuul Mehta on Wednesday shared that the poem “Marghat Ka Shahenshah”, his latest collaboration with writer Ajay Singh, was the result of the anguish he felt against the system that has failed its citizens during the coronaviruspandemic. The poem, the epilogue of which Nakuul posted on Monday, has gone viral as several of his fans and friends believe it resonates with the helplessness they have been feeling amid the second wave of Covid-19 that has left the country devastated.
Sharing an excerpt from the poem on Instagram, Nakuul penned a long post describing his intentions behind the commentary. He wrote, “There is so much one has felt in the last fortnight which we all are still processing… Fear, anger, desperation, helplessness and much more. Whilst all of us can look within and reflect on how we could gave played this differently, and sure we could have. There needs to be self accountability for the mess we are in but the general apathy shown to us by people who govern us, who have let nothing come in between their mad hunger to strengthen their vote bank whilst the citizenry has been left to his or her own devices to figure this once in a lifetime situation we are in. That there has been lack of foresight & preparation is not even debatable.”
Sanjiv Bhatia: Comparing India's responses to Covid Vaccines to Israels
Israel has once again shown countries like India how clever leaders think in the 2nd and 3rd order (thinking beyond the obvious).
Last week Israel became the first country to inoculate its entire adult population over age 18. Yesterday, all schools and colleges were opened and mask requirements were removed all across the country (barring a few congested public places).
Here's how this remarkable country did it.
Israel's leaders are all well educated and many of them have advanced degrees in science and medicine. Their PM graduated at the top of his class at MIT, and started (but didn't finish) a PhD at Harvard.
They realized at the onset of the pandemic last year that the only way to beat a virus was through herd immunity, and that vaccination was key to expediting this process. They immediately zeroed in the two companies that were ahead of the pack in vaccine development--Pfizer and Moderna. The Israeli PM immediately developed a personal friendship with the CEOs of these companies (using his Harvard and MIT connections).
As soon as Pfizer announced successful Phase 3 trials Israel made a deal with Pfizer to pick up their first 8 million doses for twice the price ($30 per dose) of what Pfizer was eventually aiming to sell the vaccine. Israel also agreed to provide Pfizer with data on the efficacy of the vaccine on its population. By November 2020, Israel had already acquired the vaccines it required to immunize its people.
The Israeli PM was asked two weeks ago why they agreed to pay $15 per dose extra, and his response was classic 2nd order thinking. He said that, just in pure economic numbers, the total amount they overpaid was a miniscule fraction of what it costs to lockdown the country. This is not counting the extra medical costs of Covid and the incalculable price of losing a loved one. The economic loss from just three days of lockdown was more than the overpayment for all the vaccines they bought.
That's how smart people think.
Pan now to India where the PM once proudly stated that he advised the Indian Air Force to bomb targets in Pakistan under the cover of clouds to avoid detection. Of course, he had no clue that clouds don't impede radars. He, by his own admission, barely passed High School, although once he became PM and started hobnobbing with other educated world leaders, he miraculously produced a Master's degree through "distant learning ", from a University in Gujarat in a subject no one had ever heard of-- " Entire Political Science."
Now India has a huge advantage that Israel doesn’t, a Pune-based company called The Serum Institute (SI) which just happens to be the largest producer of vaccines in the world.
Advantage India's PM-- a company right in his backyard that had the manufacturing rights to produce Astra Zenica vaccines.
So what did the Indian PM do? He spent months trying to "negotiate" and beat SI down on price. I am told by reliable sources that SI was threatened with dire consequences if it didn't reduce its price (contrast this with the Israeli PM who befriended the CEOs).
Remember the Indian leadership has a horrible track record on negotiating deals.They negotiated with Dessault, the French aircraft manufacturer, and ended up overpaying for the Rafael fighters. They have managed to lose half the selling price of India’s most prized asset Air India courtesy of their perceived "negotiating" acumen.
It is my understanding that the difference between SIs asking price and the government's offer was around Rs 100 per dose. So the total amount under negotiation for 800 million vaccines (India’s adult population) was around Rs 8000 crores. Let's double that for 2 doses per person and we are looking at Rs 16,000 crores.
Let's compare that with the economic loss from a lockdown. The government's own estimate is that the economic loss from the seven months of lockdown between March and September was around Rs 11 lakh crores (11,00,000 crores). This translates to a daily loss of Rs 5,200 crores.
In other words, the opportunity cost of not getting the vaccines is less than 4 days of economic loss from a lockdown. This doesn't include the massive healthcare costs and the unimaginable cost of lost lives from the vaccine shortage.
With daily cases now exceeding 200,000 several state governments have announced lockdowns. The economic loss will afain mount and the poor will bear the brunt of the burden.
As is always the case the Indian people are paying a huge price for incompetent political leadership.
For the longest time now I have argued that the single biggest impediment to India's prosperity is the size of its government. It is too big and too overreaching. As economist Milton Friedman once said " All bad government comes from big government."
India's egregious handling of the Covid crisis proves Friedman was spot on.
Several major cities are reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official death tolls. Relatives of COVID victims at Nigambodh Ghat crematorium in New Delhi. [File: Naveen Sharma/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images] 20 Apr 2021
Gas and firewood furnaces at a crematorium in the western Indian state of Gujarat have been running so long without a break during the COVID-19 pandemic that metal parts have begun to melt.
“We are working around the clock at 100 percent capacity to cremate bodies on time,” Kamlesh Sailor, the president of the trust that runs the crematorium in the diamond-polishing city of Surat, told the Reuters news agency. KEEP READING Is a double mutant COVID variant behind India’s record surge?
And with hospitals full and oxygen and medicines in short supply in an already creaky health system, several big cities are reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official COVID-19 death tolls, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.
India’s daily COVID-19 cases retreated from record levels on Tuesday but stayed above the 200,000 mark for a sixth-straight day, with cases increasing by 259,170 over the last 24 hours. Deaths rose by a record 1,761, health ministry data showed.
Officially, almost 180,000 Indians have died from coronavirus, 15,000 of them this month, although some believe the real number may be higher.
Indian social media and newspaper reports have been flooded with horrifying images of row upon row of burning pyres and crematoriums unable to cope. ‘Haven’t seen so many dead bodies’
In the western state of Gujarat, many crematoriums in Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Ahmedabad are operating around the clock with three to four times more bodies than normal.
This picture taken on April 13, 2021 shows burning funeral pyres of patients who died due to the coronavirus disease at a crematorium in Surat [AFP] In the diamond hub of Surat, Gujarat’s second-largest city, Sailor’s Kurukshetra crematorium and a second crematorium known as Umra have cremated more than 100 bodies a day under COVID-19 protocols over the last week, far in excess of the city’s official daily coronavirus death toll of approximately 25, according to interviews with workers.
Prashant Kabrawala, a trustee of Narayan Trust, which manages a third city crematorium called Ashwinikumar, declined to provide the number of bodies received under the virus’ protocols but said cremations there had tripled in recent weeks.
“I have been regularly going to the crematorium since 1987, and been involved in its day-to-day functioning since 2005, but I haven’t seen so many dead bodies coming for cremation in all these years,” even during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1994 and floods in 2006.
The iron frames inside another in Surat melted because there was no time to let the furnaces cool. “Until last month we were cremating 20-odd bodies per day… But since the beginning of April we have been handling over 80 bodies every day,” said a local official at the Ramnath Ghela Crematorium in the city.
Last week, Sandesh, a Gujarati newspaper, counted 63 bodies leaving a single COVID-19-only hospital for burial in the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad, on a day where government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths.
The chimney of one electric furnace in Ahmedabad cracked and collapsed after being in constant use for up to 20 hours every day for the past two weeks.
With waiting times of up to eight hours, Rajkot has set up a dedicated 24/7 control room to manage the flow in the city’s four crematoriums.
Government spokesmen in Gujarat did not respond to requests for comment. A relative leans against a glass window at the crematorium where a family member who died from the coronavirus disease is prepared for cremation, in New Delhi [Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters] Bring your own wood
In Lucknow, the capital of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, data from the largest coronavirus-only crematorium, Baikunth Dham, shows double the number of bodies arriving on six different days in April than government data on COVID-19 deaths for the entire city.
At two crematoriums in Lucknow, relatives were given numbered tokens and made to wait for up to 12 hours. One started burning bodies in an adjacent park, an official told AFP news agency.
Rohit Singh, whose father died from COVID-19, said crematorium officials were charging around 7,000 rupees ($100) – almost 20 times the normal rate.
Some crematoriums in Lucknow ran out of wood and asked people to bring it themselves. Viral photos on social media showed electric rickshaws laden down with logs.
In Ghaziabad outside New Delhi, television pictures showed bodies wrapped in shrouds lined up on biers on the pavement with weeping relatives waiting for their slot.
The ultimate place for Hindus to be cremated is Varanasi, the ancient city where since time immemorial bodies have been burned on the banks of the river Ganges.
Belbhadra, who works at one of the famous ghats there, told AFP that they were cremating at least 200 suspected coronavirus victims per day.
The usual time to get to the ghat – a riverside embankment for cremations – from the main road via narrow lanes was usually three or four minutes, a resident said.
“Now it takes around 20 minutes. that’s how crowded the lanes are with people waiting to cremate the dead,” he said.
The figures from Lucknow do not take into account a second COVID-19-only crematorium in the city or burials in the Muslim community that makes up a quarter of the city’s population.
Crematorium head Azad, who goes by only one name, said the number of cremations under COVID-19 protocols had risen five-fold in recent weeks.
“We are working day and night,” he said. “The incinerators are running full time but still many people have to wait with the bodies for the last rites.”
A spokesman for the Uttar Pradesh government did not respond to a request for comment. ‘I will run out of space in 3-4 days’
A summer storm is buffeting New Delhi as Mohammed Shamim wearily pauses to glance at yet another ambulance arriving with a coronavirus victim to bury, just minutes after the last.
The gravedigger’s grim workload, like those of others around India, has grown dramatically in the past few weeks in a brutal second wave that has caught authorities badly off guard.
People offer prayers before burying the victims who died due to the coronavirus disease, at a graveyard in New Delhi [Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]When AFP visited the Jadid Qabristan Ahle cemetery in the Indian capital – which is now in a week-long lockdown – on Friday, 11 bodies arrived within three hours.
By sunset, 20 bodies were in the ground. This compares to some days in December and January, when his earthmoving machine stayed idle and when many thought the pandemic was over.
“Now, it looks like the virus has legs,” Shamim, 38, a gravedigger like his father and grandfather, told AFP. “At this rate, I will run out of space in three or four days.”
Around the graveyard, white body bags or coffins made out of cheap wood are carried around by people in blue or yellow protective suits and lowered into graves.
Small groups of men, some in skullcaps, look solemnly at the ground as the imam, struggling to be heard as dust laced with rain swirls around, recites final prayers.
Sobbing women watch from their closed car windows next to the flashing lights of an ambulance as a yellow digger fills up the graves with the dry brown and grey soil.
“Two days ago someone came to me and said he needs to start preparing for his mother because doctors had given up on her,” Shamim said.
“It’s unreal. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d have a request for starting the funeral formalities of a living person.”
Elsewhere, India Today magazine reported two crematoriums in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, 187 bodies were cremated following COVID-19 protocols in four days this month, while the official coronavirus death toll stood at five.
‘Data denial’
India is not the only country to have its coronavirus statistics questioned. But the testimony of workers and a growing body of academic literature suggest deaths in India are being under-reported compared with other countries.
Experts say reliable data is at the heart of any government response to the pandemic, without which planning for hospital vacancies, oxygen and medicine becomes difficult.
Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said many parts of India were in “data denial”.
“Everything is so muddy,” she said. “It feels like nobody understands the situation very clearly and that’s very irksome.”
Mukherjee’s research of India’s first wave concludes that there were 11 times more infections than were reported, in line with estimates from studies in other countries. There were also between two and five times as many deaths than were reported, far in excess of global averages.
The Lancet medical journal noted last year that four Indian states making up 65 percent of COVID-19 fatalities nationally each registered 100 percent of their coronavirus deaths.
But fewer than a quarter of deaths in India are medically certified, particularly in rural areas, meaning the true COVID-19 death rate in many of India’s 24 other states may never be known.
Government officials say the mismatch in death tallies may be caused by several factors, including over-caution.
A senior state health official said the increase in numbers of cremations had been due to bodies being cremated using COVID-19 protocols “even if there is 0.1 percent probability of the person being positive”.
Relatives of COVID victims at Nigambodh Ghat crematorium in New Delhi. [File: Naveen Sharma/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]
This picture taken on April 13, 2021 shows burning funeral pyres of patients who died due to the coronavirus disease at a crematorium in Surat [AFP]
A relative leans against a glass window at the crematorium where a family member who died from the coronavirus disease is prepared for cremation, in New Delhi [Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]
People offer prayers before burying the victims who died due to the coronavirus disease, at a graveyard in New Delhi [Danish