Tip of the Iceberg

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The BMJ reported that as of May 3, 2021 official figures suggested that the Global deaths from covid-19 was 3.27 million. However a study from the University of Washington suggests that the pandemic’s true overall toll will reach 9.43 million deaths by September 2021. The report, based its conclusions on the past year’s deviations from expected overall mortality.

The report states that the virus is claiming about 33,000 lives a day around the world, more than twice reported figures. They estimated the true United States death toll at 905,289 compared with an official figure of 574,043.

In India the disparity between the official reported deaths to the horrors on the ground of hundreds of bodies floating down the Ganges river and crematoria unable to keep up with demand make it obvious that death numbers are far higher than reported. India is forecast to lose a further 842,000 people by September 2021.

Countries who are believed to have under reported Covid-19 deaths include Egypt, India, Mexico, and Russia. India’s death toll as of May 2021 was estimated as 654,395, which is 2.96 times the official figure. Mexico was attributed 617,127 deaths, 2.83 times the official figure. Egypt, was attributed 170,041 deaths, which is 12.6 times the official figure. Russia has the largest number of unreported deaths, they estimate, with a real death toll of 593,610, which is 5.43 times the official estimate. While some governments may attribute deaths in Covid patients to co-morbid conditions to keep their numbers low, the commonest reason for under reporting of Covid-19 deaths is inadequate testing.

Turkey and Brazil are often accused of under counting, but both were reporting more than half of their Covid-19 deaths. Many countries of central and eastern Europe were reporting only one death in three, a ratio also seen across sub-Saharan Africa. The worst under counts were found in the Caucuses and former Soviet republics.

India’s COVID Martyrs

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In India on May 16, 2021 fifty doctors died in a single day. 269 doctors have died in the second wave of the virus in India. Last year, 736 doctors had lost their lives during the first wave. The highest number of fatalities have been reported from Bihar (69) followed by Uttar Pradesh (34) and Delhi (27). Only 3% of the doctors who died were fully vaccinated.

Five months into India’s vaccination drive, only 66 per cent of India’s healthcare workers have been fully vaccinated.

Dr. Jayesh Lele, the General Secretary of The Indian Medical Association, (IMA), told NDTV, “It is very unfortunate that we lost 50 doctors yesterday across India and 244 in the second wave since the first week of April”.

“Secondly we want to highlight that doctors are understaffed and overworked. They sometimes work for 48 hours at a stretch without any rest. This adds to the viral load and they ultimately succumb to the infection. The government needs to take measures to boost the healthcare workforce,” he added.

While the The Indian Medical Association (IMA) says that a thousand doctors have died due to Covid so far, the actual numbers may be far higher. The IMA only keeps a record of its nearly 350,000 members. India, however, has more than 1 million 200 thousand doctors. The former president of IMA, Dr. K.K. Aggarwal died on May 17, 2021 from COVID-19. The doctor was infected despite being vaccinated.

Doctors and nurses who are on the front line of the battle against the virus are being stigmatized in India. There are cases of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals, being shunned by others for fear of being infected. This includes the threat of being evicted from their own apartments and general ostracism. People are frightened and superstitious. “They recognize us with our lab coats and stethoscopes. Many doctors have been asked to vacate their rented homes by their landlords as they believe that doctors staying at their houses may make them more susceptible to Covid-19,” a junior doctor at Hyderabad’s MGM Hospital told The New Indian Express newspaper on condition of anonymity.

 

 

Dung

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People in India are smearing cow dung and urine over their bodies hoping it will boost their immunity against COVID-19 as second wave of the crisis worsens. Cows are of special significance to Hindus, who see them as a sacred symbol of life and the earth. Hindus believe cow dung has therapeutic and antiseptic properties. Doctors in India are warning against the practice.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) feels he is now immune to COVID since he knows how to smear dung. At a congressional hearing about COVID-19 Senator Paul seemed to imply that Dr. Anthony Fauci engineered the pandemic. It is a line of questioning that appeared to play to conspiracy theories that are circulating on the internet. He went on about gain of function research which would “juice up” super viruses and he claimed the United States was funding such research in creating deadly weaponized viruses. Dr. Fauci’s response to the Senators conspiracy theories was, ” Senator you are entirely and completely incorrect.” Fauci continued, “We have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.”

Research is still being done to find the exact cause of the COVID-19 virus. The virus probably originated in bats, but how it passed to people is being investigated. Researchers are keeping an open mind about how the pandemic started and will not exclude any scenarios, including the unlikely one that the virus accidentally escaped from a laboratory. Considerable time has passed since the emergence of COVID-19, and many people only have mild or no symptoms, which will make it challenging to identify the first infected person.

In another hearing Rand Paul characterized of wearing masks as “theater.” This folly of dung came before the CDC said that vaccinated individuals could remove their masks when outside and indoor in certain situations. Back then Fauci advised caution, allowing scientists time to study the new variants now circulating in the U.S. and other countries. Even today some think that the variants from Brazil, Africa and India can evade vaccines causing breakthrough cases. America and particularly Florida have been very lax in offering safety protocols to slow the spread of the virus. Any time the numbers of cases go down Governors are quick to ease all safety measures and then of course there are surges in cases. Government only seems able to react rather than plan ahead.

Oxygen is God

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Insider reported that India produces 7000 pounds of oxygen a day. Most of it is for industrial use. However people are dying for lack of oxygen. Liquid oxygen has to be stored at -297 degrees Fahrenheit. India doesn’t have enough Cryogenic tankers to store and transport the increased demand due to COVID-19.

For safety reasons oxygen can not be transported by air, it has to be transported by road or train. It is this distribution problem which is causing people to die due to lack of oxygen.

People are having to turn to a Sikh temple which is offering an ‘Oxygen Langar‘ in the street outside the temple to anyone who comes. Gurpreet Singh Rummy the president of Indirapuram Gurdwara said, “We believe no one should die due to a lack of oxygen. Oxygen is a small thing, but these days people treat oxygen like god. If you can get it, it will save your life.”

One in four patents who get into a hospital need oxygen. Some hospitals have asked people to bring their own oxygen cylendars. The black market has inflated the prices on oxygen cylendars. One man paid $600 for oxygen which is about nine times it’s usual price. Researchers have determined that the overall death toll inn India is likely 10 times higher than the numbers being reported with over a million dead.

400 Children 10 days

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More children are getting infected by COVID-19 i the second wave than in the first wave in India. There was a 51 per cent rise in infection among children within a period of a month in the state of Maharashtra India. As many as 1,34,470 children as young as 10 years have been infected versus 88,827 on April 3, 2021. More than 75,387 children were infected within 25 days in the state.

400 children under the age of 10 have been infected by COVID-19 Mumbai India the last 10 days.

Over 470 children below the age of 10 have been infected with COVID-19, since the beginning of this month in Bengaluru, as the city is witnessing a spike in infections.

According to some experts, unlike in the past children are now vulnerable because they are more exposed to outdoor activities, functions and gatherings, as also schools reopening for a certain age group, which was not the case earlier due to lock downs. Along with the serious health impacts, UNICEF warns that children are facing a multitude of physical, mental, social and economic risks. UNICEF representative in India, Yasmin Ali Haque, says children are losing parents and caregivers to the virus. This is leaving many destitute and without anyone to care for them.

At least 706 government school teachers and other employees have died of coronavirus due to poll duties during the Uttar Pradesh panchayat elections, alleges the state-level teachers’ association. The minister of state for basic education, Satish Chandra Dwivedi reacted to the allegation of teachers’ deaths saying, “There’s no specific audit done by basic education department about the number of teachers’ death. It is wrong to say all those who were engaged in election duty died due to Covid. How do we know that teachers were not infected when they came for election duty? And how does anyone know that teachers, after returning from the election duty, got infected for some other reasons?” This response is typical of government officials to deflect and blame. The vaccine roll out has been deathly slow in India.

Children make up 22% of new U.S. COVID-19 Cases in the United States and account for about 3.1% of hospitalizations. As more and more adults continue to get their COVID-19 shots, infection rates are slowly falling. Dr. Grace Lee, a pediatric epidemiologist at Stanford Children’s Health said if vaccines are approved for children, those infection rates would also likely plummet.

No Oxygen in India

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People in India are dying gasping for oxygen. Hospitals are full so many are turned away and some dye at hospital entrances. Even empty oxygen cylinders are hard to find. With more than 300,000 coronavirus cases a day in India for the past two weeks, medical supply chains have broken.

NPR reported that On May 4, 2021, as many as 24 patients died after the Chamarajanagar district hospital in the southern state of Karnataka ran out of oxygen. On May 1, 2021, 12 COVID-19 patients died at Delhi‘s Batra Hospital after an oxygen delivery was delayed by just 90 minutes. Several more such incidents have been reported across the country.

The Allahabad High Court in northern India on Tuesday declared that hospital deaths from oxygen shortages amount to “genocide.”This humanitarian nightmare is being called callus criminal negligence.

A Sikh house of worship in Delhi allows people to come sit in front of the temple where they can breath free oxygen. Another organization has converted empty buses into oxygen waiting areas. The buses are parked in front of hospitals to help people who can not get in.  Many other countries including the US have pour aid into India. Including empty cylinders and oxygen concentrators. On April 28, 2021 the U.S. dispatched to the Indian capital its first shipment, which included more than 400 oxygen cylinders and 960,000 rapid-testing kits. Much of that aid became mired in customs queues. The aid was still not distributed a week later.

India has banned the use of oxygen for industries and is diverting most of it for medical use. The problem is distribution. Liquid medical oxygen is flammable and in most cases can’t be flown. It has to move by road, rail or sea freight. Many oxygen-tanker drivers got sick with COVID-19 right at the moment when oxygen demand skyrocketed. Officials had to arrange replacement drivers, and it took time. According to the Delhi government, hospitals are asking for close to 1,000 metric tons of liquid oxygen per day on average, but only 40% of that is being supplied. The biggest problem is that government bureaucracy has slowed things down.

India’s Double Mutant Arrives in Nevada

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Seven cases of India’s Double Mutant have been identified in Nevada. This mutant has been contributing to the devastating surge of COVID-19 in India.

Residents with cases of the variant “did not appear to have traveled,” said Heather Kerwin, epidemiology program manager for the Washoe County Health District. This indicates that there is community spread.

Mutations make the COVID Virus better able to evade the body’s immune defenses produced through immunization or prior infection. Early evidence indicates that vaccines still protect against it, though the level of protection might be somewhat lower, Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Public Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. said.

Based on a CDC recommendation, the U.S. announced April 30, 2021 that starting May 4, 2021 it will restrict travel from India because of the sharp increases in cases and deaths there.

Since the mutations have already arrived, this is clearly too little too late. As long as residents vaccinate they could stop this virulent mutation from spreading. The variant has also been found in Michigan which is experiencing a huge spike in COVID Cases in recent weeks.

The variant has been identified in at least 17 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

Data Massacre

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The situation in India continues to get worse. Crematories can not keep up with the dead. A dog crematorium is being converted into a crematorium for humans to try and keep up with the deaths.

Families fight for the right to cremate their loved ones while people gasp for breath outside completely full hospitals. They are turned away to die at home or on the street. One person put his dying mother on the street because he did not want to care for her. Doctors are literally being beaten by people frustrated that their loved ones have died.

On April 28, 2021 there were 360,960 cases of COVID-19 reported in India. That number is likely very low since the country has lagged in it’s ability to test for the virus. Reporters on the ground found crematories that had over 100 cremations each day. However the death reports for that area were far less that that, making it clear that COVID-19 related deaths are being under reported. Families are being forced to bury their dead in their back yards.

Less than three months ago Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaration of victory over Covid-19. The first wave of the virus wasn’t as bad as expected. India is the largest manufacturer of vaccines and they began to send vaccines to other countries while India’s vaccine distribution to citizens lagged. Emergency field hospitals which had been build during the first wave were dismantled. Over 600,000  Hindus gathered on the Ganges River for Kumbh Mela, another superspreader event. Like our former president, Modi began holding massive political rallies which were most certainly superspreader events. Such rallies were being held as recently as two days ago. It is no surprise that countries with arrogant Narcissistic and science denying leaders are having the worst outbreaks of COVID-19. Case numbers surged through April 2021. The official death toll for April 28, 2021 was 3,645 but that number could be half of the actual daily death toll.  Overall the country surpassed 200,000 deaths.

The national vice-president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Dr. Navjot Dahiya said, “The scarcity of medical oxygen has become the reason for the death of many patients in every part of the country against the fact that several projects for installing the oxygen are still pending with the Union government for clearance, but no heed was given to such an important need by the Modi government.” People are dying because they can not find an $80 oxygen cylinder. When there was an oxygen leak at a hospital 22 patients died gasping for air. India declined assistance offered by the United Nations of its integrated supply chain for COVID-19-related material. The second wave is a result of incompetence and arrogance.

Crates of ventilators and oxygen concentrators from the UK arrived at an airport in the Indian capital of New Delhi on April 27, 2021. A shipment of medical equipment from Germany is also set to to be airlifted to India in the coming days. The European Commission (EU) which includes, Ireland, Belgium, Romania, Luxembourg, Portugal and Sweden will be sending a shipment that includes oxygen concentrators and ventilators. The World Health Organization (WHO) is also providing critical equipment and supplies to India. Several other nations, including the U.S., Israel and Pakistan have also pledged to send medical supplies. For those suffering and dying today this may be too little too late.

 

One Third Test Positive

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The Wall Street Journal reported that a flight from Deli, India to Hong Kong was packed tight like sardines in a tin can. All passengers had to stay at a quarantine hotel upon arrival. More than a third of the passengers on flight UK6395, 52 so far — have tested positive for COVID-19. They had all tested negative before the flight.

One passenger, Mrs. Fathima said she feared her family picked up the infections on the April 3, 2021 journey, despite wearing masks almost the entire time and avoiding using the restrooms on board. Some passengers — including one in the same row — coughed repeatedly during the six-hour flight, people took masks off to eat, and some parents walked their crying children up and down the aisle, she said.

There is a debate as to weather the passengers were infected on the flight or in the quarantine hotel. Genome testing is being done to try and figure out the source of infection.  COVID spread could still have happened on flight UK6395 if a highly infectious patient had not worn a mask properly, or if germs had contaminated common facilities such as toilets when a passenger did not flush the water closet with the lid closed. Forbes reported that a new case study from New Zealand’s Ministry of Health finds that Covid-19 can spread on long-haul flights. In September, 2020 two other international studies came to the same conclusion. And last month, an Irish study linked 59 Covid-19 cases to one seven-hour flight.

According to The Sun, Poonam Nanda, the director of Nanda Travel, based in Hong Kong, added: “This one flight appears to be an astonishing outlier and we are all confounded by these numbers.” Hong Kong has now banned all flights from India starting  May 3, 2021 for 14 days.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently eased its domestic and international travel guidance for vaccinated people, stating that travelers who are fully vaccinated “can travel safely within the United States” but noted a greater risk for international travel. However, the agency is still discouraging nonessential travel due to rising numbers of Covid-19 infections. Driven by extremely contagious variants that have invaded all 50 states, the virus is currently hitting healthier 30 to 50 year-olds hard.

India on Fire

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On April 24, 2021, India reported 349,691 new cases of Covid-19, the fourth day in a row the country has set a world record for daily infections during the coronavirus pandemic, according to government and scientific tallies. The country’s testing is haphazard at best so those numbers are a vast under count. The country also reported its highest daily death toll for the ninth consecutive day, adding 2,767 fatalities in the past 24 hours.

India’s heath care system has broken under the load. Everything is in short supply — intensive care unit beds, medicine, oxygen and ventilators. Bodies are piling up in morgues and crematoriums, and authorities have been forced to hold mass cremations at makeshift sites.

At one hospital a faulty valve in the main oxygen tank caused a leak that resulted in 22 patient deaths. People are being turned away since hospitals are full to capacity. People are dying as they wait with no oxygen. Oxygen tankers require police escorts. On April 21, 2021, Saroj Hospital and Batra Hospital told families to take their patients away as they were running out of oxygen. Many people are dying at home.

People stood in long lines literally all day long with no social distancing in the hopes of getting remdesivir. There is now a black market for the drug in India. Nurses at a prominent private hospital in Meerut  stole a dying patient’s remdesivir and auctioned it off. Dr. Randeep Guleria said, Remdesivir is not a magic bullet and is given only to patients who are hospitalized, have moderate to severe disease and whose oxygen saturation is below 93.

One of America’s highly regarded epidemiologists and bio statisticians has said that according to her mathematical projections,  Professor Bhramar Mukherjee of Michigan University told Karan Thapar of The Wire that India could have 500,000 daily COVID-19 cases and 3,000 daily COVID-19 deaths by May 1, 2021. She said, the peak will come in mid-May when India could see over 800,000 daily infections and in terms of deaths, the peak could be two weeks later at the end of May.