I don’t care what you say but the fact that we are discussing the price of vaccines and how much of this price burden will be shifted on to states and on customers is all the evidence you need to KNOW for a fact that the wrong guys are in power.
And let me state it right here right now that the 50% supply to the govt that will be allocated to states is going to be done in the most politically skewed manner.
Someone just pinged me about my tweet. Let me respond publicly. Take this pandemic as a crisis response test. We need to be prepared for something bigger and much worse with a higher fatality rate. Unfortunately the level of profiteering in India during this
pandemic has been immense and more than I can see in any other country that calls itself “great” or aspires to “greatness”.

Neither could the govt ensure testing, PPE, oxygen vaccines and body disposal but it also didn’t significantly expand capacity
To make matters worse it has lied about literally everything from its funds gathering to its allocation to testing and infection rates to actual deaths.

You have to be a special kind of evil to profit off of people when they’re absolutely helpless. A very special kind of evil.
My worry is also about the future. What happens if these systems aren’t fixed or in place when the next pandemic hits? At this point the debate on expansion of public health investments by govts should be settled. But it’s not. We are still being run by folks who won’t
vaccinate everyone for free. They’re just always kowtowing to capital. But capital doesn’t care about people. It cares about profit.
At this point the vaccine should be seen as a human entitlement not a product for customer purchase. That’s my point. Governments exist to protect people. Not to enable their rendering as “customers”. People count as people, not because they can pay for something.
And there is precedent as so many are pointing out. Polio vaccinations for instance supported by state and international agencies. It worked!
Sorry for this extended speech

But really how is it that the biggest visions are yet another statue or temple or buildings when the vision should be for instance building the world’s largest Indian Public Health Service with a network of state of the art hospitals?
When did we allow our collective imagination to be restricted to ten new jets or two new submarines and new missiles here and there and butt ugly architectural concepts?

What does it mean to think BIG?
And pls don’t @ me “how will we pay for this”. If we can find money to build a true eyesore of a statue and buy some really ugly looking planes at more of a price than they’re actually worth, I think we have money to vax India’s poorest and then some.

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More from @vsirnate

21 Apr
Compilation of stories on death data discrepancies across India. Please alert me if you find such stories.

1. google.com/amp/s/www.news…
Read 11 tweets
19 Apr
Really struggling to understand this. A young man from NOIDA got a RT/PCR test done which came out negative but he’s been handed a bunch of meds anyway. Now tell me which sort of test report says it can’t be used for medico-legal purposes (look at what I’ve highlighted in red). Image
Case history. This man’s brother tested positive on a rapid test but negative on the RT/PCR and has symptoms (fever and loss of taste/smell). The samples of both brothers were collected together at the same place. These are what the results look like.
Private labs doing the same test are also mentioning the Cycle Threshold (CT) score. This one says nothing. For a negative test the CT has to be at or above 40 I’ve been told.
Read 5 tweets
19 Apr
Thread
I don't know if this will help. I am trying to compile a list of all real-time information portals on ICU bed availability across India. This may help in saving time for those looking for beds, assuming these portals are actually updated in real-time and reflect reality.
This is supposed to be the Mumbai/Maharashtra bed tracker. It is down. mumgis.mcgm.gov.in/Resources/COVI…
Read 23 tweets
17 Apr
Gwalior district administration seems to have its socks on. A day after a positive Covid test for family, quarantine poster, three follow up calls by docs and med bundle from the admin have reached the affected home. Not bad, but would keep my eye on the critical cases.
Med bundle includes Zinc tablets, vitamin B and C, Erithromycin and Montaire (maybe spelling it wrong). One bundle for each affected person.
My worry is that these are t he easier things to do.I.e., handling the non-critical cases. But the real test for admin effectiveness lies in the handling and marshaling of resources for critical cases.
Read 4 tweets
16 Apr
My first pick in #whatwentwrong would be a journalistic establishment that forgot to ask hard questions of the political bigwigs and forgot that it’s loyalty lies with the public to specifically amplify and uncover the truth.
The only reason that Indian journalism is still standing is because of a handful of outlets and platforms that stuck to their guns.
I say this because instead of holding leaders responsible their absolute nonsense was amplified. It took three months between when I first posted about Covid loans taken by the Indian govt. and when a financial platform ran with the story AFTER i contacted them to follow it up.
Read 5 tweets
16 Apr
Humbly and completely disagree. In India the govt led the public to believe that pseudoscientific nonsense like bartan banging would vanquish a virus. Then they slapped a horrible lockdown without proper thought leading to
desperation and deaths of migrant workers. They ended up ghettoizing these workers and encouraging the spread of the disease. The money taken as Covid loans and contributions to PM Cares has not been accounted for or transparently shown to have been used for the benefit of
a collapsing health care system. The govt was not able to stop profiteering by hospitals and unable to criminalize denial of medical care.

They also didn’t allow all vaccines to be used in India when we should have had multiple vaccines in play in Jan like every other sane
Read 6 tweets

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