Thread by @DrEricDing

HUGELY UNDERCOUNTING DEATHS—India is either sloppy in miscounting #COVID19 deaths, or they are criminally covering up overwhelming deaths. All signs & reporting points either one or the other—“It’s a complete massacre of data”. Real deaths 2x-5x higher.🧵
nytimes.com/2021/04/24/wor…

2) Interviews from cremation grounds across the country, where the fires never stop, portray an extensive pattern of deaths far exceeding the official figures. Nervous politicians and hospital administrators may be undercounting or overlooking large numbers of dead, analysts say.

3) ““It’s a complete massacre of data,” said Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has been following India closely. “From all the modeling we’ve done, we believe the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported.”

4) At one of the large cremation grounds in Ahmedabad, bright orange fires light up the night sky, burning 24 hours a day, like an industrial plant that never shuts down. Suresh Bhai, a worker there, said he had never seen such a never-ending assembly line of death.

5) But he has not been writing down the cause of death as Covid-19 on the thin paper slips that he hands over to the mournful families, even though the number of dead is surging along with the virus.
“Sickness, sickness, sickness,” Mr. Suresh said. “That’s what we write.”

6) When asked why, he said it was what he had been instructed to do by his bosses, who did not respond to requests for comment.

7) To be honest, coverup has been Indian govt’s MO under Modi recently.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1386092507168133120

8) Across India, mass cremations are now taking place. Sometimes dozens of fires go up at once.

9) Based on cremations, the undercount can be way more than 2-5x. It could be 10x or 24x or even more potentially.

I’ve been highlighting this for days.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1384789570957500416

10) At the same time, India’s Covid vaccine campaign is struggling: <10% of Indians have gotten even one dose, despite India being the world’s leading vaccine manufacturer. India’s dire needs are already having ripple effects across the world, especially for poorer countries.

11) It had planned to ship out millions of doses; now, given the country’s stark vaccination shortfall, exports have essentially been shut down, leaving other nations with far fewer doses than they had expected.

(Cough, Canada, COVAX, cough)

12) Meanwhile, the undercount of cases and deaths are even more severe in rural India. HT @RanaAyyub

We must act in solitary.

13) India health officials now privately admit they have already hit 10,000 deaths per day and rising. I think it’s 2-5x that likely.

https://twitter.com/saitomri/status/1385872746999992320

14) Let this sink in — *1 million deaths* projected for India— and that is a conservative value based in just the current official death counts, which we know are severe undercounts.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1385797607646285829