 Hello and welcome to New Slick Today. Last week we had discussed the statement of the health minister, Dr. Harshabandhan, in Indian Parliament regarding COVID-19. And we had commented how he has only talked about the so-called victories that the government has won. And a lot of the data that he had given. And as the saying goes, you have lies, damn lies, and statistics. Statistics can be used in different ways. And this seems to have been used by Dr. Harshabandhan differently. Taking that as a given, that the government has been using data to hide the reality of their failure. What was striking in Dr. Harshabandhan's discussions was that he had no forward plan. He didn't talk about how they plan to control the epidemic, the speed at which it is developing, the fact that India is going to be the number one country in the world in terms of probably total numbers by October. So we are really looking at a big picture and the fact that India is the highest growing number of infections per day. And that's been constant throughout this month. None of these facts were not only registered by the Minister of Health, but more worryingly, the government did not seem to have anything to say beyond that they have done a good job. And though the things are looking pretty bad now, it could have been worse. Lot of figures that were presented where that our numbers per million are low. Of course, India has a very large population. The point is the pandemic when it grows, when it develops, it doesn't develop all over the country, particularly a country as large as India. So therefore, it really develops in some places, goes elsewhere, urban centers were hit first, not all cities, some cities. And then of course, respect to other cities, what was important is that our rate of growth has been virtually constant for a very long time. We'll see all of those in just a minute. But what was important for us to register is the government, by all accounts, seems to have given up that it doesn't want to do anything and is only talking about unlocked down keep prakriya as our telephone messages seem to suggest. So apparently, apart from unlocked down, there is nothing for the government to do in terms of epidemic control. And that is something, it's an admission of failure on a scale that no other country seems to have done, except for, for example, Brazil, which does not even recognize that the government has a role in epidemic control. That's not been India's position. India did institute a lockdown, accepted. Yes, the government has a role. But having failed, it seems to have now given up that role completely. So this is the key issue that we have before us today. And unfortunately, we do not have much to offer in terms of hope, in terms of the government is registering these issues and they will do something about it, something new, something which takes into account that the earlier failures have taken place, but now we're going to retool our policies and do something else. None of that, that seems to be there. So we really have a bleak picture about what the government intends to do. Now, of course, it is also true that given this picture that the crisis of the epidemic is not going away, the government seems to be utilizing this opportunity to drive a set of measures in parliament, which have nothing to do with the epidemic. Level laws, talking about, for instance, farmers' support prices, which of course, they haven't removed, but there is an indication that the market reforms they're carrying out, which Mr. Modi has talked about is a new chapter in the life of Indian farmers. All of that could mean really letting the markets be completely free, effectively, which would mean that the producers, when they come to the market, will find a glut, prices will crash, and those who have the ability to buy food range will continue to buy and hoard them. So this was the reason originally we had different policies. All that has been given up today at a time when the parliament is not really fully functional, and we have still a disaster management act in action, which means we have a kind of emergency for a state of emergency. Coming back to the COVID-19 pandemic itself, so if we look at what we see in terms of the COVID figures, we are having roughly what would be called five and a half million, 55 lakh population, which is the total cases today. Total confirmed cases today are really five and a half million. Now, if we take also that currently the new cases, that's really 87,000, nearly 87,000 as of the last 24 hours, what does it really mean? It means that we have been at the top of new cases, 24 hours, the new cases for again for the whole month. We are ahead of all other countries. And if you go to the Worldometer site, which gives you comparative figures, we'll find that apart from US, Brazil and India, the new cases, you will find that US and India are in a separate class. US has 33,000, India has 87,000 plus figures, all others are way down. Brazil, which was doing quite badly earlier, it seems is now doing relatively better. It has more than 16,000 cases, France has 10,000 cases, every other country is below 10,000. So we are at the moment, we're nearly 90,000 cases. And if this rate continues, we are likely to touch 100,000 plus very soon. And if the speed at which we are catching up the United States continues, then as I said, by October, we'll be quite close if not overtaking them in terms of total cases. If you look at the graph of total cases, you will find that almost all the countries which had high figures had flattened. Out of that, only France is rising again. And already there are warnings which have been issued regarding France, that their numbers are going up. And so is UK figures going up by a little amount, which means there is a resurgence of, possibility of a resurgence of COVID-19 in different European countries because of the fact that they have opened their lockdown, they are going through what India is calling the unlocked down phases. And therefore this has come back again. But if you take the case of India, there is a difference. Indian figures have never really stopped rising. If you see from right, say for three to four months back, if you see India's figures have been rising almost at the same rate. And if you see, you will see that India's slope of the graph has hardly changed. Yes, India's doubling rate was about 20, 25 days, about three months, two months, two and a half months back. Now it's about 30, 35 days. But it is not significantly different. Well, all other countries, including the United States, you can see relatively there is a growth. The US is still seeing a growth of figures, but as you can see, the growth is less sharp than India's. Their doubling rates are now around 60 to 65 days. So that is the cause for worry that even compared to the basic failed cases, failed countries like the United States and Brazil, we seem to be doing worse after a very, very draconian lockdown. So that is our basic cause for worry. And it is, again, if we look at cities, we will see the total Indian cities, total cases. You will see that Mumbai and Delhi are on the rise again. So these are the figures, these are not very comforting. Yes, their figures seem to show some flattening in the middle. They've started to rise again. We don't have Pune in this chart, but Pune at the moment is leading the number of new cases among cities. So that's also something to be registered, that it is not the old cities alone which is rising, but your new candidates which are coming in, which is what I said, that different places, different countries, different states come in at different points of time. And for a country as large as India, we should not expect uniform patterns that it will grow and savour it all over the country. And therefore, no consolation. If some state is lagging or some state is ahead, it just means that the figures will start to rise again later. Now, what is important to register for us is that telegraph has reported that a paper in the Indian Journal of Medical Research was essentially censored by ICMR's chief Balram Bhargav, who asked the researchers to remove infection prevalence data from 10 cities hotspots. 10 cities at hotspot. They had done what are called the seroprevalence studies, antibody studies to see how many people in these areas were exposed to infection, may not have got active cases, may not have shown active cases, but had been infected. And maybe their bodies had fought back, so there's no symptom of the disease. But the prevalence would show the extent of the infections in the cities. And the 10 cities showed figures which earlier were reported in the press of something like 30, 35% in certain places, sometimes even higher. Now, those were important. But ICMR instead has chosen to censor those figures. It could be considered self-censorship because Balram Bhargav, as the ICMR chief, asked the researchers to remove certain data sets from the published paper. They're very difficult for those researchers to resist the such an exercise. So he has used essentially the position he holds. He's also an ex-officio secretary to the government of India for medical research. He has essentially asked them to remove the data of the hotspots of the 10 cities, which ICMR with others had conducted the research on. Now, Telegraph has reported, again, they have extensively been quoted, some of the people who have said very clearly, this is completely wrong. This is medical research. We do not approve of medical research being censored in this particular way, even if it means essentially self-censorship, which is what has been done in this case. This also goes to show that the government, in fact, is more interested at the moment in whitewashing figures claiming victories, even if the victories do not exist, claiming victories and not letting the true picture emerge by such action. We remember Dr. Bhargav had instructed at one point by 15th August, you must complete all your vaccine trials and the results must be available to us. Now that was something like a 40 days notice for a vaccine trial, which normally takes place over years. In this particular case, even when you're accelerating the trials, we have to do it for at least phase three trials at least for four to six months and test at least 30 to 40,000 people. Then only we'll know that yes, these vaccines are safe and the work. So this was shot to be short circuited within one and a half months. That was Dr. Bhargav's instructions that he had issued to the participating organization and the organization carrying out the vaccine trials. Of course, that was withdrawn after you and cry by the community, scientific community saying this is bogus. And then of course they said, no, no, no, this was just an idea that we were trying to say, you know, it was not an instruction to be followed and so on. But the fact remains that Indian scientific establishment is falling prey to various pressures. And it seems to be the pressures are to make the picture less, frankly less, sorry, I've lost my sentence. The pressure is making the picture look less bleak than it is claim victories when none are really available and then distract attention away from what the key problem is on the score that we have an epidemic which is raising. The government is not in control of it. It doesn't seem to have any new solutions to offer how to mitigate the crisis. It doesn't seem to have any policies in place now to see how the numbers can be at least controlled and path towards flattening the curve achieved. None of these are there. All we are talking about is, well, we have now PPEs, we have more ventilators, we have more oxygen equipment. While we are getting reports from different cities, different states that oxygen may be there supposedly, but it is not reaching the hospitals. But we're not going to that today. Essential point that I'm addressing is, okay, when people fall sick, they need hospitals. Whether treatment is available or not is a separate issue. Question is, are we doing anything to control the epidemic or have we really given up on that front? And now we'll unlock the country thinking the economy will therefore start growing again and the crisis of the Indian economy is now overtaken the government. We have had the biggest drop in GDP ever and the largest GDP drop amongst all the G20 countries. So that is where the government now wants to go, sacrifice the consequence, sacrifice the protection, the public health measures that we need to take to control the epidemic and hope that at least better economic picture will shift the focus away from what the epidemic is doing to all of us. But what they're forgetting is without addressing the epidemic, you're not likely to address the economy either. People will not go to restaurants, people will not go to markets, except for essentials, people will not go to cinema halls, life to normal will not come back and consumptions will not come back that easily. Even US and other countries which have done much more in terms of GDP support, supporting the people, what are called fiscal stimulus, directly giving money in the hands of the people for increasing consumption, do not expect a V-shaped recovery that you go down and you come up equally fast, that's not going to happen. So I think it's time the government registers, we are not only in an economic crisis, we have a public health crisis which is driving the economic crisis. And unless we address that, we are not going to be able to address the economy, the economic crisis either. With that, those thoughts I shall leave you today. Do keep watching Newsweek and do that, visit our website.