 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we come back again with our discussions on COVID-19. Why do we discuss COVID-19 again and again? Because it's clear that if COVID-19 pandemic cannot be controlled, then neither will the economy come back. And we have already seen that what is the hit that economies around the world are taking. And of course, the economy in India as well. The GDP fall has been quite precipitated in the second quarter. For most countries, including India. And it's very clear that unless we have control over the pandemic, the people are not going to step out to buy. And if people don't buy, then obviously the economy does not roll. Of course, it is possible if the government is willing to spend more money to provide what is called demand in the economy. Then of course, the economy can take off. But this government has been unbelievably what shall be called fiscally conservative and not putting money in the hands of the people, not willing to annoy global finance capital by printing what's called helicopter money, which the US, or shall we say the fortress of capitalism is willing to do, this is something that we are not doing. And even European Union banks, which are very, very conservative, are doing it right now. So let's look at what the pandemic is doing in India and where we are with respect to the world. Let's look first at the global scenario. And for that, we go to what is the worldometer site, which looks at what is yesterday figures in terms of death, as well as new cases. And I'm talking about new cases and new deaths in the last 24 hours. If you see that, India is again right at the top. This is what we've been seeing for the last three to four weeks. We have sent roughly 76,000 numbers in the last 24 hours. And we have also something like 1,000 people who have died in the last 24 hours. We are number one in terms of new cases. Brazil is about 47,000, 48,000. US is about 44,000, 45,000. So there are still a wave below us. Of course, all other countries are well below the three. And we can say that these three effectively are the epicenters of the global epidemic. And of course, in Africa, you have South Africa, which is having, well, much less than us, 2,700 odd figures as the numbers who got infected yesterday in the last 24 hours. So we are really way above everybody else in terms of new infections that we see, because that's a figure we really need to track now. Not total cases, not total recovered cases, but only active cases and the new cases in the last 24 hours. And if you go up at this rate, and this has been a steady growth that we have seen, we are likely to cross all other countries soon. Let's look at quickly what other countries, where the other countries are compared to us. And you will see that the US is, this is again, in terms of active cases. Let's look at new cases. And that's again the parameter that we should really look at. We will see that at the moment, India is the highest in terms of new cases. And if we look at all other countries, they're below us. Now, even if you see active cases, you will see the yes, US at the moment, this is US, the active cases are three million. So US is still well above that. India is about 700,000 odd cases. So we are certainly below the United States, but the speed at which we are growing, that has been steady. If you see our slope, yes, it's come down a bit, but not significantly. While the US, again, it did come down and again seems to have gone up, probably flattened the bit at the moment. So what we are seeing is if Indian figures keep on rising, then the total number of cases in the world that US is leading, maybe in a month, month and a half, India would reach up to the United States. These are the total figures. You can see they are still ahead of us, 5.7 million. But India is in the verge of overtaking Brazil and India is roughly around 3.7 million. 3.3, sorry, India is about 3.3 million. And Brazil is about 3.7 million. US is 5.4 million. But the rate of growth of cases if you see, as you can see from the total cases means India is going to touch them maybe month, month and a half because India's figures don't seem to show that we are actually going to slow down. Now, the other part that I would like you to focus on, let's look at for instance, states and capitals or not capitals only, but really the urban centers. And we had talked about earlier how about 40 to 60% of the new cases infections were appearing mostly in the metropolitan centers. That was the figures that we had showed you earlier. Now it's clear that if you take for instance, new cases you will see that in Mumbai, the new cases in Mumbai is roughly about 1,000 odd. But if you take Maharashtra, the parent state as of the last 24 hours, then you will see the figures in Maharashtra in the last 24 hours is about nearly 13,000. Which means that it's not no longer Mumbai, which is the epicenter of the epidemic pandemic in Maharashtra. It is also Pune. It's also a lot of other smaller towns in Maharashtra. It's also very urban areas, the areas close to urban centers where the pandemic has spread. And therefore you are seeing a much bigger spread of the pandemic today than we saw earlier, which is focused mainly in the urban centers. And it's also visible if you looked at India map and look at for instance, new cases. And you will see immediately that the spread of the pandemic is now almost all over India. And there are a large number of states, colors, the darkness of the colors indicate the intensity of the epidemic. And you will see the bigger states and the bigger numbers. But there are states like Andhra Pradesh, because Maharashtra is a big state, UP is a big state, but even states like Orissa, Telangana, Rajasthan, these are, they're also seeing lots of new infections. And of course, West Bengal, which of course has the urban center Calcutta. So these are the top only of new cases. So you can see that the spread of the epidemic now is much larger than it was earlier. So the epidemic is in fact one of the major reasons why the Indian economy is taking it. Indian economy was in a crisis earlier itself. This is not the only reason. But obviously this has sharpened the problems much more. And that's what we are beginning to see. The question is that why is it India, which has been talking about competing with China, not willing to compete with China on that count? Let's look at what's happening in China. They control the epidemic in roughly two months. They had almost at that point of time about 82,000 people who fell sick or infected, registered confirmed cases. We know that the confirmed cases are a fraction of the total number of cases, but that's true for India as well. The seroprevalence studies show the numbers of actually infected are probably much higher than those who show symptoms and have been tested as confirmed. If you take that, there are 82,000 people who at that time were infected, out which about 4,000 odd people died. If you take the figures after that, after another four to five months, only 2,000 additional people have fallen sick. And if we look at, for instance, Wuhan, where the peak of the epidemic took place, they're having pool parties are all out in the pools. They're celebrating in different ways. It seems Beijing has now lifted its lockdowns. Most places in China are functioning without any constraints. Now, that is what happens when you're able to control the epidemic. If you're not able to control the epidemic, then that doesn't happen. If that doesn't happen, then people don't go out, then they don't buy. As I said, the economy does not really move. And we all know the hardest hit in such an economic crisis, of course, are the poor people because first thing that happens is they lose their livelihood. Most of them are daily wage workers and most of those industries are closed or they've cut down their neighbor significantly. What happens also is that the normal medical benefits or the normal medical support that people need, you fall ill. You go to the hospital if you're seriously ill. Now, people are afraid to go to the hospital. Why? Because I think they'll get COVID-19 over there. And the hospitals are afraid to take people in without testing. And testing is still not so easy. Maybe not so in Delhi or Mumbai, the metropolitan centers, but in most places, it is difficult to get to a hospital and be admitted under conditions where there is a COVID-19 epidemic and people are scared to go to the hospital. Secondly, of course, a lot of the medical staff, and we've seen glaring examples from hospitals of people who fall ill. And this is, for instance, in Bihar. When the fall ill, obviously two sets of things happen, that there is an uncontained infection in the hospital itself. And the second, of course, that you take the hospital out of the equation. And then, of course, you don't have the people, you don't have patients coming there because they know there is a COVID infection in the hospital and they lose access to health care. So this is the second issue that is not been registered, that COVID-19 itself is causing problems, deaths, which of course we are counting. But there are a lot of uncounted deaths because people are going to the hospitals very late. This could be as simple operations, which are, for instance, you do when you have an appendix, appendicitis problem, have your appendix removed. Or you have a heart attack, which could be much more serious. People are reaching the hospital late, and if they reach the hospital late, then obviously the medical problem becomes much more serious. So these are some of the issues that we are beginning to see already. And that's why the epidemic control is such an important issue for all of us. And competition should not be the United States because United States has bought its handling of the pandemic badly. Everybody is saying it, Trump has done one of the worst exams handling of the pandemic in any country in the world. But we and Brazil, three countries are showing up clearly in our list and haven't done something significantly different. And that's surprising because unlike Brazil and the United States, we had very strict lockdowns. So why did the lockdown fail? Why is the government not able to explain the failure of the lockdown? Why is the government not able to explain what steps it is taking now? In fact, what we are getting is a remarkable silence on the pandemic front, but the government has stopped talking about it. Government is only talking about the border, about the economy, about the mythical saved lives, which is done by putting some charts and claiming that we have saved lakhs of lives. In any case, like postponing the epidemic or the spread of the epidemic, you don't save lives. All you do is postpone them. So the numbers are what counts. And you can see almost all countries which were badly affected earlier are able to overcome that. We have seen the European countries, we've seen a number of other countries overcome them. And we can see countries like Malaysia and Thailand who actually are able to control it pretty early, not different economically or otherwise from countries like India, we failed. Now that failure still has no explanation of the government is given. In fact, we have said many times here that they failed because it needed a collective effort of the society of the people and the governments to pull together. Here we had a completely top down example of how the pandemic should not be handled. Police exercise of police powers to handle what is essentially a public health problem. And it is very clear that that does not really work. I'll end with the last point that if we are looking at the solution to this in the long term sense, it is the vaccine. That's the crucial issue. On the vaccine front, again, we have complete silence. We do not know what the government is doing. We already know that countries like the United States, the European Union are buying up vaccines which are yet to be manufactured in the expectation that if you buy up enough vaccines from different manufacturers, one of them will work and therefore their people will be protected. The US has brought up at least three times the vaccine it needs per head. And that's primarily because it does not know which vaccine will succeed. It has put billions of dollars in money into three vaccine manufacturers, possibly more. And it thinks it's the three in one chance of getting a good vaccine for its people. Now, European Union is doing the same. We have major vaccine manufacturers in the country. We have, for instance, Cadilla is there. We have called Serum Institute, which you have been talking about, the largest generic vaccine manufacturer in the world. We also have Bharat Biotech. So these are three major vaccine manufacturers. But we also have other facilities which the government of India has put together which are supposed to be for also vaccine manufacture. I think one is near Faridabad itself, which we have talked about with Dr. Rat in our show. Question is, what is happening? What are the preparations we are making? Are we going to depend only on AstraZeneca, who is tied up with Serum Institute to provide us whatever is left after they supply the United States and Great Britain with the vaccines? Are we going to wait for that to happen? Are we doing anything else? Have we given money to the vaccine manufacturers to at least block something for ourselves? Are you willing to talk to other countries in the world to say, well, the world needs a vaccine. Can we set up something very quickly, which is collaboratively will work to see whichever vaccine succeeds. We should be able to manufacture it and make it available globally to everybody. The whole demand that was made that there should be no intellectual property rights on vaccines. We should be able to create the platforms for such vaccines and depending on which vaccine is successful, we should be able to use them for public purposes. And that should be done at the cheapest cost possible and the government should bear the cost of the vaccine. Why? Because this is a public health issue. You don't cure the people. You don't vaccinate the people. You are not going to likely to see the reopening of the economy, which is what every government is today talking about. We don't see any movement on that. And that is surprising. Maybe there is movement, maybe talks are going on, but it's completely opaque. And that has been one of the biggest problems in this government, complete opaqueness about what it is doing. We don't know how the PM cares fund is being used. Why is the PM cares fund, for instance, not being used for vaccine platforms? We don't know. Maybe it is, but nobody's telling us anything. All that we know is that this funds exists, the infrastructure exists, people exist. What is happening is happening when closed doors. We have no transparency of the government of how it proposes to handle the ongoing pandemic. And that makes us really worried that the government has now given up. And is it now depending on quote unquote fate or the goodwill of the United States at some point of time, when it has enough for its people, it'll make available vaccines for us as well. So is it going to depend on goodwill of big capital? Is it going to be dependent on the goodwill of other countries? That's a question we need to ask because there is no particular reason, India with its infrastructure, which was the pharmacy of the poor, was the pharmacy of the world. It's still in terms of generic medicines, the pharmacy of the world. Why is it not taking steps, visible steps and why is it not talking to the people what they're planning to do with respect to vaccines, with respect to other things, other steps that is necessary still to control the pandemic, which is really public health measures involving the people who hasn't really given up. These are answers we are seeking. Unfortunately, there is nothing that is coming out and this is something the question that all of us need to ask the government. That's all the time we have for NewsClick today. Do keep watching NewsClick and do come back to us for these discussions and for other discussions we'll continue to have.