Monday Musings: Will deaths after Corona vaccination be investigated?

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By Amitabh Srivastava, Copy Edited By Adam Rizvi, The India Observer, TIO: I was impressed by a story in The New York Times highlighting the heroic deeds of ordinary citizens in the United States during the Corona outbreak five years back. There are several NGOs, individuals and media persons who risked their lives to bring succour to the victims.

But is that enough?

The confusion, misinformation, death toll, and mishandling of medical treatment during a crisis the human race was witnessing for the first time remain a black mark on so-called civil society.

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For any country or institution, the easiest course of action is to pass the blame onto a supposed villain. The Trump administration did exactly that when a judge imposed a hefty $24 billion penalty on China for allegedly allowing the deadly virus to spread across the world from one of its labs.

Is it really possible that the same Donald Trump, then President of the United States, who was on a two-day family visit to India—paraded as Namaste Trump on February 24–25, 2020—was unaware that a deadly virus had already broken out in China?

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And for that matter, was India not aware of this deadly outbreak? Books by medical reporters have revealed that an Indian lab had reported the outbreak in China as early as February 2020. However, for some strange reason, this crucial information was neither published in a Press Information Bureau release nor deemed important enough for discussion by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Either the Modi government did not want to disrupt Trump’s visit, as he was then considered Modi’s best friend, or the medical fraternity failed to grasp the implications of a virus that, according to the NYT report, had already claimed 23,000 lives in one month in the United States.

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In either case, it was an act of criminal negligence—one that, someday, some court may hold the world’s top leadership accountable for.

I vividly remember the day when the lockdown was officially imposed in India on March 24, 2020, following Modi’s address to the nation. Before that, a Janata Curfew (People’s Curfew) had been declared on March 22.

However, unofficially, markets, schools, and other institutions had already shut down a week earlier. At the time, I was visiting my son in Mumbai. I still remember watching the opening show of Irrfan Khan’s last movie, Angrezi Medium, in a Mumbai theater. He later received a National Award for the film, but that is another story.

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The clampdown in India was totally unplanned and sudden, leaving people stranded wherever they were. Daily wage earners had no idea how to cope with the situation, while migrant laborers—mostly from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Odisha—were stuck in faraway cities like Mumbai and Delhi, with rail and road transport at a standstill.

The working class in big cities was told to work from home, which created its own set of challenges. Reports filed by NGOs after the pandemic revealed that atrocities against children and women increased manifold during the lockdown, instead of families enjoying what seemed like a forced vacation together.

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This phenomenon is yet to be thoroughly researched by social scientists—and the situation was not unique to India; it was universal.

In India, until the vaccine was developed, the medical fraternity had its “best day out” in ages. Preventive medicines like Vitamin D and Vitamin C were sold at exorbitant prices. Any medicine that was mentioned in the media disappeared from shelves but was available in the black market at exorbitant rates.

Those who managed to reach hospitals often jumped to their deaths, knowing their families would not be able to afford the treatment. Nurses and medical staff refused to care for COVID-19 patients, fearing they would contract the virus, which was considered fatal at the time. Oxygen cylinders were unavailable—even for money.

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In India, the bodies of the dead were disposed of in the Ganges River to hide the actual death toll. Many who died were not recorded as COVID-19 victims, but instead listed under causes like heart attack, diabetes, or old age.

There was a reason for hiding the true figures. Courts had ruled that those who died of COVID-19 would have to be paid heavy compensation.

After six months of mayhem, life-saving vaccines became available worldwide. However, they came with their own set of skeptics—one of the most prominent being Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now the Health Secretary under Donald Trump’s second presidency.

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Kennedy openly questioned the effectiveness of vaccines as lifesaving tools. In India, Baba Ramdev also questioned the efficacy of vaccines, for which he was heavily criticized.

I personally know several high-profile individuals who are raising concerns—not only about the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing COVID-19 but also about their potential side effects. They claim that vaccines may have caused life-threatening issues such as blood clots and brain hemorrhages, which are now affecting young people.

Will we finally see a thorough investigation into this global crisis, now that Kennedy is heading the Department of Health?

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Curated and Compiled by Humra Kidwai

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