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Showing posts with the label corona virus

The shaman, his tune and the rats.

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A boy with his steel plate The taali and thalli bajao is an expression in animism of the Indian public that is peeing in its pants, shit scared of an alien powerful force that is hard to control. The Pradhan Choukidar / Shaman has managed to direct people into this tribal ritual primarily for these reasons, it would seem. 1. He can later ask people for example to eat baked human shit if he convinces people that they are doing so for their own good and for the country. 2. More pertinently he shifts the responsibility of solving the issue in hand to the people themselves. By a mere collective animistic ritual we have now forgotten to ask questions as to what the government has done to tackle the issue - things like how are additional beds, ventilators and other respiratory machines, health care personnel, safety equipment are being managed; how is the money being managed for the next coming weeks when there might be a deluge of sick old people wanting medical attention. T

80% immunity rate !!!

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A man peacefully sleeping in the times of COVID 19 virus. A doctor told me today that there are just about 1,50,000 testing kits in India to detect COVID 19 virus in the country. Each kit tests around 10 samples. And these kits are not made in India. For one, we had two whole months to get prepared since it the virus breached China, we just laughed at people who warned about the impending threat. In two months our preparation was only that much. Therefore we are relying on banging taalies and other theatrics. This virus is bound to spread and it spreads very rapidly than the other Corona viruses  that we have encountered in the past like SARS etc. But unlike the last time, the death rate with this virus is only about 2-3%. But since the infection rate is very high, even the three percent would weigh heavily on our (also the world) health care system. Now, over the years thanks to the neo liberal politics that we have been witnessing the world over the public health sys