This gov literally needed the former Prime Minsters letter to start acting even when the mess was as clear as day for everyone else. The gov was too lost in their lust for even more power. Making things way worse than they needed to be. To get to that "decisiveness" we needed fires burning constantly in Delhi, the Ganges flooding with bodies. Plus foreign media covering how big a mess it was.
A coalition gov would have been faster to act just because they have to take care of the people or face a major backlash. We paid a heavy price for this "decisive" leader!
I am not going into how the supporters of the gov behaved with people who lost family...all because they wanted to protect the image of the government!
Credit where due? The man shows up only when he has credit. He literally inaugurated a stadium in his own name. He is the most silent PM I’ve ever seen, doesn’t ever take interviews.
I would rather attribute health officials doing their job for this success.
Willing to take credit sure, but what about the millions of deaths, where were the politicians when the 2nd wave hit and millions lost their lives (election duties and rallies right before).
Not even a single press conference was given when people needed some empathy, leadership or assurance. Imagine, the scenario in USA or Germany where thousands are dying every day, and the top brass of the country has nothing to say.
Absolutely not. 90% of these doses were provided by Serum Institute, a private company, that wholly managed the relationship with AstraZeneca since the early days of the pandemic, even when the government was asking citizens to perform rituals to ward off the pandemic.
The government not only played a largely passive role, but they did not even assist where they could. Before the second wave, Serum Institute was appealing for financial help to boost production capacity. But the government completely neglected that, choosing to prop up covaxin, their homegrown vaccine instead.
Even as the government was petitioning WHO to open up vaccine IPs, they refused to open up the IP for their own covaxin to domestic manufacturers, instead ensuring exclusive access to a company that is very "close" to the party.
What saved India in the end was a strong pharma/health industry enabling local manufacturing and ready distribution network for the vaccine. Serum Institute was already the world's largest vaccine manufacturer and was in an amazing position to take up the Oxford vaccine. They jumped at it with all hands and today account for 90% of all doses administered. It's a shame that the rest of the industry doesn't have a bigger share, they certainly have the capability. India is like top 3 in the world in pharma manufacturing. Many companies were ready and willing to switch to vaccine manufacturing but were tied up in bureaucracy with no support from the government.
Political will was the need of the hour, the government had none and it certainly shows in the outcome. Bad leaders always seem to enjoy something of a stockholm syndrome where they are forgiven and admired for everything once the dust settles. People forget how bad the second wave was, and how bad the decisions of the government leading into it. If not for Serum Institute and the strength of the pharma industry, India would have easily gone down the path of Brazil for the kind of shithousery the government pulled.
Sarcasm aside, look at the economy: >-20% dip in pandemic. Heck even Pakistan manages to keep its haad above the water. And Bangladesh has more per capita income.
Keeping the voters alive and dealing with a public health emergency is a basic job of the government. I am not going to praise a leader for doing their job. I would have praised if they did exceptionally well, and rapidly set up a way to manufacture vaccines in a war-time urgency and made the vaccines available much earlier than they did.
I have family in India, and they have no hesitation to get the vaccines. It just wasn't available for very long. India insisted on a seaparate Indian trial from Pfizer which almost eliminated access to those for Indians. Only to embarrassingly withdraw such requirement and allow them back as cases spiked.
The dear leader refused to fund free vaccines for people under 40. Instead, states were pitted against each other to procure doses It wasn't until the Supreme Court got involved that the government backtracked. So much for being decisive.
And everyone from the Central Board of Secondary Education to state owned enterprises were made to put up posters thanking Modiji for the vaccines. Because you, know he's funding them personally, not us taxpayers. Even the goddamn vaccination certificate has his smug face plastered on it. So, let's not pretend he's not taking credit for it.
Say clearly what’s in your head. You’re saying a brilliant and intelligent person like Manmohan Singh couldn’t have done this? Because he was the last Indian leader leading a coalition who saw us through 2008 International economic crisis and was an architect of 1991 Indian Industrialization push.
Covid was an event of unimaginable proportions which affected every Indian and I believe any Indian leader would have done same or even more than what Modi’s government did provided India was already a leader in vaccination logistics and vaccine production even before Modi came to power. For all the good said about current vaccination numbers, they are well below than what could have been achieved had Modi govt. acted in a more timely manner and played the international vaccine politics better. Over committing Vaccine production to the outside world, delaying the immunization drive because of unnecessary red-tape and toxic nationalism, delaying the deployment of well tested Moderna and Pfizer vaccines forever but approving locally designed vaccine Covaxin even before its phase three trials were over, overblowing the vaccination numbers on some designated dates to create “single day vaccination records” while creating shortage on other dates at the same are all blots on this vaccination drive.
Credit for what? India already had one of the largest vaccination programs in the world. Despite tried and tested innovative strategies of immunization available, Narendra Modi's BJP government still botched up the covid vaccination drive horribly and both indian and international media has covered this extensively:
- Modi Backtracks on India Vaccine Drive After Intense Criticism: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-07/india-to-vaccinate-citizens-above-18-in-covid-fight-modi-says
I would be surprised if India didn't set a record. The fact that it took India so long to reach this milestone is almost embarrassing. India has in fact a very sophisticated network of trained vaccinators, cold chain equipment, surveillance of disease even at semi-rural level combined with being home to largest vaccine manufacturer.
It took Supreme Court of India's criticism for this government to finally get their act in order on Covid Vaccination Program.
At this point, I believe everyone knows this.
> The more accurate number is 290 million
Why this is the only ‘accurate’ number? Both doses and people are perfectly accurate numbers. Maybe you meant more ‘relevant’ or ‘important’ number.
And every dose, be it the first or the second, has to be produced, bought, shipped and administered to a Human being who has been convinced to take it...
It would be nice if every Indian managed to get vaccinated. And it's easy to get distracted by the observation that 290 million is smaller than a billion. But the important thing is that those 290 million are concentrated around urban areas. That goes a long way in breaking the chain. It's okay if logistics makes it very difficult to reach every remote rural place for now. We'll get there eventually.
The union government claims here and elsewhere that it is administering ‘the world’s largest vaccination drive’. I wish it were true. But China is far ahead.⁰ The website also remarks on a ‘world record of 2.5 Cr+ Vaccinations in a day’: China has reached nearly 3 crore (=30 million) as a weekly mean.¹ Vaccination was an opportunity to shine in comparison to China, but the union government seems to have moved rather slowly (not a fault unique to it):
> India’s daily vaccinations surpassed 10 million doses on Friday, with national vaccine production more than doubling since April and set to rise again in the coming weeks.²
1B is very impressive but more than twice that in the same time really puts the capacity, scale and reach of the Chinese State at a different level. Still I am curious why China is not opening up the borders to visitors?
And, I know a few people who were vaccinated, but the dose did not get registered. In some cases, this was purposefully done - so that they could get the dose while they were below the age floor (at that time). In other cases, this was accidental - the hospital staff simply neglected to put it into the system, and no one cared.
The words for the orders of magnitude don't group by thousand like in English (*thousand, million, billion, and so on) but by thousand (hazaar), hundred thousand (lakh), ten million (crore), and I don't know what next.
So the comma separation reflects the words, as in English.
> 38,625
38 hazaar ... Vs. 38 thousand ...
> 13,38,625 vs. 1,338,625
13 lakh ... Vs. 1.3 million ...
> 1,00,13,38,625 vs. 1,001,338,625
100 crore Vs. 1.0 billion
This would no doubt be an entry in a hypothetical 'falsehoods programmers believe about numbers'! I.e. use things like Intl.NumberFormat in the browser, rather than home-grown 'group 3 digits and insert a comma then join again'.
(* yes, I'm going to conveniently ignore 'hundred' and its occasional/domain use like 'twelve hundred'.)
Yes, Indian Numeral System is different. Thousand is Thousand. Hundred Thousand is 1 Lakh. 1 Million is 10 Lakhs. 10 Million is 1 Crore. 1 Billion is 100 Crores.
Proponents of vaccines claim that we have to vaccinate most people and then we can 'go back to normal'. Is there any country with high vaccination rate that has gone back to normal? By normal I'd assume no mask mandates, outdoor or indoor, no vaccine passports of any kind. It seems that even the countries that are over 90% vaccinated are still struggling just as much as the other countries.
As per the serology report that comes out once in a while that uses random sampling, most cities/towns/places have 60-70% people already having anti bodies. It is assumed that almost everyone acquired immunity due to infection at this point in India. However, there is almost no antivax moment as such in India so vaccination will continue throttled only by the availability (with 3 more companies nearing approvals for their new vaccines). Vaccines at this point are serving the same purpose as a booster shot (with the long duration between the shots probably helping).
[+] [-] ing33k|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rathish_g|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghoomketu|4 years ago|reply
An indecisive leader or one heading a coalition govt probably couldn't have done it like this.
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capybara_2020|4 years ago|reply
A coalition gov would have been faster to act just because they have to take care of the people or face a major backlash. We paid a heavy price for this "decisive" leader!
I am not going into how the supporters of the gov behaved with people who lost family...all because they wanted to protect the image of the government!
[+] [-] anaganisk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rockyj|4 years ago|reply
Not even a single press conference was given when people needed some empathy, leadership or assurance. Imagine, the scenario in USA or Germany where thousands are dying every day, and the top brass of the country has nothing to say.
[+] [-] potamic|4 years ago|reply
The government not only played a largely passive role, but they did not even assist where they could. Before the second wave, Serum Institute was appealing for financial help to boost production capacity. But the government completely neglected that, choosing to prop up covaxin, their homegrown vaccine instead.
Even as the government was petitioning WHO to open up vaccine IPs, they refused to open up the IP for their own covaxin to domestic manufacturers, instead ensuring exclusive access to a company that is very "close" to the party.
What saved India in the end was a strong pharma/health industry enabling local manufacturing and ready distribution network for the vaccine. Serum Institute was already the world's largest vaccine manufacturer and was in an amazing position to take up the Oxford vaccine. They jumped at it with all hands and today account for 90% of all doses administered. It's a shame that the rest of the industry doesn't have a bigger share, they certainly have the capability. India is like top 3 in the world in pharma manufacturing. Many companies were ready and willing to switch to vaccine manufacturing but were tied up in bureaucracy with no support from the government.
Political will was the need of the hour, the government had none and it certainly shows in the outcome. Bad leaders always seem to enjoy something of a stockholm syndrome where they are forgiven and admired for everything once the dust settles. People forget how bad the second wave was, and how bad the decisions of the government leading into it. If not for Serum Institute and the strength of the pharma industry, India would have easily gone down the path of Brazil for the kind of shithousery the government pulled.
[+] [-] dilawar|4 years ago|reply
Sarcasm aside, look at the economy: >-20% dip in pandemic. Heck even Pakistan manages to keep its haad above the water. And Bangladesh has more per capita income.
But hey, Bhakti is what bhakt do.
[+] [-] reacharavindh|4 years ago|reply
I have family in India, and they have no hesitation to get the vaccines. It just wasn't available for very long. India insisted on a seaparate Indian trial from Pfizer which almost eliminated access to those for Indians. Only to embarrassingly withdraw such requirement and allow them back as cases spiked.
[+] [-] unmole|4 years ago|reply
And everyone from the Central Board of Secondary Education to state owned enterprises were made to put up posters thanking Modiji for the vaccines. Because you, know he's funding them personally, not us taxpayers. Even the goddamn vaccination certificate has his smug face plastered on it. So, let's not pretend he's not taking credit for it.
[+] [-] gigglesupstairs|4 years ago|reply
Covid was an event of unimaginable proportions which affected every Indian and I believe any Indian leader would have done same or even more than what Modi’s government did provided India was already a leader in vaccination logistics and vaccine production even before Modi came to power. For all the good said about current vaccination numbers, they are well below than what could have been achieved had Modi govt. acted in a more timely manner and played the international vaccine politics better. Over committing Vaccine production to the outside world, delaying the immunization drive because of unnecessary red-tape and toxic nationalism, delaying the deployment of well tested Moderna and Pfizer vaccines forever but approving locally designed vaccine Covaxin even before its phase three trials were over, overblowing the vaccination numbers on some designated dates to create “single day vaccination records” while creating shortage on other dates at the same are all blots on this vaccination drive.
[+] [-] amriksohata|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webmobdev|4 years ago|reply
- How India's vaccine drive went horribly wrong: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57007004
- India could see over 1 million Covid deaths by August due to Modi’s “self-inflicted national catastrophe”: https://qz.com/india/2006872/lancet-editorial-blames-modi-fo...
- The Indian government's failed vaccine drive has caused thousands of Indians to needlessly die - https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/the-india...
- Modi’s Vaccination Fumbles Leave India Behind in Race Against COVID-19: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/16/modi-vaccine-failures-i...
- Fix botched vaccination, reduce transmission to end current crisis: The Lancet to India: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/fix-botch...
- Narendra Modi fails India's vaccine test: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Narendra-Modi-fails-India-s-...
- Modi Backtracks on India Vaccine Drive After Intense Criticism: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-07/india-to-vaccinate-citizens-above-18-in-covid-fight-modi-says
- Complacency and Missteps Deepen a Covid-19 Crisis in India: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/world/asia/india-covid-va...
- The Guardian view on Modi’s mistakes: a pandemic that is out of control: https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/apr/23/...
- Modi’s liberalised vaccination policy is a mistake that other countries avoided: https://caravanmagazine.in/health/modi-liberalised-vaccinati...
[+] [-] einszwei|4 years ago|reply
It took Supreme Court of India's criticism for this government to finally get their act in order on Covid Vaccination Program.
[+] [-] tpmx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LordAtlas|4 years ago|reply
The more accurate number is 290 million, which is how many people have got both doses. Our population is 1.3 billion, so we're still a long way away.
https://dashboard.cowin.gov.in/
[+] [-] blntechie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesian_horse|4 years ago|reply
And every dose, be it the first or the second, has to be produced, bought, shipped and administered to a Human being who has been convinced to take it...
[+] [-] OJFord|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kumarvvr|4 years ago|reply
26.16% of that are children. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/271315/age-distribution-...)
So, about 1 Billion require 2 doses of vaccination.
Out of that 1 Billion are almost done.
A long way to go, but an impressive journey so far.
[+] [-] sameerds|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NilayK|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blntechie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1cvmask|4 years ago|reply
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-...
[+] [-] jayp1418|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eynsham|4 years ago|reply
> India’s daily vaccinations surpassed 10 million doses on Friday, with national vaccine production more than doubling since April and set to rise again in the coming weeks.²
0: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-covid-vaccinat...
1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-19-vaccinatio...
2: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/30/india-covid-vaccine...
[+] [-] mckirk|4 years ago|reply
Yes, China is far ahead of India, but Cuba, the UAE and Urugay are far ahead of China.
[+] [-] ghostcluster|4 years ago|reply
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...
[+] [-] blueblisters|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niranjanbalu13|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yeshok|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crummy|4 years ago|reply
>Total Vaccination Doses: 1,00,13,38,625
Is that an Indian thing?
[+] [-] OJFord|4 years ago|reply
So the comma separation reflects the words, as in English.
> 38,625
38 hazaar ... Vs. 38 thousand ...
> 13,38,625 vs. 1,338,625
13 lakh ... Vs. 1.3 million ...
> 1,00,13,38,625 vs. 1,001,338,625
100 crore Vs. 1.0 billion
This would no doubt be an entry in a hypothetical 'falsehoods programmers believe about numbers'! I.e. use things like Intl.NumberFormat in the browser, rather than home-grown 'group 3 digits and insert a comma then join again'.
(* yes, I'm going to conveniently ignore 'hundred' and its occasional/domain use like 'twelve hundred'.)
[+] [-] addicted|4 years ago|reply
After thousand, numbers are usually grouped by the hundreds.
So, for example, Indians usually use:
Number: Indian Term/Others 1000: Thousand/Thousand 100,000: Lac/Hundred Thousand 1,000,000: 10 Lac/Million 1,00,00,000: Crore/Ten Million
and so on…
[+] [-] ra7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gigglesupstairs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepakkarki|4 years ago|reply
10 lakh = 1 million
100 lakh = 1 crore
[+] [-] kumarvvr|4 years ago|reply
100 - Hundred 1,000 - Thousand 1,00,000 - Lakh 1,00,00,000 - Crore
We don't use millions here.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] prvc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidpatil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skocznymroczny|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] option_greek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amriksohata|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lapsa|4 years ago|reply
NaN Crore + NaN Lakh
[+] [-] known|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] xony|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ewarstdyfg|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] calltrak|4 years ago|reply
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