[smukherjee]

Originally Posted by Diesel9999

We had the chance to start vaccinating early and prepare for round 2. Instead, we gifted and sold millions of doses to other countries before inoculating our own citizens. The politicians of this country have blood on their hands.

Very sad to hear your predicament. The real tragedy is that in the second wave, these cases are no longer an exception. I have lost a loved one recently as well, and the case was similar - despite having monetary resources and decent contacts, the person could not get a bed with oxygen till it was too late. I hope your loved one recovers soon.
Young Indians are badly impacted, the fatality numbers are scarily high and it doesn't seem we have hit the peak yet.

The failure is in not preparing for the second wave and letting our guard down to soon. China, where it all started, has never had a second wave because it has never really eased restrictions on overseas travel and even inter-state travel.
India is recording almost 3 lakh cases a day, China's total case count is 90,000 (approx) - yes, you read that right! China has also focused on vaccinating its population first rather than exports (when they are undisputed champions of exports).
So high population or people's discipline as an excuse is not viable - a strong administrative response to control population movement and lack of healthcare strategy has doomed us.

[Ragavsr]

Originally Posted by Diesel9999

Our society is not just staring at economic disaster from closure of businesses. We are staring at economic disaster induced by exorbitant hospitalisation costs.

You have pointed out a severe problem that is 100% true. Leave alone the cost of covid care, the end of life hospitalization bills are frightening, to say the least. Most big hospitals have forgotten what palliative care even means.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

But that is a very big if. I do not know if these Govt figures can be relied upon.

I believe the government data on vaccinations is accurate. Most people I know who were eligible for one has taken one. Also, a lot of teaching hospitals proactively made students including of all paramedical courses take the vaccine mandatorily. God bless them.

There was initial hesitation even in the doctor community to go for covaxin . I think the PM personally taking covaxin shots helped assuage fear.

[pkk077]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

If, if indeed we have vaccinated 10% then yes it is a sizeable number in the time available. But that is a very big if. I do not know if these Govt figures can be relied upon.

Number of vaccines being supplied to each state is very tightly controlled and records being kept. The numbers of vaccines being wasted is also being openly discussed. Each person being vaccinated is being asked for Aadhaar and they get an SMS on their phone post the jab. Barring some minor tracking error, it's unlikely that all states and centre would get together to pull this level of fraud.

[Gansan]

I read an account by a person on FB. He had walked in to a peripheral facility of a private hospital in Pune for vaccination. He found a big line so went to the reception counter to book his name and visit later. The receptionist innocuously asked him would he like to take a quick RADT test to which he replied he had no symptoms. She said a lot of people are taking a quick test to ensure they are safe, and in a moment of weakness he agreed. Guess what, the test showed positive. Now he was too worried to go back home. She said it would be safer to undergo a full RT PCR test to rule out any false positive and be sure. He had no other go but to agree. But he had to visit their main facility elsewhere for the test, the peripheral facility didn't have it.

So off he went to the main facility and found a big line there too. While waiting it dawned on him many of the faces in the line looked familiar, and surprise, a lot of them had indeed come from the same facility he visited, and some more were from a few other peripheral clinics of the same hospital! All had been snared by sweet talking people in the reception desk. He gave the test, went home and isolated himself while he awaited the result.

Well, his test result proved to be negative. And so were the results of most other people, but there were a few positives as well. He concluded by saying please test if you have any symptoms or had an exposure, but don't let anyone sweet talk you in to it!

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by krishnakarthik1

Just because a vaccine was given emergency approval it was touted to be a scam and that laid the seed for the vaccine hesitancy campaign. If ten or twenty in a crore had a complication only those cases were highlighted.

It has penetrated so much that even my domestic help and her entire colony won't get vaccinated. Even if a vaccine was 1% effective, it's still better than 0 and gives some strength to fight. For a few clicks or a few eye balls or some retweets or hatred towards one person this was done.

Solutions-
1. Get vaccinated asap. On May 1 when it opens to the majority of us lets get vaccinated by paying that 600 or 400 or something and not crib about that money and lets share that we got vaccinated.

I dont know what's the scene in your area, but Pune Metropolitan was averaging perhaps the highest vaccination numbers on a daily basis (over 40000 per day) until recently. And even now, there are thousands waiting, but the supply is coming short. So none of these vaccine rumours at play atleast in Pune or MH in general, which is leading on the vax numbers.

[viscosity]

I am hoping against hope that whenever we come out of this mess, hopefully people will carry forward the lessons learnt and it will pave a path towards a better India. For example, after World War2, Japanese folks worked like crazy to develop their nation and make it a powerful self sufficient economy.

Sharing some life learnings :

• Don't take too much debt when things are going good
• Save for the rainy day when things are going good
• Be always prepared that you may lose your business or fired from your job the very next day. Build a Safety Net.
• Assume that no one from government will come to your help
• Keep good relationships with friends, family and neighbours and with Bhpians here
• This pandemic has shown what is the real value of such relationships and stop thinking that we can live independently in our cocoon as long as one has sufficient money. Twitter is having some many tweets from people with blue ticks to their name who are pleading for medicine, oxygen, bed etc.
• Pandemic has shown how fragile life is, so be humble, keep an attitude of gratitude and don't forget to drive, love your automobiles everyday
• Media is a business and it sells propaganda and not news
• Government or State is no different from a mafia and the taxes they collect is no different from a Hafta (weekly allowance for providing protection) Mafia collects
• When we all go to vote next time, please vote only for development and leave all other latest hot topics related to religion, caste, nationalism etc aside
• Last but not the least, remember Mr. Murphy --> if things can go wrong, they will

[JayPrashanth]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Isn't it a bit odd ?.

IMF PREDICTS A 12.5% GROWTH FOR INDIA
https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/IND

Logically it means pent up demand getting fulfilled in 2021 but I must confess that i have stopped trying to make sense of the stock markets and also the IMF jargon specialists statements. My only concern is how much money i have in my pockets and how long can I save it.

If your last year's growth has been 1 %, if you grow at 2.5 % this year, it's represents a GDP growth of 50 %. So, a 12.5 % growth on a base of say 1 %, is 1.125 % real growth. And we were in recession (degrowth) last year.

Cheers,

Jay

[sharatravan]

Originally Posted by ramzsys

If anything, covid only accentuated the pathetic lives we are living already.
.

I totally agree with this.

COVID has just completely exposed everything that has failed us collectively as a nation. The locked up time at home gave some time for introspection and deep thinking last year and not a day went by without me wondering - What have we accomplished in the last 70 odd years of being independent?

It's easy to blame the political fraternity for all our problems but fundamentally speaking - Who are these politicians? Where do they come from? Who put them in the place that they're occupying? What has the 'Over'populated India done to make them accountable? What has this 'Over'populated India itself done to uplift itself from its misery?

India's problems are unique to India, and yet, we haven't been able to find ways to solve them, instead relying on a very easy model of blind copy pasting - we took the exact same approach for managing COVID as well, without any foresight or understanding of India's unique problems.

Time and again we've highlighted pros of having such a huge population, especially of working age, but it's precisely this population that's letting this entire nation down. The workforce that we produce isn't of the highest quality, since we don't have the best education standards to start with. We don't even have awareness of basic sanitization or personal hygiene. There's no civic sense. We're definitely not the most ethical or honest people either. People who can barely feed themselves once a day have a family of 10 to feed. So no sense of birth control or the impact that it has on the economy/personal life either. Corruption/Shortcuts/Power abuse etc etc - you name it and every such negative quality is amplified in India. Covid has completely destroyed whatever little was left of the country.

Sorry for going OT and this rant, but it really pains me to see how misplaced and irrelevant the priorities have been for this country all these years, and more so during the current times. Pains even more to see some countries who were just like India or may be worse, fare today compared to us - some of these countries have galloped and progressed by leaps and bounds, while for us, it's the same story every single time. God knows which generation in the future will eventually see India becoming the real super power.

[aashishnb]

Originally Posted by vinit.merchant

A few points I would like to make

On 10% vaccinated already- vaccine was made available to general public on 01 March, but limited to 60+ population & 45+ if having co-morbidities. This part of the population will receive their second dose in April (4 weeks for Covaxin and 6-8 weeks for Covishield). Only then they can be called vaccinated.
Those seniors who received covishield in march, are still not vaccinated thanks to this revision of 4 weeks to minimum 45 days.
Hence I do not think 10% are actually fully vaccinated. First dose is not vaccination.

I think they vaccinated the entire armed forces, frontline workers (healthcare, police, etc.) much before this without age limits. Therefore, the 10% may be possible.

Originally Posted by IUNKWN

Call me whatever you wish to, the cases will go down post bengal results. People may continue to die but the media won't shout from rooftop. Former PM who is well known for his silence calls upon center to let states import vaccines. Pfizer and moderna want a huge pie of the trillion dollar indian vaccine market but are unwilling to run their product through trial, bridge or otherwise. They want approvals just by their brand name which the govt refused, a good move. Now vasooli gangs have good opportunity to haress corporates in the name of CSR and import what they like to, of course with a good kickback. SII had demanded 1000 per dose which the govt negotiated to 150, the 100 extra is given to private administrators aa handling charges. All this gone down the drain, now the institute is asking for 3000 crore as grant aka bhik amount and will sell indians the vaccine at 600 per dose.

Can anyone see that we are fighting a pharma cabal? Last year it took more than 10 months to cross 10 lacs and now within days with has breached 16lac figure. Hope it will open govt eyes, they need good med folks in intelligence like good hackers! I will refrain myself at this point lest the paid NGOs worker report the post and brand it as conspiracy theorist rant.

I may be a sceptic and wish I'm wrong, but I think the whole shortage of vaccines right now will go away come May when private sales are allowed. Reminds of onion episode every year - prices rise to Rs.80-100/kg, news channels go crazy, talks of banning exports but no shortage of onions in the mandis.

Originally Posted by Ragavsr

You have pointed out a severe problem that is 100% true. Leave alone the cost of covid care, the end of life hospitalization bills are frightening, to say the least. Most big hospitals have forgotten what palliative care even means.

Here is some food for thought on historic costs. In all likelihood, entire world will go the same way:

[viscosity]

Originally Posted by sharatravan

What have we accomplished in the last 70 odd years of being independent?
.

Not to say we couldn't have done better, have a look at how our close neighbours have done during the same period. In 50's and 60's, we had millions dying because of hunger, famines. That was the country we had at inherited at independence. In my view, a platform was set up in 70 years and with a great demographic dividend we have right now, this coming decade will define where India will go from here in foreseeable future i.e. will we remain a mediocre country on development index or whether take giant strides towards becoming a first world like developed country.

[PSG]

Originally Posted by kiranknair

Some points from my side ( a bit contradictory though) ->

1) IT companies - people are jumping with insane increments. A lot of folks in my inner circle who are in IT have quit their companies having at least a couple of job offers between a 10 to 40 per cent hike. Again some of them have good skills.
.

Very true , I am hiring many in my current IT organization and the % hike demanded by candidates is insane and they do have multiple offers with them. I am talking about skills which are not so niche . My organization even offered joining bonus to few candidates with niche skills.

[sharan1988]

I have a different perspective to this. I feel COVID has thought us how little money we needed to survive during lockdown and the amount of money that we have been simply wasting all this long. I understand that many businesses has been affected due to this, including mine but when that’s the case there will be new lines of businesses that emerge. This might have been difficult for many but this experience will teach them to plan better in the future.

[matizcrazy]

I am very encouraged by the vaccination process. I applied for a slot, got a booking, got the shot and all records updated by SMS instantly; all for Rs 250.
I don't know the Govt is able to subsidize it to 250, must be a big one.
Have already got my second vaccine slot booked too.
I would not resort to judgements on the Govt because I am very happy personally that prompt decisions are being taken despite the numbers being reported.

[.HEM]

Being an Entrepreneur, I vowed not to layoff any of my coworkers and never stopped or slashed their salaries. It was indeed the happiest moment of my life when we were able to pay each and everyone who depended on my little organization, from the house keeping to tea vendor to senior managers.

It is actually a cycle, my clients supported us, we supported our staff, our staff supported the company, my company supported the clients.

I have a different perspective, I feel we should spend after the pandemic lock-down is over, to bring back the economy on its foot again. We should not save everything and spend only for survival. If you can afford it buy! it will for sure save someone's job! I would be happy if the government give grants of few thousand rupees to each and every citizen to spend. It will definitely boost the economy.

[pratyaksh]

Originally Posted by GTO

As if the suffering from the virus wasn't enough, my heart goes out to those that have lost their jobs / businesses. And we still haven't bottomed out IMO. The worst is yet to come, we will see that in the economy as well. This is the rainy day you saved up for, guys. Be cautious with spending money. Hope no BHPians or their friends / family have suffered like the examples in this article.

I also read this article in economic times and was on the brink of asking if T-BHP can do something here. Can we bring about real change with some fundraising for people in need or something of value for the people. I don't know but just a thought!