A story from mid-February: “Why did COVID fail to take off in India and has now collapsed?”
This is a story that has disappeared into a dark hole. I was alerted by a broadcast from David Icke to an article cited by David Icke from the middle of February, Why did COVID fail to take off in India and has now collapsed?
I tried to track it down to an item from Beforeitsnews which cites an article from the Daily Mail with that title.
When I pressed on the link I found the article has been taken down.
On further search I found an item in the Lebanese al-Masdar News that said the same.
It appears obvious to me they have changed the narrative along the lines Icke describes and they have tried to disappear a story from as recently as February because it contradicts the current narrative.
I suggest that you listen to David Icke talking about this. He no longer sounds to me nearly so extreme as he did as this story was unfolding this time last year.
Why did COVID fail to take off in India and has now collapsed?
A good article in The Daily Mail (whose covid-19 related reporting has been very good):
Scientists are baffled by the relatively low rate of coronavirus infections in India after at one point it looked as though it might surpass the US as the country with the biggest case toll.
Infections began to plummet in September, and now the country is reporting about 11,000 new cases a day, compared to a peak of nearly 100,000, leaving experts perplexed.
They have suggested many possible explanations for the sudden drop, seen in almost every region, including that some areas of the country may have reached herd immunity or that Indians may have some preexisting protection from the virus.
I had noticed that, and I am as baffled as they are. As the charts in the article show, India had a steady increases in cases/deaths for a few months, followed by an equally steady decline. Peak daily deaths were no higher in India than in the UK, even though India’s population is twenty times as large. There was no exponential growth or fall, it’s a straight line up and a straight line back down.
Brazil had been following a similar straight up and down path to India until late last year, when they were hit by a second wave and/or the Brazil variant. But India is approx. one-fifth of the world population, so you’ve expect there to have been a far few new variants there as well.
Answers on a postcard, your guess is as good as mine.
Something else that baffles me is that the lockdowns/easing don’t seem to have had any discernible impact on daily UK cases/deaths. The easing of the first lockdown in July (in the middle of a gloriously warm summer) had no discernible impact – there was no sudden increase. Numbers didn’t start ticking up until two months later (when it started getting cold).
They peaked and started falling again just before the December lockdown, and they peaked again two months after that. In other words, the number of infections continued going up for nearly two months after the lockdown started. Of course we’ll never know what would have happened without lockdowns, but hey.
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Also, well said Mr Z. From the BBC:
Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi said that it’s his “very strong instinct… to say, those who through no fault of their own other than their work, have to come into contact with the virus, should be prioritised”. He listed shopkeepers, teachers and police officers as those who might be prioritised next.
This next item seems to be the only other source for this story. Al-Masdar News does not seem to censor its own reporting in accordance with new narratives, it seems.
Scientists baffled by plummeting levels of coronavirus infections in India
15 February, 2021
Scientists are baffled by the relatively low rate of coronavirus infections in India after at one point it looked as though it might surpass the US as the country with the biggest case toll.
Infections began to plummet in September, and now the country is reporting about 11,000 new cases a day, compared to a peak of nearly 100,000, leaving experts perplexed.
They have suggested many possible explanations for the sudden drop, seen in almost every region, including that some areas of the country may have reached herd immunity or that Indians may have some preexisting protection from the virus.
The Indian government has also partly attributed the dip in cases to mask-wearing, which is mandatory in public in India and violations draw hefty fines in some cities.
But experts have noted the situation is more complicated since the decline is uniform even though mask compliance is lagging in some areas.
It is more than just an intriguing puzzle; determining what’s behind the drop in infections could help authorities control the virus in the country, which has reported nearly 11 million cases and over 155,000 deaths.
Some 2.4 million people have died worldwide.
“If we don’t know the reason, you could unknowingly be doing things that could lead to a flare-up,” said Dr. Shahid Jameel, who studies viruses at India’s Ashoka University.
India, like other countries, misses many infections, and there are questions about how it is counting virus deaths.
But the strain on the country’s hospitals has also declined in recent weeks, a further indication the virus’s spread is slowing.
When recorded cases crossed nine million in November, official figures showed nearly 90% of all critical care beds with ventilators in New Delhi were full.
On Thursday, 16% of these beds were occupied.
That success cannot be attributed to vaccinations since India only began administering jabs in January — but as more people get a vaccine, the outlook should look even better, though experts are also concerned about variants identified in many countries that appear to be more contagious and render some treatments and vaccines less effective.
Among the possible explanations for the fall in cases is that some large areas have reached herd immunity — the threshold at which enough people have developed immunity to the virus, by falling sick or being vaccinated, that the spread begins to slacken, said Vineeta Bal, who studies immune systems at India’s National Institute of Immunology.
But experts have cautioned that even if herd immunity in some places is partially responsible for the decline, the population as a whole remains vulnerable — and must continue to take precautions.
This is especially true because new research suggests that people who got sick with one form of the virus may be able to get infected again with a new version.
Ms. Bal, for instance, pointed to a recent survey in Manaus, Brazil, that estimated that over 75% of people there had antibodies for the virus in October — before cases surged again in January.
“I don’t think anyone has the final answer,” she said.
And, in India, the data is not as dramatic.
A nationwide screening for antibodies by Indian health agencies estimated that about 270 million, or one in five Indians, had been infected by the virus before vaccinations started — that is far below the rate of 70% or higher than experts say might be the threshold for the coronavirus, though even that is not certain.
“The message is that a large proportion of the population remains vulnerable,” said Dr. Balram Bhargava, who heads India’s premier medical research body, the Indian Council of Medical Research.
But the survey offered other insight into why India’s infections might be falling.
It showed that more people had been infected in India’s cities than in its villages and that the virus was moving more slowly through the rural hinterland.
“Rural areas have lesser crowd density, people work in open spaces more and homes are much more ventilated,” said Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India.
If some urban areas are moving closer to herd immunity, wherever that threshold lies, and are also limiting transmission through masks and physical distancing and thus are seeing falling cases, then maybe the low speed at which the virus is passing through rural India can help explain sinking numbers, suggested Dr Reddy.
Another possibility is that many Indians are exposed to a variety of diseases throughout their lives — cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis, for instance, are prevalent — and this exposure can prime the body to mount a stronger, initial immune response to a new virus.
David Icke starts to talk about India and the context at approximately the 40 minute mark.
