Wise to have an escape plan ready.

"Breaking all records, India has recorded a massive surge of 145,384 Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours," reported Business Standard. "Active cases are nearing the 1-million mark." 794 people died, taking the total number of deaths since last year to 168,467. "Amid the rising COVID-19 infections across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (April 8) said that there will be no hard lockdown," reported Zee News. "The PM maintained that the Centre needs to prioritise vaccines depending on affected areas and suggested the states to reduce wastage of doses for better management," reported Hindustan Times. Cases are naturally high in cities where large numbers of people live in crowded areas. Had vaccination been concentrated in major cities first, then in smaller cities and then to villages the number of cases would have fallen drastically. On 24 March 2020, Modi announced a total lockdown of the entire nation giving just 24 hours notice. On 25 March, the first day of the lockdown, there were only 600 cases, but now that there are over 100,000 cases in 24 hours he is ruling out any lockdown. Why? The sudden cessation of all economic activity resulted in migrant workers losing their livelihoods and millions of workers and their families, including little children, somehow made their way back to their villages. Many died of starvation and in accidents. This uncontrolled exodus of millions of people without any masks, social distancing or sanitisers, in a desperate effort not to die of starvation, spread the virus to villages. "The main benefit of the migration efforts comes from the lives saved. According to one estimate in an influential paper by Neil Ferguson and co-authors of Imperial College London, enhanced social distancing of the type adopted in India could potentially save 2 million lives compared to the case without any migration efforts," reported The Indian Express. That is the point. So desperate were these poor people that they rushed to train and bus stations at any rumor of resumption of service, got beaten up by the police and still came back. Apparently, the lockdown gave time to the government to increase the number of beds dedicated to the care of covid patients, which is a false assurance because doctors need about 10 years or more to be trained and a nurse needs a minimum of 4-5 years. Governments ordered hospitals to reserve ICU beds for covid patients which means there would have been no beds for serious non-covid conditions, such as heart attacks, strokes, head injuries, diabetic coma and other common medical emergencies. Mortality figures have not been released. Prof Renuka Sane and Ajay Shah used data from Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy (CMIE)'s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey of 200,000 households 3 times a year and found that all-cause mortality doubled between May and August 2020 compared to previous years, wrote Rukmini S. Meanwhile, "Data collated from the Union health ministry shows that states have on average just over five days of vaccine stocks remaining at their current levels of vaccination, and an additional week's supply in the pipeline," reported Times of India yesterday.  "The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's biggest vaccine manufacturer has asked the government for a grant of 30 billion rupees ($402.97 million) to increase its capacity to make AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine," reported Reuters. Probably because, AstraZeneca have sent a legal notice to SII for failure to supply 10 million doses to the UK as per contract because the Indian government stopped the supply. Just to be on the safe side, head of SII Adar Poonawalla has rented a property in central London at 50,000 pounds per week, which amounts to Rs 5 million per week. Ready to escape. We can't.