We practised dying in April. No surprise this time.

"In a major security lapse, PM Narendra Modi was stuck on a flyover for around 20 minutes on his way to Hussainiwalla in Punjab due to a group of protesting farmers blocking the highway," India Today. A letter written to Punjab Police officers by the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) said, "As you are aware that PM's rally is being held in Ferozepur on January 5, 2022, around 1 lakh (100,000) people are being mobilised by the organisers from all the districts of Punjab. There is likely to be a lot of public traffic and a large number of VIPs moving to the district Ferozepur on February 5, 2022." Around 100,000 people were to be collected to hear Modi's campaign speech because election to Punjab assembly is to be held by March, wikipedia. Meanwhile, on 4 January, "Schools and colleges will remain shut and a night curfew will be imposed to restrict public movement, the Punjab government ordered today following a sharp rise in Covid cases in the state in the past few days," NDTV. "A night curfew will be in force from 10 pm to 5 am daily." Strange that the coronavirus can be transmitted while sitting separately in classrooms but not by 100,000 people transported in packed buses. Modi lives in Delhi which will be "under curfew from 10 pm, Friday to 5 am Monday" as a "way to arrest the spread of Covid-19 cases, officials said", TIE. "We've seen this movie before," wrote Ruth Pollard for Bloomberg. "In April 2020, as India reeled from a wave of hospitalizations and deaths and its citizens took to social media to beg for oxygen, a mask-less Modi boasted of huge crowds at an elections rally in the state of West Bengal." "Health experts and epidemiologists are despairing." It's natural. "India reported 90,928 fresh COVID-19 cases on Thursday (yesterday), over 56 percent higher than the previous day's cases," NDTV. "The number of deaths climbed to 4,82,876 with 325 more fatalities, the data showed." These numbers must be much lower than actual figures, as we saw in April, when "Gas and firewood furnaces at a crematorium in the western state of Gujarat have been running so long without a break during the COVID-19 pandemic that metal parts have begun to melt," Reuters. Even the Holy Ganga was not spared. "The bodies on the river banks, taken together with funeral pyres burning round-the-clock and cremation grounds running out of space, tell the story of a death toll unseen and unacknowledged in official data," BBC. "The horror in Uttar Pradesh first came to light on 10 May when 71 corpses washed up on the river bank in Bihar's Chausa village, near the state border." "A forum of scientific advisers set up by the government warned Indian officials in early March of a new and a more contagious variant of the coronavirus taking hold int the country," Reuters. The response is just as illogical this time round. While travelers from Europe "are tested as they get off planes and subject to home quarantine, while those from the US, where new infections crossed 1 million over a 24-hour period on Monday saunter through," wrote Rahul Jacob. Modi stuck for 20 minutes is huge news, 100,000 exposed to Covid is not. We practised dying in April. Same again this time.