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Comment by hesarenu | Hacker News Reader

Why this latching onto election rallies and kumbh. Cases are exploding in Karnataka. No election or Kumbh here. Same for Maharastra.

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Do you really buy into the excuse that somehow election rallies and kumbh did not increase the severity of the problem at hand ? Its Standard whataboutery spewed constantly by the ruling party. They just don't even want to own up to their mistakes and the PM is staying silent as he is expecting everyone to forget and move on to the next hot topic. The Central Government allocated covid related very critical projects(Oxygen Plants) to companies that are now untraceable. The Projects itself were floated in Oct(7 months into the pandemic) so they took actually a lot of time to do the job so poorly that we don't have any special infrastructure ready. I mean if the Prime Minister is campaigning til the very day, the Election commission had to put a ban on it due to the exact reason. BJP is a power hungry party and they involve in open candidate buying in a lot of states post elections(The situation is so bad that the opposition parties actually have to camp with all of the leaders in a secluded resort to prevent any kind of horse-trading to happen). Modi government will never accept their mistakes, which we have already seen with demonetization(another useless idea of the current government, which had already broken's India's back financially), or jobs or various other front the current government is failing on.

It seems more like elections and kumbh are standard phrases of opposition party. Cases are exploding in Bangalore. Do you know how far kumbh is to Bangalore. You are just trying to find a scapegoat, like how the RW where using Jamat last Year.

Kumbh Mela is attended by far more than just people who live near where it occurs. People from all across India travel to it, participate, and then go back home.

So i assume jamat guys spread covid across India last time?

Mahakumbh impact? Uttarakhand active Covid caseload jumped 1,800% in 25 days - https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/apr/27/mahakumb...

Uttarakhand maybe. But Bangalore has as many cases as UP.

Not just Uttrakhand. See this news from Madhya Pradesh - Madhya Pradesh: 99% 'Kumbh returnees' test positive for COVID-19; 22 pilgrims untraced - https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/madhya-pradesh-99... ...

The Kumbh Mela is definitely a super-spreader. The increased case numbers in Karnataka can be attributed to the local body elections held there. Moreover, with around 8 months to go for election, UP is actually under-reporting and fudging the figures of its COVID cases.

> Do you know how far kumbh is to Bangalore.

Do you know how far the province of Quebec is from Europe, Caribbean and Latin America, and US/Florida? Because that's where a few people went and caused an explosion of cases in March 2020:

> The researchers found that as few as 247 spring break travellers were at the root of Quebec’s nearly 70,000 cases. The week off ended March 9th, and those who came back from abroad circulated freely in the community for days.

* https://globalnews.ca/news/7354322/new-study-coronavirus-que...

There are more cases in city in Bangalore alone when compared to whole to UP(80Lakh pop vs 22cr). It seems double mutation strains in present in most cases in India. Which initially was seen in Mah. So i do assume it spread from human contact to eveywhere.

Number of cases in UP is highly unreliable, as the current State government is known to be obsessed with maintaining its image and for causing problems for anyone who raises voice against it. It didn't even spare people asking for SOS on twitter - https://scroll.in/latest/993484/up-fir-filed-against-man-who...

It is also the state, where the police recently took an oxygen cylinder from a patient for someone who was politically connected [Police wouldn't have done anything this severe, unless they were forced to do the same] (https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/twitter-furious-over-c...)

you really want to say that holding elections and kumbh didn't make the existing problem worst. As soon as the information of the new strain was received, a ban on international travel and increased restrictions should have ideally gotten things under control or just do anything about it. Instead we have the prime minister, instead of listening to the experts, declared victory over covid(yes this actually happened, twice) and went to campaign holding huge rallies(also boasted about the numbers on the twitter) with no covid protocol adherence[People in Political rallies in India are actually brought from the neighboring states, and are paid daily wages and it was done during the pandemic as well during the Bengal Elections as well & they must have also taken the virus back as well].

Anyways these aren't the only blunders the modi government has done, you can find a whole lot of information on the thoroughly incompetent supreme leader and his blunders with a single click quite easily. In case you belong to his fan-club, you would find every other media house(except the ones actually owned by the prominent right wingers) to be sold. (Anyone reading from US- Modi fan club members are very similar to the Trump Fan Club members and behave in the same manner as well)

Cases are exploding in Bangalore, because the city also had taken the restrictions lightly. I live in Bengaluru, and used to see good amount of traffic on the roads till the day lockdown was announced. A number of super spreader events in closed spaces such as colleges, marriages, cinemas where covid protocols weren't followed properly is also the reason mixed with the higher rate of spread of the new strain. This could have also been prevented for Bengaluru as well, if only the central government had taken some preventive action against the new information received. Instead we all know, what it chose to do.

Did they happen in fresh air? The science from USA already tells us they have no big impact on the numbers.

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