Yogendra Yadav- The fearmonger who says India has 15 crore cases and 1 lakh have already died

Amid the ongoing fight against the pandemic when all the elected governments across the country are making every effort to minimize the damage, the members of “tukde-tukde gang” have resorted to fear-mongering to maximize the damage to the country.

Yogendra Yadav, psephologist-turned-politician, is now suddenly trying hand in epidemiology to come with astronomical figures about the death and the number of cases in the country.

In a tweet, written in typical sensational left-liberal media establishment fashion, Yadav claimed that more than 1 lakh people many have died and there are nearly 15 crore Corona positive cases, by extrapolating data from a random sample survey done by ICMR.

“Breaking: Is the Govt of India saying we have nearly 15 CRORES Corona positive cases? That more than 1 lakh persons may have already died of Covid?  That’s 500 times more than the official figure, higher than any other country. Don’t believe me? Follow this thread,” tweeted Yadav, in a 9 tweet thread.

ICMR conducted a survey which revealed that 0.73% of the sample population were infected with Coronavirus.

Given the fact the Indian government has been one of the most transparent authorities in reporting Covid-19 data, and there have been no restrictions on journalistic coverage even during the harshest phase of the lockdown, no one can allege that the government is hiding the data.

Even Yogendra Yadav knows that even if the number of deaths are double of what is being reported- 7,000 in the second week of June, it must have come out through social media or journalistic coverage, or some NGO. But, so far, no credible authority has raised questions over the data reported by the government. Even the most critical media houses have not gone as far as Yogendra Yadav in fear-mongering and wedging trust deficit against the government.

The astronomical figures given by Yadav are akin to those projected by economist turned epidemiologist Ramanan Laxminarayan, who, in March, projected that as many as 80 crore people in India could be affected from the virus and millions of deaths.

After Laxminarayan’s figures proved astronomical and he lost credibility to speak in media, the task of fear mongering was taken up by Yogendra Yadav, who aims to benefit politically by peddling agenda.

Predictions based on mathematical modeling and random sampling is the most stupid thing to do when dealing with a health crisis, as every country, in fact, every individual has very different biology. Such gross generalization, based on random sampling and mathematical modelling, could only be expected from an economist-turned-epidemiologist and psephologist-turned-politician with zero understanding of biology.

Yogendra Yadav has no skin in the game, as he is at best, a politician who spent the majority of time reading and writing on socialism. But his fear-mongering could create havoc and panic among the people of the country. And Indian media has already started running stories over Yadav’s claims.

Dainik Bhaskar, a popular Hindi newspaper with a very large readership, gave space to Yogendra Yadav to publish these astronomical figures and allege the government of lying. A person like Yadav, who has long been associated with mainstream media, will now use the space for fear-mongering and damaging the image of the country.

India media has been known for sensationalism for decades, but at a time when the world is facing worst public health crisis of modern age- A little sanity was expected. But the leftist portals have stick to the agenda and fear-mongering in the case of Coronavirus too. To attract more eyeballs, media organisations exaggerate everything and make sensational headlines. The print medium is relatively better but few websites and almost all the television channels are more of Ekta Kapoor serials than being platforms for sensible coverage and informative reporting.

Indian media exaggerates every issue and the TV shows lack mature content. The Prime Time shows on TV give a sense that the world will fall apart on just the other day. The media needs to behave more responsibly, at least on the matters of public health crisis such as Corona.