Health Ministry’s savage response to fake news peddler New York Times

The global liberal media is at it again. New York Times has published a report titled, “India Is Stalling the W.H.O.’s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public.” The entire story is a naive attempt at discrediting India’s achievement of controlling the Pandemic. However, NYT hasn’t been allowed to get away with its propaganda as India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was ready with a sharp response.

NYT tries to defame India

In a serious bid to defame India, NYT stated that a recent effort by the WHO to use year-long research and analysis showed that about 15 million died due to the Pandemic by the end of 2021. This is more than double the official number of deaths since the pandemic started.

NYT added,  “But the result of more than a year of research and analysis by experts around the world and the most comprehensive look at the lethality of the pandemic to date has been delayed for months because of objections from India, which disputes the calculation of how many of its citizens died and has tried to keep it from becoming public.”

Baseless Stats & Baseless Allegations

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has used baseless data to claim that several million deaths went unreported in India.

NYT stated, “More than a third of the additional nine million deaths are estimated to have occurred in India, where the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stood by its own count of about 520,000. The W.H.O. will show the country’s toll is at least four million, according to people familiar with the numbers who were not authorized to disclose them, which would give India the highest tally in the world, they said.”

But how did the WHO arrive at this sweeping conclusion? NYT reported, “The W.H.O. calculation combined national data on reported deaths with new information from localities and household surveys, and with statistical models that aim to account for deaths that were missed. Most of the difference in the new global estimate represents previously uncounted deaths, the bulk of which were directly from Covid; the new number also includes indirect deaths, like those of people unable to access care for other ailments because of the pandemic.”

So, what does “new information from localities and household surveys” mean? Does it mean that the WHO relied on hearsay information and agenda-driven statistics? And then there isn’t any explanation for “deaths that were missed” either.

Finally, the revised data should have some sort of equitable character. If 5.2 lakh deaths in India are being passed off as 4 million, then why is the WHO not interpreting over one million COVID-19 deaths in the US as say eight million deaths? Why is there no parity in numbers? This is exactly what India is asking.

Health Ministry’s response

Fact-checking NYT, the Health Ministry has published a hard-hitting reply to the newspaper’s allegations.

It stated, “India has been in regular and in-depth technical exchange with WHO on the issue. The analysis while uses mortality figures directly obtained from Tier –I set of countries, uses a mathematical modelling process for Tier II countries (which includes India). India’s basic objection has not been with the result (whatever they might have been) but rather the methodology adopted for the same.”

The Ministry added, “The concern specifically includes on how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size & population of India and also fits in with other countries which have smaller population. Such one size fit all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not be applicable to India with a population of 1.3 billion.”

And India also asserts that if the statistical model is accurate, then it should also be used for all Tier-I countries. India also asserts that the WHO uses Global Health Estimates (GHE) 2019 for calculating the number of deaths in the country, whereas national datasets are used for calculating deaths in Tier-I countries. Why this distinction?

The Ministry also questioned the genuineness of the NYT report. It stated, “It is very surprising that while New York Times purportedly could obtain the alleged figures of excess COVID19 mortality in respect to India, it was “unable to learn the estimates for other countries!!”

Read more: The New York Times wants Joe Biden to start a ‘Ministry of Truth’, headed by a ‘REALITY CZAR’ to tackle ‘misinformation’

NYT can say what it wants. But the fact remains that India has managed to keep the number of deaths low. On the other hand, the US under Joe Biden has failed to combat the Pandemic. The US has faced double the number of deaths when compared to India despite a much smaller population and lesser population density. So, if the NYT should be speaking up about anything, it is Joe Biden’s failures. Or otherwise, it will keep getting humiliated on the global stage.