MANAGER
India is a country that has practically gained immunity. At a huge price.
CREMATION: The dead are cremated when the pandemic ravaged its worst in India in the early summer of this year. Photo: AP / NTB
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Manager: This is an editorial from Dagbladet, and expresses the newspaper’s views. Dagbladet’s political editor is responsible for the editorial.
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Is there a way out of the corona nightmare? The question moves closer to us day by day, as the number of infections increases, hospitals and intensive care units are filled up, and stricter measures are constantly being considered by central and local authorities. The not-so-good news is that, yes, there is a way out. The definitely bad news is that that road is not passable at all, because it is paved with disease, long-term harmful effects of the virus, and death.
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India is that country which by all accounts is now on the other side of the nightmare. In big cities like Delhi and Mumbai, the field hospitals that were set up when the pandemic ravaged the worst in early summer are largely empty. Doctors in Delhi can start by jokingly saying that nowhere in the world is it as difficult to get infected as in Delhi. In the capital, 90 percent of the population has antibodies in their blood. This is despite the fact that only half of the population has received a dose of the vaccine, and only 25 per cent have been fully vaccinated.
So India is an example of a country that has achieved virtually immunity in the tough way. The reality is that it was never India that fought the virus, it was the virus that far and away fought India. The official death toll from the pandemic is 460,000 people. But the excess mortality in the time of the corona is about ten times as great, 4, 6 million people.
Scorched politics
The numbers from then the pandemic ravaged the worst, from April to June, shows that the column for infected rose almost vertically, but after the peak in early May, it sank almost as vertically, and at that time only about ten percent of the population was vaccinated. In the sacred river Ganges floated corpses dumped by desperate relatives, and were caught by large nets, because there was not enough wood to cremate the dead. What the numbers say is that immunity was achieved in the tough way, where vaccination played a relatively small role.
India is, of course no example to follow. In huge China, on the other hand, you officially have about as much infection a month as you have in little Norway every day. There is a zero tolerance for infection, despite the fact that around two thirds of the population have been vaccinated at least once, and millions of cities are still closing down with only the slightest infection. All over the world, people are looking for their way out of the nightmare, and to freedom. And neither India’s nor China’s path is to be followed.
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