DailyOh! Why Pfizer vaccine means nothing for India, to where cyclone Burevi is
A move that was expected early next week came right in the middle of this week with UK granting emergency regulatory approval to Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. So, Pfizer can now start rolling out vaccines for people on a mass scale. The rollout will happen next week though.
The scale, we told you yesterday, may not cover India entirely because the vaccine price is expected to be sky high and the temperature at which it needs to be stored needs to be at a netherworld low of -60 to -90 degree Celsius.
So how long do we have to wait before we get the vaccine here in India? Possibly forever. The Centre has said what it never said. What we mean is that the Centre has said it never said everyone will be administered the Covid vaccine shot. ICMR director general Balram Bhargava has said the purpose of the Covid vaccine would be to break the chain of viral transmission. So, you see, the Centre isn’t even saying not everyone will get the vaccine. It is only saying what it hasn’t said. Full marks to the Centre for saying this and that and then saying neither this, nor that.
No vaccine has reached 7,50,00,00,000-plus people of the world. That is no excuse for no vaccine ever reaching all people of the world should they need it. But do you know which vaccine has had the highest penetration?
According to World Health Organization (WHO), the vaccine against tuberculosis, which we commonly know as TB, was the most widespread in the world in 2018 with a coverage of 89%. An 89% coverage doesn’t mean 89% of the world population has received it because WHO measures the global reach of vaccine coverage by the number of one-year-olds around the world who have received the vaccine.
The measurement changes when it comes to yellow fever, a deadly disease caused by mosquitoes, where the reach is only measured by the share of children who receive it in 40 affected countries and territories.
While the TB vaccine has the highest penetration, Sushant Singh Rajput and Rhea Chakraborty were the most searched people on Yahoo in 2020. So, when scientists were looking for a cure for coronavirus, many were searching for Sushant and Rhea. That may sound like a very ‘Sharma ji ka beta’ kind of a comparison, but we mean to draw no comparison at all. A choice is a choice. The choice to make no choice is also a choice.
Even as we talk about the top choice, let us also tell you that Rhea’s brother Showik Chakraborty got bail in the drug case linked to Sushant’s death case, a full three months after he was sent to jail.
But the most important thing about the Yahoo data is that for the first time since 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wasn’t the most searched. While Sushant and Rhea topped Modi, Virat Kohli topped Sachin Tendulkar during the third India-Australia ODI. India went on to win the match by 13 runs even as they lost the ODI series 2-1.
Kohli, meanwhile, broke Tendulkar’s record as the fastest to score 12,000 ODI runs. Tendulkar reached the milestone during his 300th innings against Pakistan, while Kohli notched up the landmark in only his 242nd ODI innings - 58 innings less than what Tendulkar took. While there is no taking away from Kohli’s record, there is no denying that Tendulkar used to play way down the order when he started playing international cricket.
Tendulkar has retired but Kohli’s international career is on. Also on is the farmers’ protest against the farm laws. The farmers used the day to prepare a list of objections to the laws that the government asked for yesterday, for the next round of talks to be held tomorrow. Not all farmers were preparing the list so they are blocking highways and low ways, or whatever ways they can block. The blockades at Delhi borders have set vegetable prices, which were already soaring, to soar further. To break the blockades, the police continued to use water cannons and batons and tear gas shells. The combined impact: blockades continue.
On its part, the government continued meeting government to devise the next government strategy. We mean Union Home Minister Amit Shah met Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Piyush Goyal, who is a minister of many things, including food and public distribution, and was part of the meeting with the farmers yesterday.
A tweet by BJP's social media chief Amit Malviya on the farmers’s protest, meanwhile, has been flagged as ‘manipulated media’ by Twitter, which just got done flagging all of outgoing US President Donald Trump’s tweets.
Twitter's “manipulated media policy” says, “You may not deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm.”
Malviya, on his part, had tweeted a 'fact-check tweet' on Rahul Gandhi’s tweet that showed a cop swing a baton at a farmer. In response to this tweet, Malviya posted a “propaganda vs reality” tweet with a video of the same still.
So Twitter made it a “propaganda vs reality vs manipulation” tweet. Twitter belongs to Twitter and so only Twitter wins on Twitter. If you got to win, you got to make your own Twitter. Our unsolicited advice: Just don’t name it Tooter.
National Disaster Response Force is bracing for a cyclone that has been named Burevi. Who gave it the name? Maldives. Cyclone Burevi is likely to advance into the Gulf of Mannar early tomorrow morning and cross the coast of south Tamil Nadu on December 4. The cyclone is not expected to be a severe one, but then cyclones are known to beat expectations both by upping and lowering their intensity. So, IMD has put both Tamil Nadu and Kerala on high alert.
Many cyclones have scary names. Sometimes, they are scarier than the cyclone itself which does nothing beyond uprooting a few trees and causing strong winds. Burevi, not so. Burevi, in Dhivehi, means mangrove. What is Dhivehi? It is the language spoken in Maldives and is said to be Indo-Aryan in origin. Mangroves are found in abundance in Maldives. Whether Maldives named the cyclone thus to boost tourism or simply because it was the first word that came to the mind when asked to name the cyclone is not known, but Burevi, our Word Of The Day, is what mangroves are called in Maldvies.
From Maldives let’s come back to Lucknow, which is now in Bombay. Actually, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) has been listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Which means we can trade in LMC stocks.
UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath reached Mumbai yesterday to launch the stock today. But Yogi has bigger plans. He wants to invite Bollywood actors and filmmakers to make films in Noida Film City. Not in the one that exists. A new one which is being planned.
Back in UP, Yogi is considering withdrawing a scheme that incentivises inter-faith marriages. This comes after a law against love jihad, whatever that is. A Times Of India report says even Uttarakhand, Yogi’s hometown, is planning to go UP’s way. The debate over whether this is an interference in people’s lives or a bid to save lives of women is on and if you have no interest in this debate, you can find your escape in All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy.
We will leave you thinking about your life and the lives you never lived. There is also the Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives on Netflix that you can watch for a trip to Doha and a peek into places you may never be able to visit.
We will be back tomorrow.
Stay safe.
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