Waiting to receive Covid-19 vaccinations in Mumbai, India, on Monday. Credit...Divyakant Solanki/EPA, via Shutterstock A Global Disaster

"The current wave is particularly dangerous."

 "It is supremely contagious and those who are contracting it are not able to recover as swiftly. In these conditions, intensive care wards are in great demand."

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal

 

"[The world is entering a critical phase of the pandemic and needs to have vaccinations available for all adults as soon as possible]."

"This is both an ethical and public health imperative."

"As variants keep spreading, this pandemic is far from over until the whole world is safe."

Udaya Regmi, South Asia head, International Federation of Red Cross, Red Crescent Societies

 

"As India did that, [halting vaccine exports to retain supplies to inoculate its population], the pipeline of vaccines dried up for COVAX."

"I don't know who did the maths, but someone did the maths wrong."

"And the decision to go exclusively with the Serum Institute of India and not provide the license to more manufacturers has proved deadly for the developing world [in a shortage of vaccines for re-distrition]."

Leena Menghaney, Médecins Sans Frontières, New Delhi

 

"The ferocity of the second wave did take everyone by surprise."

"While we were all aware of second waves in other countries, we had vaccines at hand, and no indications from modeling exercises suggested the scale of the surge."

K. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific adviser to the Indian government

 

"The situation is horrible, absolutely terrible ... Everyone is afraid, every single person."

"People are afraid that if I am talking to a person, maybe I won't get to talk to them tomorrow or in the near future."

Manoj Garg, resident, New Delhi

AstraZeneca doses manufactured in India arriving in Kathmandu, Nepal, in January.  Credit...Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press

In January, when the Indian government appeared satisfied that it would be able to control the initial outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it enacted strict orders for its population to remain at home to venture so far and no further from their homes, and only for essential business. The infection rate in India's largest cities wasn't as disastrous as it might have been, given crowded living conditions and matters appeared to be well in hand. As one of the world's largest producers of vaccines, India also magnanimously began donating vaccines to its less-well-off neighbours.

It's a familiar scene; countries that succeeded in gaining a level of control over the global pandemic looked outside their borders at neighbours struggling to achieve what they did, and generously offered assistance. Some countries when China was in the throes of the first infections with the pathogen that originated in Wuhan, sent respirators, masks and anything else they had to give assistance, at a time when their own countries had not yet been engulfed by the fast-spreading virus that all too soon hit Europe and North America, sending Italy and Spain into a headspin.

Things have not proceeded well for India. To a good degree perhaps it was predictable; in fact India with its great population of 1.35 billion people was initially thought of as a potential tinderbox of opportunity for any threatening virus, and it seemed puzzling at first that it hadn't exploded into a firestorm of cases. It's almost as though the virus has a sense of dramatic timing, keeping the world in suspense, and then striking. It has struck India through a second venomous wave that seems unstoppable.

 

India is now experiencing what Italy did a year ago, in the shortage of hospital beds and medical oxygen. Italy became a symbol of the worst that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could inflict on humanity, but worse was to come when the U.S. and Brazil began their own epic struggles for survival against a beast of a virus. The world was given a hopeful boost of encouragement at early news that vaccines were in development, and then a vision of recovery as a handful of pharmaceutical manufacturers saw their products succeed in third level trials leading to approvals for mass inoculations.

 

Confidence was high for those countries with vaccine-producing facilities and the logistics of production and distribution and contract-signing proceeded apace. With India's own national vaccine producer on contract with AstraZeneca and the assurance that it could handle the demand for its product both at home and abroad. Now, however, for a week of succeeding days hundreds of thousands of new COVID cases have been logged for the world's second largest population. There are now 18 million in India infected with COVID-19.

 

Each day over 300,000 people test positive for the virus. The health facilities and crematoriums are working on overdrive and they are still being overwhelmed. On Wednesday alone, 360,960 new cases of COVID were tallied, horrifying India itself and the world around it, impelling other nations to begin sending relief to India, medical equipment, medical oxygen, respirators, personal protection equipment. The numbers are staggering, but according to experts these are not true numbers which are in fact, many times greater than the official tallies.

 

Yesterday alone, 3,293 Indians died of COVID-19. There is one death from COVID reported in Delhi state every four minutes. Ambulances convey bodies of COVID-19 victims to temporary crematorium facilities set up in public parks, parking lots and anywhere else they can be installed to relieve the pressure. Bodies are burned on funeral pyres set up in row after row. 

 

A mass cremation this week in New Delhi for people who died from the virus.  Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

In the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, Genesis hospital informs families they must take their family members elsewhere in view of its supplies of oxygen fast depleting. "The hospital is trying to get fresh oxygen but we are told we have to make alternative arrangements", stated Anjali Cerejo who must now attempt to find another bed elsewhere for her father who had been admitted to the hospital which now is unable to keep him as a patient. 

There is a burgeoning black market in operation however, where scarce supplies, including medical oxygen can be had at prices far, far in excess of what their usual rate is. For those who can afford those astronomical prices there may be a hope, but for the vast numbers of other afflicted people when the public hospitals and clinics are unable to respond, there is no hope. 

 

It is a scene of bedlam as people are lined up on trolleys, in cars and rickshaws with their family members holding oxygen cylinders for them, desperately awaiting an empty bed in the hospital.

India, according to the World Health Organization's weekly epidemiological update, accounts for 38 percent of the 5.7 million cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide last week. The B.1.617 variant of the virus that surfaced in India has a higher growth rate than other variants in the country, according to early modelling, suggesting increased transmissibility. 

India's best hope lies in vaccinating its vast population, in experts' opinion. Registrations were open for everyone in the population above age 18 to be vaccinated. Ironically and tragically, the world's biggest producer of vaccines is vastly short of stocks to inoculate the estimated 600 million people now eligible, added to the efforts to inoculate India's elderly, and those with other compromising medical conditions.

Several states in India have reported a shortage of coronavirus vaccine doses. AP Photo: Rafiq Maqbool

"I think the highest priority, you know, to be quite frank, has to be India."

"I mean, their situation is so desperate and the cases continue to rise [validating the decision to retain vaccines produced in India to be used in India]."

"This is a crisis now at a global level [but countries in Africa awaiting doses supplied to COVAX by India must wait]."

Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist, Columbia University 

The Serum Institute in Pune, India, is the world's largest vaccine maker. Supplied: The Serum Institute

China: Energy Use and Climate Show-and-Tell

The closing meeting of the fourth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 11, 2021. Leaders of the Communist Party of China and the state Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, Han Zheng and Wang Qishan attended the meeting, and Li Zhanshu presided over the closing meeting and delivered a speech. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

 

"One of the main constraining factors in China’s quest to raise living standards, modernize, and become a major world power has been a persistent shortage of energy."

"Energy shortages have greatly hindered the industrial, agricultural and social development of China."

Elspeth Thomson, economic historian

 

"The discovery and development of the supergiant Daqing and Shengli oilfields in the 1960s briefly promised to end the country’s heavy reliance on coal, and even turn China into a major oil exporter."

"By the late 1980s, however, production from Daqing and Shengli was peaking, and no further readily exploitable major discoveries had been made, forcing a renewed focus on coal."

"In 1993, China turned into a net oil importer as domestic consumption outstripped domestic production, and the gap has grown steadily since."

"China had become the largest importer in the world by 2019, importing more than 10 million barrels per day, and relying on imports to meet almost 75% of its consumption".

"For similar reasons, China has also become one of the world’s largest natural gas importers, relying on imports to meet more than 40% of its domestic needs."

"The problems with relying on coal as the primary source of energy have been well understood by Chinese and international policymakers since at least the 1980s".

"Moving huge volumes of unwashed and unprocessed coal from mines to power plants has put immense pressure on the country’s rail network and periodically contributed to congestion."

"Coal’s contribution to urban air pollution, acid rain, and climate change was extensively analyzed in a landmark report on 'China: Long-Term Development Issues and Options' published by the World Bank in 1985."

John Kemp, Reuters market analyst

"China’s coal activities remain a large concern and are inconsistent with the Paris Agreement. It would need to phase out coal before 2040 under 1.5˚C compatible pathways, but it appears to be going in the opposite direction. After lifting a previous construction ban on new coal plants in 2018, China has rolled back policies restricting new coal plant permitting in each of the last three years. By mid-2020 China had permitted more new coal plant capacity than in 2018 and 2019 combined, bringing its total coal capacity in the pipeline to 250 GW, and brought 10 GW of new plants online. China is going against the global shift away from coal and now possesses roughly half of the world’s coal power capacity as well as coal-fired power plants in development."

Climate Action Tracker

photovoltaic panels lined up in the rising sun in Shangzhang township, Xianju county, Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, China.- Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images) 

The West, fully invested in Climate Change and the need by governments worldwide to pledge to reduce their carbon emissions in aid of fostering a healthier environment and off-setting rising emissions leading to weather patterns that threaten world stability, looks to China, the world's largest emitter by far of carbon dioxide emissions to make good on its pledges in a collaborative effort to firm up commitments in the greater interests of saving the planet.

 

China has made promises and been happy to make some strides in public relations moves to demonstrate its sincerity in pledging its commitment to effecting a reversal of its colossal emissions in a common strategy to fight climate change. What it has also cagily offered is negotiations of a sort whereby the West will put a rein on its human rights charges in exchange for good news from Beijing on its climate/energy intentions.

 

Prepared to make firmer commitments as long as trade sanctions targeting Xinjiang Province and the slanderous charges of genocide against the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs commences to its satisfaction because after all, Beijing is as committed to battling climate change, cleaning up the environment, as it is to upholding human rights as a highly principled government. So, thus the choice, pull back on sanctions for the compliance so urgently needed with China buying in to climate pledges.

 

That does create a bit of a dilemma for Beijing, one that it prefers to keep close to its vest. Since China has strategic objectives to meet, and it cannot reach those goals by decreasing its C02 emissions, simple as that. The gargantuan consumer production behemoth that has cornered the world market in inexpensive and wide-ranging product manufacturing cannot continue to uphold its commitment to remaining the world's premier factory-linked shipper without vast stores of energy.

 

It is hugely dependent on foreign oil and gas sources and its National Development and Reform Commission is tasked with ensuring that those energy supplies continue unobstructed by do-good environmental pledges. The National People's Congress heard from the National Development and
Reform Commission in its 2020 annual report pledging to "ensure energy security" to "improve our contingency plans in response to major changes in supply and demand at home and abroad".

 

Xi Jinping,  Congress, Great Hall of the People,  Japan Times

 

March 5 saw the current year's report delivered to the People's Congress giving short shrift to climate change and promising weak commitments to decarbonization. The priority was securing energy supplies, and to "boost oil and gas exploration and development" while "systematically increas[ing] our ability to ensure the supply of coal". The huge smoke stacks adjacent every manufacturing plant throughout China are going nowhere.

The international community of sport enthusiasts may or may not recall the Beijing Olympics where it was necessary to order production facilities to shut down for days in hopes of clearing the air of effluent and making for some reasonable visibility in view of the constant yellow 'fog' that obscures normal sightlines in the metropolis and entirely reflective of the dismal air quality in China's many megalopolises, home to much of its 1.4 billion population.

China's foreign oil dependence reached 50 percent for the first time, in 2008, and by last year it had reached 73 percent dependence. China's oil imports increased by 7.3 percent in 2020 while its domestic production rose merely 1.6 percent; self-sufficiency its goal but hardly achievable as its energy need continues to rise exponentially in lock-step with the Chinese Communist Party's drive for world domination in production, communication, technology and AI inventiveness. 

What really concerns China is that its oil and gas imports mostly must make it through the South China Sea, the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca, connecting the Indian Ocean to the Pacific to transit China's imported oil. Sea lanes in the control of other states vexes China. The prospect of potential conflicts with Taiwan, Japan, India, even the United States cause for concern. The Suez Canal blockage served as a urgent reminder to China to guarantee its energy-derived security.

Militarization of the South China Seas where the world's largest navy patrols, to protect oil and gas tanker routes into China. Claims of its ownership of disputed areas with its neighbours encompassing, land, sea and air all play in to China's concern over its undisputed future destiny as a world giant in influence and control of the global community. 

From Turkmenistan to Xinjiang, overland oil and gas routes from Russia and Burma, China aggressively develops assurances of energy provision. Oh, and from Iran too, of course, helping it through its own sanctions. And its most secure and dependable energy source? Why, coal, of course, dredging coal out of its very own mines and financing and installing new coal mines abroad. Coal which still accounts for a massive share of China's energy consumption.

China's gigawatt power of new coal-fired installations represents over three times the new capacity built in the entire rest of the world, with another 247 gigawatts planned or in development. The proposed additional coal plants represent 73.5 gigawatts of power, fully five times what the rest of the world combined proposes. But then, a superpower not quite oblivious to the concerns of its critics for the most part, expertly plays the game of 'we're with you' on climate change.

 

 

Brainy Battlefield Weaponry, IAI

 

The AI ‘super-brain’ will use an array of high-powered sensors to help tanks and robots patrol battlefields and find enemy targets

"We are not very far from the basic level of getting an automatic awareness picture [of the battlefield]."

"If you ask me [when it will happen], at the end of 2021. I think with 90 percent accuracy that the answer is positive."

Colonel Eli Birenbaum, head, IDF military architecture department

"Ethics is 100 per cent at the heart of what we’re doing. We have a legal and ethical framework that got written and developed with the best ethicists and moral philosophy in the world, [and] which was developed before we coded any algorithms for the project."

"If we want this system to actually sit [with] someone who can use this in combat, what does it need to do? What does it legally have to do? And, then what, ethically, do we want it to do?:

"I had thoughts about conflict experience. I knew at a minimal level that [ethics] are very important. And, then the Trusted Autonomous Systems Defence Cooperative Research Centre [TASDCRC] had a parallel research program led by UNSW where they had an emphasis on looking at certain ethics problems associated with AI. Trusted Autonomous Systems have a significant research program underway where they had an emphasis on both ethics and law associated with AI."

?This is currently being refocused as an ethics uplift program and guided by a recent Defence report, A Method for Ethical AI in Defence. And they were interested in really good use cases that they can actually apply their ethics theory to products."

"We identified that there were a large number of casualties that were from friendly fire in conflict. There were a number of individual cases where there were large amounts of collateral damage in both Afghanistan and Iraq. There was a fuel tanker incident in Afghanistan where 200 civilians were killed. There was a case involving an AC-130 where 60 civilians were targeted by gunship at a hospital."

"We understood based on conflict there were a lot of flaws with [human decision-making], and the consequences were really bad. We sort of said, ‘Well, how can we use autonomous vision systems to help a human take that tactical pause and actually look at the situation and have something else help them look at the situation, so they can make a better-informed decision'?"

"We had a small background using vision-based artificial intelligence for drones, but not in terms of how we can exploit that artificial intelligence to achieve a better outcome." 

"That’s a person. That’s a child. That person’s got a gun. That person’s got a Red Cross. We actually go through a variety of scenarios and we are consistently looking based on our data set and our use cases: what is the best network to run in a given situation? Sometimes it’s a hybrid of two different techniques, because they want the best of both worlds in some instances — speed and accuracy of the AI."

"How you can ensure that your data is very well validated and very well represented. And then, the third aspect is ensuring that you are using the best algorithms or techniques possible for the vision-based protection."

"About five PhDs, and 10 years of development expertise have supported the project. There’s three things that are super important to our product. One is the accuracy of our vision-based AI — that we are at the edge with the best possible products. And, then once we run it through one network, we cross check it against another network as well. And, this all happens behind the scenes."

"You have to train the network with really good data that’s well-balanced and unbiased."

Stephen Bornstein, CPEng, Israel Aerospace Industries

Athena's AI software classifies a vast array of battlefield objects

 Israeli advanced technology is in the process of developing an AI "super-brain", using an array of high-powered sensors to help guide tanks and robots in their patrol of battlefields and to pinpoint enemy targets. The project has named its artificial intelligence Athena, after the Greek Goddess known for association with the attributes of wisdom, with handicraft, and with warfare. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is in the early stages of development of a program that could be deployed within the space of a future decade.

 

Imbuing robots and military tanks and other equipment with a "brain" to function at a powerful speed in detection and decision-making that no human brain can match. A recent demonstration took place as an instructional tool and public relations gambit of the use by tanks in a combat scenario of this specialized "brain". Israel Carmel tanks were fitted with the AI, the size of a smart-phone, which collected data gleaned from infrared and radar sensors, to tag enemy fighters deep underground and within battlefield buildings.

 

 

 

It took but an instant for the data to be beamed to the commanding officer, then tansformed into a "battle menu", offering the most efficacious methodology of attacking the identified targets. The tanks' fire control and manoeuvre systems can also plug into the Athena brain permitting targets to be attacked automatically. There is also the option available for the commanding officer to produce the final decision on how to proceed, overriding the AI's instant automation attack mode and re-directing it as needed.

 

Athena's AI software classifies a vast array of battlefield objects

IAI is Israel's state-owned defence firm. It is considering fitting the Athena to robotic vehicles which could automatically patrol border fences, searching for intruders. AI defence systems are anticipated to enable Israel's armies to become more efficient, since the machines have the capacity to analyze a battlefield, generating a tactical battle plan far more expeditiously than a human mind is capable of doing.

The Israel Defence Forces are exploring AI warfare through its senior officers' involvement; some aspects of the technology could be usable for real-world situations as early as next year, according to Colonel Birenbaum, head, IDF military architecture department. What the Athena device represents is one of a number of "AI weapons" now in development around the world; which are rarely discussed in public as a matter of national security.

Fitted here on a surplus M-113, Elta’s CARMEL solution fuses several operationally proven ELTA products managed by Athena, an autonomous C6I and combat management system, and can be fitted to any armored vehicle of comparable size. (IAI photo)

"There is a bit of an arms race underway between the U.S. and China, while the Russians are also doing a lot of experiments, but are quite a bit further behind", Dr.Jack Watling, an expert on land warfare at the Rusi defence think tank in London, noted. "It is realistic, and very much available, but not necessarily deployable. And this is partly because militaries are not necessarily sure of the ramifications of using it."

In the U.S., military cadets are programming tanks with algorithms in practise sessions, where balloons are popped, the balloons representing enemy soldiers. Last November the head of the British armed forces speculated that "robot soldiers could represent as much as a quarter of the military", by the time 2030 rolls around. The rumour is that Israel made use of an AI-powered machine gun last year to assassinate one of Iran's top nuclear scientists.

Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of Iran's nuclear program, was killed, reportedly, by a satellite-controlled machine gun with artificial intelligence used to target him specifically. Seated beside him in the vehicle where he was killed was his wife, who was untouched, emphasizing the split-precision capability of the AI-guided gun. 

 

The Iranian authorities have put out conflicting accounts of how the scientist was killed   Reuters

Silent No More!

 

"The recent legal ruling in France sets a dangerous precedent that murderous anti–Semitism can go unpunished. It is a shocking blow not only to the family of Sarah Halimi and to French Jews, but to anyone who cares deeply about combating racism, anti–Semitism and intolerance. It must not go unchallenged."

"By bringing our voices together and speaking in one unified voice, we can make a powerful statement to the world that anti–Semitism will not be excused or tolerated."

Sacha Roytman-Dratwa, director, Combat Anti–Semitism Movement

 

"Sarah Halimi was murdered for clearly anti-Semitic motivations, for the sole reason that she was a Jew."

"This was a despicable murder that harmed not only the victim herself and her family, but also the entire Jewish community’s sense of security."

"The way to confront anti-Semitism is through education, zero tolerance, and heavy punishment.This is not the message that the court’s ruling conveys."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Hayat

 

"It’s not for me to comment on a court ecision, but I would like to express to the family, to the relatives of the victim, and to all our Jewish citizens who were waiting for a trial, my warm support and the Republic’s determination to protect them."

"[France] does not judge citizens who are sick, we treat them… But deciding to take drugs and then ‘going crazy’ should not, in my opinion, take away your criminal responsibility."

"I would like Justice Minister [Eric Dupond-Moretti] to present a change in the law as soon as possible."

French President Emmanuel Macron

Justice for Sarah Halimi placards, April 2021 (Crédit : Consistoire israélite du Haut-Rhin)

"It comes from a very good, honourable place of not wanting to overgeneralize, but sometimes it can go too far."

"What’s a fair critique is that mainstream politicians have not figured out a genuine way to address, aside from security measures, the legitimate problem of anti-Semitism in France today – including in certain areas of France’s Muslim population."

Ethan Katz, history of Jewish-Muslim relations in France, professor of history, University of Cincinnati

There has always been an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in France, the European country that has hosted Jews for over a thousand years. Until recently, French Jews lived in a country that claimed to value its Jewish population, where fifty percent of Europe's Jews lived, a half-million, after the Holocaust years. The current atmosphere is of a growing narrative and reality of a “nouvelle antisémitisme” emanating from within the nation’s Arabo-Muslim population (~5.7 million, or 8.8% of the total French population), characterized by hostility at best, violent, public attacks in the worst-case scenarios.  

Tensions between Muslim and Jewish groups in France are not of Jewish making, but arise from a deep sense of Islamist hostility to the presence of Jews -- anywhere, overlapping the rage over the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. The situation is historically problematic. Traoré’s murder of Sarah Halimi results from this history.  The French court and court-appointed psychiatrists saw fit to overlook this history, the vicious antagonism emanating from some portions of the Muslim-French community toward French Jews. 

The court preferred, in its secular wisdom, to make use of a centuries-old idea in France linking cannabis consumption to high rates of insanity and violent criminality among Muslims to 'understand' and excuse the anti-Semitic criminality of the torture and murder of Sarah Halimi, a defenceless, elderly Jewish woman who lived alone and was vulnerable to the religion-inspired hatred of her 27-year-old neighbour, a man who had a violent criminal record, and was intent on satisfying his urge to kill a Jew, and chose the most convenient one available to him.

Years after her suffering through a vicious beating that broke every bone in her face, before her assailant threw her over the balcony of her appartment to her death, the French court rendered its official opinions on Traoré’s sanity and deliberately perceived criminal culpability. Originally, François Molins, prosecutor in Paris’s second district, had stated the attack did not constitute an anti-Semitic hate crime, declaring Traoré unfit for trial as a result of an acute episode of cannabis-induced psychosis; the die was cast.

What is the value of a human life? A gentle, elderly Orthodox Jewish woman who is also a physician and a teacher is murdered by an inveterate criminal addicted to a huge daily intake of a psychotropic substance further fuelling his hatred of a religion and ethnicity that has been the occasion in the past of his issuing threats against her. When he was finally realizing his cherished goal of murdering her, he exulted "Allahu Akbar!", and as he beat her mercilessly he chanted chapters from the Koran.

An initial psychiatric evaluation by psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Zagury reported: “Today, it is common to observe, during delusional outbreaks…in subjects of the Muslim religion, an anti-Semitic theme: The Jew is on the side of evil, of the devil. What is usually a prejudice turns into delusional hatred.” He concluded that Traoré’s murder of Sarah Halimi "constituted a delusional if anti-Semitic act." In the years since then, nothing much has changed; the original conclusions remained and fed the response of the court.

People gather to ask justice for late Sarah Halimi on Trocadero plaza in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris [Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP]

Since Sarah Halimi's murder, quite a few French Jews decided France no longer afforded them the security it guaranteed for its citizens, and have moved elsewhere, many to Israel. France no longer ranks as the country with the third-largest Jewish population in the world after Israel and the United States. A recent report of a survey of eleven European countries found France to be identified as the most dangerous place in Europe for Jews. 

"The derailment inflicted by the high court is revolting."

"Indeed, we live in a country, France, where a man who throws his dog from his fourth floor is sentenced to a year in prison, whereas if he murders an old Jewish woman, he may face no consequences whatever."

Jewish French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy

Re-Opening Precipitately? Look at India

"I think the problem is that what we are seeing is that this idea of herd immunity is messy."

"Whether we're talking about a single mutant or double mutant or triple mutant, we're seeing quite a few different mutations." 

"The real question for us is figuring out, as quickly as possible, with India, what does this variant mean? Is there a correlation between B.1.617 and the crisis that they're in right now [does it have enhanced properties?} For Canadians, that's the information we need to know."

What does it tell us from our own personal standpoint? It tells us we are still dealing with the same virus.We've got to be vigilant with that stuff if we don't want to see this new variant, or any other variant, transmitting widely through our community. Because once it hits a tipping point, we can't stop it in its tracks."

Jason Kindrachuk, virologist, University of Manitoba

"[Following the first wave in India the numbers started nose-diving early in the New Year], and everybody started celebrating, declaring success, that 'we're out of the woods'."

"And we thought a good proportion of Indians would have gotten naturally infected last year and would have antibodies, and then vaccination started."

"And then the Indian government, in its wisdom, opened up in a hurry. No social distancing [as millions attended religious festivals and super-spreader political rallies], masking went down, public health measures were relaxed and testing went down."

"And then we started to see the number climb again. You've seen the graph, right? It looks like a rocket going up. I've never seen anything like it."

Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada Research Chair in epidemiology and global health, McGill University

Paramedics wearing protective equipment wheel a patient into the emergency department at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

 

A directive was issued to hospitals in Ontario in April that non-urgent care in the operating room must cease. Surgeons, nurses and anesthetists should be prepared to redeploy to the COVID wards and the ICU. Triage meetings have become regular events to discuss which of the cases presenting must be sent to the operating room and which patient appears on the brink of permanent or irreparable harm, and that person must then wait -- 'declined'. This is called the reality response to a desperate situation.

India's catastrophic COVID-19 wave has brought with it a dire situation with doctors sending out SOS messages pleading for oxygen. It is where opportunistic variants are now beginning to spread widely in Canada, causing great alarm, but in comparison to the situation in India, a mere ripple as opposed to that nation's riptide of illness. On a number of recent consecutive days India has posted unbelievably huge single daily COVID caseloads such as 332,730 cases and 2,263 deaths. Daily. Mind-boggling.

New Delhi, the nation's capital, is riddled through with COVID cases and they continue to rise. "If we open up everything, give up on public health and not vaccinate rapidly the new variants can be devastating", warned Dr. Madhukar Pai of McGill University. It is as yet unknown whether India's growing caseload owes to new infections or how much reinfection is involved. Studies out of Manaus in Brazil suggest that up to half the population in some of India's largest cities had been infected previously in the first wave, resulting in a fairly high immunity in the population.

Only now has Canada officially closed the air corridor for a month for direct-passenger flights from India and Pakistan to enter Canada. Too late, unfortunately, to prevent a new 'double mutant' from arriving. The B.1.617 variant has already been identified in British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta. "Variants of concern" now account for over half of confirmed COVID-19 infections in Canada, Friday's new modelling confirm.

In the Greater Toronto Area patient transfers are increasing, COVID patients being sent to other, less-crowded hospitals in Ontario to relieve some Toronto hospitals briefly, before even more patients arrive, as anticipated. Pregnant women are now being over-represented in Toronto hospitals with COVID, populating ICUs, requiring emergency C-sections. A new phenomenon has arisen where an average of two people a day die at home, becoming critically ill so suddenly there is no opportunity for them to arrive at a hospital.

 

Despite the Covid-19 surge, crowds have been allowed to gather for Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, India. Photograph: Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

 

Word of a "triple mutant" virus detected now in India has turned the heads of virologists and infectious disease specialists. There is speculation, but no hard data available, about how these variants behave together, or on the background of other mutations. The variants all carry an alphanumeric soup of mutations, some more threatening than others. B.1.617 is imbued with several mutations shared by other variants shown to have a measure of antigenic escape; in other words the capacity of a virus to evade its host's immune system.

The situation is so grave it is imperative that vaccinations be sped up by all necessary means. Complicated by the reality that vaccines are in short supply, thanks to the incompetence of the federal government that chose early on to do business with China, until that fell through and vaccines had to be sourced elsewhere, late in the game, through more infinitely reliable venues. Masking, distancing and all other infection prevention control measures continue to be in mind of everyone in an effort to control as much as possible, the trajectory of the coronavirus surge.

 

A patient with breathing problems is seen inside a car while waiting to enter a COVID-19 hospital for treatment   Reuters

 

Deaths are known to be under-reported in India, with infections likelier to reflect three million per day, than the official tallies. Space to cremate people is no longer so readily accommodated; there are simply too many to deal with. The vaccination programs are not proceeding as speedily as they should. Vaccine production in India has run into difficulties with the emergence of a scarcity of supplies for which they have turned to the U.S. to expedite the materials needed, held there in greater abundance. India is no longer releasing vaccines outside their interior emergency, and the U.S. is reluctant to release materials they may themselves need. A deadly spiral.

Entire families are becoming ill, the young being infected along with all others in India, and similar reports are beginning to come out of Ontario, with entire families arriving at hospitals with COVID. People in their 30s or 20s in intensive care. Natural acquired immunity may not be adequate in protecting from the new variants, Dr. Pai worries. "But we really need to see this as a global problem. If you have fires raging in India, or Brazil, or somewhere else next month, we will never get out of these pandemic cycles."

A mass cremation of victims who died due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is seen at a crematorium ground in New Delhi   Reuters