Covid-19: India must be doing something right, even if most don’t acknowledge it!

Posted on July 18, 2020 by Sunil Rajguru

While there has either been less or inconsistent testing and some fudging of data here and there, one thing you simply cannot hide is Covid-19 deaths. They may even have been jacked up due to co-morbidities. Billionaire Elon Musk joked on the Joe Rogan Show that if a man got eaten by a shark and they recovered his hand and it tested positive, it would be put down as a Covid death. A recent US motorcycle accident death was indeed put down as a Covid death.

That way India has a population of 1.35 billion is still not a fully developed country with an inadequate healthcare system with problems of general indiscipline among the general population and also problems of awareness, especially in the rural areas. Then there’s the fact that everyone in the world in their lifetime will either catch the flu or cold or some sort of Coronavirus. No matter what you do, billions will eventually catch Covid-19. What exactly is flattening the curve? The Smallpox and Polio viruses have been around for thousands of years before they came under fully control. Every curve eventually goes flat. What is the correct time frame to know you’ve done well and beaten the worst-case scenario?

There’s no point really focusing on number of cases, number of tests and the like. China is the largest population in the world but we will never get the exact statistics beyond the Bamboo Curtain. So no matter what we do, no matter how well we manage, India may still emerge as the country with the most official Covid-19 cases.

There’s one statistic that is probably the most important and the least discussed.

Deaths… Per… Million…

That is the true nature of how we are doing because Covid deaths may be boosted up but very difficult to hide and the “per million” part equalizes all countries. How does India fare with regard to that? As of the time of writing this article San Marino has the highest rate but let’s discount that due to the fact that it is so small. At No. 2 is Belgium at 845 deaths per million. Strange that there is so little talk in the media about that!

Where does India feature? At 100th position with 19 deaths per million! So in that case, 99 countries are worse off than us. It was reported that the first Covid-19 case was in November 2019, even though it was confirmed in December. There was talk of some people flying into India January 2020 end and it really became a talking point in February. Now it’s mid-July and we are still doing better than 90+ other countries.

Who knows what will happen next month, but it seems under control as of now. Plus all of India is not affected equally but there are a few dozen hotspots all over India only and the rest of the country is doing much better than most parts of the world. So what’s the reason? Did we conduct the first lockdown at exactly the right time? Is it genetics? Is it climate? Is it geography? Is it a weaker strain? Is it luck?

Either way India seems to have escaped the full wrath of Covid in the first half of 2020. Let’s see what happens in the second half.

10 tectonic shifts that the
Covid-19 pandemic will facilitate

Posted on April 16, 2020 by Sunil Rajguru

1. The Slow Disengagement of China.

China is not going to collapse overnight. It is too powerful for that. But now you have to totally discount the mega growth that it was due for in the upcoming decades. The biggest issue is trust. You simply can’t believe China anymore over the pandemic that has totally shut down the world. Had they been honest from the beginning, they could have saved the whole world some blushes. China has been the supply chain of the world. Now that chain has been disrupted and countries will be forced to look locally or elsewhere for alternatives. Either way China will be the biggest loser. This comes right after the US trade war where China was already suffering.

2. The Fall of the European Union.

Brexit happened in 2016, but it dragged on till 2019 when the inevitable finally happened. Let’s say the EU cracked before the Covid-19 crisis. Now those cracks are wider. Open borders is highly unpopular. Forget the migrants outside the EU: The European countries are wary of even opening their borders with each other. The EU is supposed to work together and take all decisions together. But when faced with the biggest crisis of recent times, each constituent of the EU believes in doing its own and is acting accordingly. Will we have Brexit style movements in the 2020s?

3. The Irrelevance of UN-WHO.

The World Health Organization covered itself with egg when it first hinted that there was no harm in travelling to Wuhan or that masks were not important. Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso ranted that the WHO should be renamed Chinese Health Organization. US President Donald Trump has been against both the United Nations and WHO and is stopping funding for the latter. In the 2010s these global organizations saw a steady decline and the 2020s look more ominous.

4. The Decline of Globalism.

Go local is the mantra of 2020. That may well extend into the 2020s and beyond. Nationalism was on the rise in the 2010s. Apart from the ideologies, the global supply chain has proved to be a big pain. Every country will want to make its own closed supply chain based on essentials. Ideologically and practically nationalism seems to be gaining ground over globalism. We will see more of Make in _____ (whichever country you belong to) campaigns.

5. The End of Marxism.

UN and EU. Global trade treaties and power groups. Open borders. These are all Leftist ideologies which were on the decline but will decline further. Leftist parties like India’s Congress, UK’s Labour and America’s Democrats are in decay. The 2010s saw one of the best decades in ages for the Rightist parties and they will cement themselves further in the 2020s. The Leftist mainstream media continues its decline. The Leftist universities see its students weighed under the burden of student debt and defaults. They had been challenged by online education, which will grow stronger.

6. The Rise of India.

China was already been weighed down by an ageing population and the trade war with US when this happened. China’s loss is certain to be India’s gain. Only India has the size, population and potential to take over from China. By 2030, India will displace China as the country with the largest working population. The US-India ties will do well in things like technology. Recently India eased its Hydroxychloroquine exports and in return the US FDA granted concessions. In the 2010s India has made great strides in power, LPG, toilet connections, bank accounts and roads. This infrastructure burst will bode well for the 2020s.

7. The Rise of Work From Home.

WFH has been around for ages, but companies have been cautious in expanding it as much as possible and many employees also have been wary. 2020 has pushed everyone to the limit. The IT industry has gone out of its way to expand WFH infrastructure. Not everyone is going to return to office. Many people and many organizations will realize how many posts can be permanently WFHed. Collaboration tools will proliferate and the industry will flourish. Corporate foreign travel will reduce.

8. The Decline of Large Gatherings.

We already had hundreds of types of cold and flu viruses in the last century. Then we had Bird Flu, Swine Flu, SARS and MERS. Covid-19 is also called SARS 2 by some experts. We may have frequent pandemic alerts and frequent lockdowns. Initially technology will facilitate that and then it will become a permanent part of the fixture. Large gatherings will always be under a cloud. Some airlines will go bankrupt. Many planes will be lying idle: That’s not an ideal situation in terms of maintenance. Overall the airline industry may see a sea change. This will severely impact the travel-tourism industry, including buses and trains.

9. The Rise of Virtual Sports

After World War 2 there have been 18 Olympics which have been held like clockwork every 4 years. 2020 will be the first leap year not to feature an Olympics. They have been postponed to 2021. What happens if there’s another pandemic scare next year? We could have our first cancellation since WW2. The IPL went strong from 2008-19 but there will be no IPL this year. Team India last played a cricket match on February 29, 2020. Nobody knows when the next match will be. But the world needs to watch sports. With drone fighter planes, teenagers can do better than seasoned veterans. Will the same thing happen in sports? Or will the likes of Virat Kohli participate in virtual sports to stay relevant?

10. The Push for Multiple Emerging Tech.

As mentioned above, collaboration tools have really taken off. If offices are spread out and WFH is now a new office, then data centres and cloud operations will become larger. No touch tech like drones, robots and driverless cars will get a fillip. People were wary of touching paper notes lest they were infected: Now that can’t happen with cryptocurrency can it? Dark/lights out (people less) factories will be promoted. Companies will want to do lesser with humans and promote Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Robotic Process Automation and IoT (Internet of Things). Consumer Internet is booming with its delivery networks. Augmented Reality-Virtual Reality-Mixed Reality has the power to replace offline education techniques, training, tourism and entertainment. Silicon Valley billionaires talk of the Singularity where man will merge with AI to gain immortality. With our mortality starkly in question during Covid-19, that concept will also gain ground.

8 lethal costs of 2020’s
Covid-19 lockdown

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Sunil Rajguru

1. Physical Health: As it is in today’s lifestyle we sit by the desk all day and stare at the screen continuously. We get less exercise. Now a lot of people in strict areas are unable to go for morning and evening walks altogether. What about those living in packed apartments and short of fresh air? What about people having minor ailments which may become major ones by the time the lockdown finally ends? Everyone is not cut out for doing intense household chores and that may lead to both a physical and mental strain.

2. Mental Health: Everyone is not suited to work at home. People like going to office and gossiping and attending meetings to break the monotony. Forget extroverts, even the average person likes going out and meeting people. What about cinema halls, malls, plays and the like? People like going on vacations for a change of scenery. Now the scenery is the same day in and day out. Then there’s the issue of being packed with the family all day and that does not suit everyone. There will be a great toll on mental health.

3. The poor: The middle class survives no matter what. It is the poor who are always hit the hardest. They suffer in normal times. They suffer even more in abnormal times. They cannot work from home. Labourers, construction and low wage workers, small farmers and mainly daily wage earners who have no savings have it bad. In many areas they are finding it difficult to even procure the basic goods: This even as it was announced recently that the world removed record people out of poverty in the 2010s. The clock has been set back for many of them. Migrant workers stranded far from home face further uncertainties.

4. Small businesses: Many of them do not have deep credit resources and small factories are losing out a lot by being shut. These businesses survive on a month to month basis and cannot afford to pay their workers regularly if there is no work being done. Even after the lockdown is over, new business is uncertain.

5. Supply chain disruptions: Global supply chains have been disrupted. Nationals ones have too. Many trucks have been abandoned along the highway. At the lower levels many workers have simply gone home. It’s going to be difficult to start certain supply chains during the lockdown and others even after. Global supply chains will be hit for the entirety of 2020.

6. Wastage: We don’t have hands to get all the crops from the fields, to distribute them to the mandis and get them out of the large godowns. While non-perishables can stay for months and some even for years, perishables will simply go bad. Even in the best of years there is a lot of wastage and now that will only go up during the lockdown.

7. Life disruptions: If you are in a stable working job, you can still manage and work from home. What if you had just quit or was on the verge of joining and now couldn’t? What if you were about to get married or pregnant? What if you were about to emigrate? If you were not planning changes in 2020, then you can manage, but what if you were bang in the middle of something life changing? Now that’s some disruption to your life.

8. Students: Final exams got cancelled. Entrance exams got cancelled. Admissions have got postponed. For students it could have not have come at a worse time towards the end of the academic year. As it is there is enough pressure on the students of today and now add uncertainty to the mix.

The 10 deadly Corona Truths

Posted on March 31, 2020 by Sunil Rajguru

#1 School was created not to educate children, but because parents can’t handle their children sitting at home all day, picking their brains to nothingness and demanding food on the hour every hour and generally getting on their nerves.

#2 Nuclear family is not suited for the modern age. We would all rather jump into our mobile screens and be blissful and alone.

#3 Collaboration tools are enough to run most departments and do meetings, make plans and discuss important things. International travel is way over-rated. We can do without the airlines industry.

#4 There are essential services and certain stuff where presence on the ground is required. Everything else can be simply WFHed, maybe to the tune of billions.

#5 Netflix, Amazon Prime & OTT rules when you have tonnes of work.
Netflix, Amazon Prime & OTT rules when you have absolutely nothing to do.

#6 You get that sinking feeling that you really maybe be redundant one day. A combination of AI, ML, drones, driverless cars, robots and Robotic Process Automation can take over the world. Maybe Hollywood wasn’t wrong after all.

#7 The chief enemy of mankind is not disease or inequality, but boredom. We all need to just pass time, no matter how productive or unproductive it is. Boredom can kill in the long run.

#8 We can do much more with less. And we can even prosper doing it.

#9 There is no concrete civilization, absolute truth or settled life. It can all come crashing down with the click of a finger.

#10 The rich don’t care. They have it really good. The middle class can survive anything. It is always the lower classes that suffer in normal times and abnormal times.

8 shifting goal posts of the Mueller probe

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Sunil Rajguru

Everyone knew the Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin Russian collusion theory was 100% fake and everyone knew that the Mueller probe that looked into it would probably yield nothing. But still there was such tremendous hype round it. Why?

The simple reason was that this was all a witch hunt and Trump haters were clutching at straws because they were drowning in the tears produced by the loss of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential polls. Marxists (Socialists + Liberals + intellectuals etc) have a habit of shifting goalposts.

When they don’t score, as they usually haven’t been doing in the 2010s, they simply shift the goal posts and claim victory. However in this particular case, they were so off target that all the multiple goal posts missed.

Here is a list of traps that the Trump haters set for the current US President…

1. He would be a lame duck President.

That was their first goal. They hope that he would be unable to function from Day 1. They hoped he wouldn’t be able to function in Washington DC and be consumed by the swamp. Trump may be a billionaire with decades with experience, but this was his first political job.

At that time even the Republican leadership abhorred him and the Democrats thought that they would get together and neutralize him via the Mueller probe which wouldn’t let him function.

2. He would resign in frustration.

If the above played out, then Trump would be totally frustrated at having no work done. On top of that Mueller would always be hanging above him like a Damocles Sword and he might wonder: What if the special counsel fixed him over some bogus charge? Might not it be better to just quit and leave? Then his Vice President Mike Pence would take over who would also be attacked 24X7 and that would clear the decks for a Democratic President in 2020.

3. He would sack Mueller and be charged for obstruction.

Trump is one of the smartest guys around and he would have fully understood the above. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to just sack Mueller? Then the Democrats would charge him for obstruction of justice. The charges and attacks would just seamlessly shift from collusion to obstruction.

That is why they went after his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions could well have sacked Mueller and taken the heat on himself. But he was virulently attacked and forced to recuse himself so that the Mueller sacking would solely be on Trump and the obstruction narrative could move forward.

4. He would enter a perjury trap.

Mueller kept trying to get Trump into a room and grill him. Trump wisely got out of such a situation. Mueller would have asked him as many questions as he could and had anything that technically could be a lie would have been called that.

If collusion and obstruction fails, then go for perjury! That’s what the theory of shifting goal posts is all about!

5. He would be a disgrace by 2018.

The Democrats thought that even if Trump fought it out, then Trump would be a total disgrace and spent force by 2018 by which time they hoped to take the House and they actually did. The Democrats would then impeach Trump and the action would have shifted to the Senate.

While it is highly doubtful the Senate will remove Trump (The Democrats need 67 votes and they don’t even have 50) the narrative would have shifted away from the Republicans and the Dems would be primed to take over the White House in 2020.

6. Something Russia over his colleagues and family.

Actually they knew that if would be quite difficult to tie Trump to Russia, but anyone else would do. His children. His campaign team. Any senior person in his many businesses. All they had to do was nail any close Trump associate for having close ties with Russia and Trump would be guilty by association in the public court.

Perception is all that matters!

7. Something. Anything. About Anything.

Actually it wasn’t just about Russia. The 22-month probe covered everything. The Dems were hoping to dig tonnes of dirt and get anything. Anything related to finance. Anything related to tax returns. Anything related to any of his dealings. Anything related to even racism in his businesses.

However anything became nothing in the end.

8. What if he did actually collude with Russia!

For Marxists, the 2016 is probably the worst year since 1991 when the Communist Soviet Empire collapsed. That year had both Trump and Brexit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi won in 2014. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept winning. And the Right is rising in almost every European country. They keep losing.

The Marxists have become severely delusional and have entered their make believe world where anyone who isn’t Far Left is a Hitler Nazi. They actually believe that all their opponents are evil. They keep doubling down and getting more and more delusional and they actually believe Putin and Trump colluded.

But then if that’s the case then the then US President Barack Obama should be arrested because he allowed it to happen because it happened under his watch. Such subtle nuances are totally lost on the Marxists.

It is amazing that Trump continues to soar, save all the opposition goals and doesn’t have an approval rating below 20%. He has used his Twitter handle to totally neutralize the mainstream media.

The Mueller Probe is dead, but it still lives in the hearts of the Marxists.

Also read…

How the media whitewashes the black and blackwashes the white

Focus Trump: How the media whitewashes the black and blackwashes the white

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Sunil Rajguru

Fact I: Donald Trump is the most pro-Jew pro-Israel US President in history…

1. Trump’s son-in-law is Jewish. His daughter has converted to Judaism. His grandchildren are being brought up as Jews.

2. In 1949, Israel proclaimed Jerusalem as their capital. In 1995 the US Congress voted overwhelmingly to recognize Jerusalem and shift the US Embassy there. However successive Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama kept postponing that move. In 2018 Trump finally shifted the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

3. Iran threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Iran regards the US as the Great Satan and “Death to America” almost became their national slogan. Despite this Obama alienated Israel and signed a one-sided Iran nuclear deal detrimental to both Israel and the US. Trump scrapped the one-sided deal and fully recognized Israel’s strategic concerns.

4. Trump has warmed ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel and that has led to the latter becoming much safer and securer in the region.

5. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a big fan of Trump (Obama and Netanyahu hated each other). Netanyahu used Trump in an election poster. An Israeli football club renamed itself Beitar Trump. Most polls also show Israelis having a highly favourable approval rating of Trump.

Global media consensus: Trump is a racist anti-Semite (anti-Jew).

——-

Fact II: Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan.

1. The Democrats opposed the abolition of slavery.

2. The Ku Klux Klan was formed in the 1860s and had a good number of Democrats as the founders.

3. From 1860s to the 1960s, all pro-black legislation had a greater percentage of Republican lawmakers supporting them than Democrats.

4. Democrat Thomas Dixon Jr. was a strong proponent of white supremacy and wrote The Clansman and The Leopard’s Spots. They were made into the white supremacist movie The Birth of a Nation in 1915.

5. Democrat President Woodrow Wilson screened The Birth of a Nation in the White House (the first film to be screened there) and that led to the revival of the KKK.

6. Democrat-KKK leaders regularly ran for elections on the party ticket and the last such high-profile individual was former President pro tempore of the United States Senate Robert Byrd who retired in 2010. Byrd still remains the longest-serving US Senator ever.

7. When Byrd died in 2010, Hillary Clinton paid glowing tributes to him.

8. As late as 2019, Democrat Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is embroiled in a KKK controversy when it was revealed that there was a photo of a black face and a man dressed up as a KKK member in his yearbook.

Global media consensus: Trump and KKK are synonymous.

——-

Fact III: Trump is the most pro-gay Republican President in history.

1. Trump became the first US President in history to accept gay marriage during election campaigning while running for office for the first time.

2. Trump became the first Republican Presidential nominee to have waved the rainbow flag at the Republican convention.

3. Trump appointed gay Richard Grenell as US Ambassador to Germany and he is leading an effort to decriminalize homosexuality at a global level.

Global media consensus: Trump is the biggest impediment to gay rights worldwide and is trying to ban them.

——-

Fact IV: Before he joined the Republican Party, Trump was a popular and aspirational figure in the African American community, as you can see by this YouTube video: 67 Times Rappers Name Dropped “Donald Trump” In Their Songs. Respected leaders like Reverend Jesse Jackson also praised him regularly. Trump’s prison reforms are being hailed universally by the African American community. After Trump took over black unemployment reached its lowest level since 1972. Despite all this, the global media has successfully painted Trump as one of the most anti-black global leaders of all time.

——-

Fact V: Most of their Trump analyses and predictions have been totally wrong.

1. Trump doesn’t want to be President.

2. He will withdraw from the race.

3. He can’t get the Republican ticket.

4. The Republican leaders will be able to stop him.

5. He may win the popular vote but never the Electoral College.

6. There’s no way he can beat Hillary.

7. He will be impeached in 2017.

8. He will resign/be jailed in 2017.

9. He will be impeached in 2018.

10. He will resign/be jailed in 2018.

11. The economy will tank because of him.

12. He will start World War 3.

And so on and so forth. You could fill a book with the failed predictions from 2015-18.

The Russian collusion theory is probably the biggest Fake News story in American history.

——-

Fact VI: The media will back all anti-Trump hoaxes to the hilt.

The Russian collusion hoax is one of the many forwarded by the media.

Most of the violent political attacks have been against Trump supporters. However the media will either ignore them or justify them. Attacks by Trump supporters have been so few that a slew of hoaxes have come up.

An interesting link with that regard…

Here’s A List Of Hoax ‘Hate Crimes’ In The Trump Era

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