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The High Price of Stating the Obvious in India
David Montoute
May 8th
On April 17th, 2021, Tamil actor and comedian Vivek passed away after suffering a massive cardiac arrest. The unexpected demise shocked the film industry and the nation as a whole. Two days before his death, Vivek had publicly received a dose of Covaxin (manufactured by Indian company Bharat Biotech), at a state Hospital in Chennai. The following morning, he experienced breathlessness and chest pain, and was admitted to SIMS Hospital, where doctors deemed him critical. After an angioplasty, he died the next day, having suffered “an acute coronary syndrome with cardiogenic shock.” Vivek was buried immediatedly, without any post-mortem.
As Tamil Nadu's Health Ambassador, the actor had campaigned to promote the benefits of vaccination and the use of public hospitals. At the public awareness event where he received the vaccine, he said:
Many have doubts about vaccination and its side effects. There are also several rumors doing the rounds. I want to put an end to all the rumors. I want to show people that there is no danger in getting vaccinated. On the contrary, it will protect us.
The hospital later dismissed speculation that Vivek's death was linked to the vaccine, claiming that the actor had thrombosis with a complete blockage, something which clearly could not develop in a day. But Vivek’s death is only the latest in a rash of cardiac-related fatalities after COVID-19 vaccination in India. Last month, an analysis of 79 Indians who died following a COVID-19 vaccine showed that more than half had suffered strokes or heart attacks.
There are currently three shots authorised for emergency use in India – Covishield/AstraZeneca, Covaxin and the Russian Sputnik V. The locally-produced Covaxin is an experimental “inactivated virus” requiring two doses several weeks apart. Covaxin's factsheet claims its product is made with a whole, inactivated virus, a curious statement given that no labs anywhere in the world claim to possess a purified virus sample of Sars CoV-2. Aside from the supposedly inactivated virus, Covaxin also contains "inactive" substances such as aluminium hydroxide (a potent neurotoxin that blocks the electrical discharge of nerve cells), the adjuvant imidazoquinolinone, that has apparently never before been used in approved vaccines, and the synthetic preservative 2-phenoxyethanol, also with known toxic effects.
Shortly after the comic actor's death, fellow Tamil actor Mansoor Ali Khan, held an impromptu media interview outside the hospital where Vivek died, claiming that it was the Covid vaccine that was responsible for the actor's cardiac arrest. The recorded interview went viral in India, as Ali Khan claimed that "Covid" was part of a wider political scheme. Clearly agitated, he denounced almost every aspect of India's approach to the alleged pandemic:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/82305786.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppstAli Khan claimed that there is "nothing like coronavirus in this world," asserting that Covid was a part of a wider political scheme.
“Don’t compel people to take the Covid-19 vaccine. I have been saying this for the past one year, stop these Covid-19 tests. There should be no news about vaccines. Why [is the government] killing people? Does the government think that no one can question them? He (Vivek) was fine a day before the vaccine was given to him. I have slept on the streets, shared food with beggars during my campaign in Thondamuthur constituency and I haven’t contracted the virus. I am telling you frankly that there is no coronavirus. All these preventive measures are of no use. Making masks compulsory is a foolish act by the government.”
Mansoor Ali Khan also claimed that the wearing of masks was inducing illness and urged people to stop using them.
"We are inhaling the exhaled breath when we are wearing masks. It is very unhealthy, and it will affect our respiratory system. We do not know what is the content of the coronavirus vaccine. Why cannot the government introduce an insurance scheme to protect people who face side effects due to the coronavirus vaccine?"
Realising the likely consequences of his words, Mansoor Ali Khan challenged India's authorities to "take a case against me and imprison me in jail." And the authorities were not slow to oblige. The governing Chennai Corporation and the ruling BJP lodged a formal complaint was against the actor, alleging that he had engaged in a "defamatory campaign" against the government, and that he had expressed views that were "contrary to medical science". Acting on the complaint, the Vadapalani police booked Khan under numerous sections of the Indian Penal Code ("Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot", "Malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life", "spreading rumour with intent to cause fear or alarm to the public" etc.).
Though Ali Khan was granted anticipatory bail, the Madras High Court ordered him to pay Rs 2 lakhs (roughly £2000) to the Health secretary (which was assigned to the purchase of more Covishield vaccines).
Mansoor Ali Khan hasn't been the only person to fall foul of India's approved-thought-enforcement. The Chennai Corporation has announced its intention to initiate action against anyone who spreads "misinformation" on social media, while politicians such as Akhilesh Yadav and businessmen such as Rajiv Bajaj have been excoriated for doubting the government's strategy and encouraging "vaccine hesitancy".
Rather than being "hesitant", however, industrialist Rajiv Bajaj is certain that he won't be taking the vaccine: "A vaccine that is new and hurried is the last thing I will take." Bajaj, the Managing Director of Bajaj Auto, suggested instead that homeopathy could be used to combat coronavirus symtoms. Echoing scientific critiques by the likes of Sucharit Bhakdi or John Ionnaidis, Bajaj has picked apart the basis of lockdowns:
"When 99.9% of the most vulnerable are above 65, I see no logic in this sweeping lockdown in a country in which 94% are below 65. We should have kept the seniors home, closed public spaces, and allowed the rest of us to keep life moving forward."
Bajaj pointed out that no country in the world could arrest a flu virus and this is why 600,000 people die every year due to common flu. If the common flu cannot be contained even after so many decades of research, then how could COVID-19 be contained by lockdown? During an interaction via video link, Bajaj told former Congress president Rahul Gandhi:
“You (the government) have not solved that problem. But you have definitely decimated the economy. You flattened the wrong curve. It is not the infection curve, it is the GDP curve. This is what we have ended up with, the worst of both the worlds.”
Bajaj's expressed preference to be "infected by the virus" rather than receive the experimental vaccine is reflected more widely than India's official culture can comfortably admit. Even before the death of Vivek, the country was already witnessing "a crisis of trust" in its COVID vaccines, according to Vice. One of the more high-profile examples of such scepticism is the medical freedom movement known as the Awaken India . In addition to its anti-lockdown position, this largely youth-based group has helped to publicise vaccine-related scandals, such as the reveal by activist Rachana Dhingra that people affected by the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy were being used in without their consent in Phase-3 Covaxin trials at the People’s University in Bhopal. Poor, vulnerable and often illiterate individuals, says the activist, are being mass-vaccinated "with a promise of Rs. 750.” Dhingra has alleged that most of the participants are not even aware that they are part of the Phase-3 trial. “They are told that they are being given the vaccine to stop COVID-19...And no copy of the consent form is being given.”
Immediately prior to India's Covid vaccination programme, the civic body known as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation announced a propaganda blitz to counter the threat posed by "antivaxxers". A Johns Hopkins study from last year had already suggested that fully one quarter of the Indian population was sceptical towards the vaccine. And as other medical voices have denounced the rush to vaccine approval and the process' lack of transparency, popular attitudes have hardened.
All of this comes in the context of an alleged Covid-19 "catastrophe" in India, with previously neglible "Covid" cases and mortality suddenly and dramatically on the rise since April 2021. Yet, the Lockdown Sceptics website has pointed out a specific feature of this development that has not interested the corporate media:
One mystery, as yet unexplained, is why India, which has not experienced a strong surge like this so far, suddenly did in March and April. Adding to the mystery is that the simultaneity of the surge across the regions is unexpected in a country as large as India and contrary to earlier outbreaks last year. Nick Hudson from Panda suggests it means there must be something artificial about it as it is not a natural pattern, since viruses naturally spread across the country with some delay and variation evident between regions.
By February India claimed to have vaccinated some 6 million people. And Lockdown Sceptics have not been alone in noting how the country's significant uptick in cases and mortality began some 3 to 4 months after the beginning of this campaign.
It seems, then, that this could be yet another "coincidence", the type of which has become axiomatic in the age of mandatory vaccination.
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