San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A story of collapse and death
What the delta variant did to India — and my family
Last month, the COVID delta variant took the lives of two of my uncles in two different cities within 24 hours.
One resided in New Delhi, the capital of India, with its supposedly stateoftheart medical facilities. The other was in Kolkata, where he died at home gasping for oxygen.
What I’m about to tell you is a story of collapse. It is the story of how residents of the secondmostpopulous nation on Earth, left to fend for themselves amid government ineptitude, scrambled to save the lives of their loved ones. It is the story of how we failed.
My uncle in Delhi, a resident of the tony neighborhood of Lutyens, caught COVID on an unavoidable hospital visit to check on his falling hemoglobin levels. He was used to receiving the best care India had to offer. But that trip would be the last time he saw the inside of a hospital.
As my uncle’s condition worsened, my cousin frantically hunted for a COVID bed for her father in all the wellknown hospitals of the capital. But the entire system was falling apart. With no functional helpline in place, we took to social media to try to ascertain realtime bed availability. WhatsApp and Twitter had been churning out bed numbers by the minute. But I found that as soon as these figures were published, the beds were immediately occupied.
Meanwhile, another crisis unfolded here in Kolkata. A second uncle had also come down with COVID; his oxygen saturation levels started plummeting. I switched my attention to getting hold of an oxygen cylinder. No one in my family had ever even handled an oxygen cylinder, let alone tried to save a man’s life with one. My sister reached out through WhatsApp groups and Twitter to find out what to do. I pinged my younger sister in the U.S., urging her to contact her school alumni network for help. In the span of six hours I made more than 70 phone calls around the world. Finally, a friend’s neighbor responded to our plea for help.
As we searched for a way to get a hospital bed for my uncle in Delhi, horror stories and competing advice began to flow in from colleagues and other families. “Your best bet is to drive your relative attached to his oxygen cylinder to the Emergency Room of a government hospital,” suggested an acquaintance. “The hospital will be compelled to find him a bed.”
Meanwhile, a young journalist told me how patient families were now on vigils to determine which patients had the least chance for survival — so that they could grab the hospital bed for their ailing relative when that person died.
My family was making little headway. We were able to get my uncle admitted to a small nursing home in the neighborhood. But it wasn’t the panacea we were hoping for. The facility was stretched beyond its capacity. Relatives of the sick were expected to find their own continuous supply of oxygen. So we took to the black market to find what we could.
Doctors, meanwhile, were shooting in the dark. In a blind gamble they suggested that the families of patients try to procure Remdesivir. The efficacy of this injection was doubtful, but the astronomical demand in the market was an indicator of the desperation.
This climate created a fertile ground for fraudsters and cheats.
My cousin tasked me with getting hold of an injection. Her friend put me in touch with a “distributor.” I saw nothing overtly suspicious at first. The display ID on the phone number was that of a foundation. The rate stipulated was the same as what the government charged per vial. The bank details were that of a legitimate private sector bank.
We transferred the money without a moment’s delay. Four hours later, I realized we had been scammed.
We lost money, but, even worse, we were left without medicine. And my uncle’s condition was deteriorating. The nursing home was not equipped with a ventilator, so they asked us to find a BiPAP machine to facilitate his breathing. But every form of respira
tion device in the city was sold out. We searched nonetheless.
In the midst of all this, I lodged a complaint with the cybercrime bureau of the Delhi police and spoke to a newspaper reporter about the Remdesivir scam. I hoped this would help prevent others from getting cheated. I’m not sure it did.
Despite our best efforts, both my uncles passed away. As did countless others. My Twitter feed was an unending queue of white clothwrapped corpses awaiting cremation.
The real death toll will never be known. Gross underreporting is the reality of India’s COVID death figures.
Even now, a month later, every phone call I receive fills me with dread. I can never be sure who is dying and who is surviving. I am exhausted and angry.
Despite India’s flaws and warts — its staggering bureaucracy, its corruptionridden systems, its endemic caste system, its grinding poverty — I had always taken pride in the fact that, for 70 years, we consistently worked toward bettering ourselves. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime, with its authoritarian tendencies, has undone those sentiments practically overnight. He ignored the warnings of epidemiologists and instead launched into premature celebrations for “defeating the virus.”
The India that I used to be so proud of now seems a far cry from our nightmarish reality. We, the hapless public, are paying the price for the government’s complacency.
I recently started compiling a “roll call of the departed” list of all my loved ones felled by COVID. I added 10 in the past month alone. With each passing day, my list grows longer. I’m haunted by the thought that many could have survived had the Modi government not abdicated its responsibility.
The nightmare isn’t over. A third wave appears imminent. Only 3% of the country is fully vaccinated, and we are still plagued with a shortage of doses.
My sister and I are still waiting for our second shot. The official vaccination policy seems to change with each passing day. What was a sixweek gap is now 12 weeks. It is widely believed this change was made to accommodate vaccine shortages, not science.
India is in desperate need of vaccine supplies from other countries. And we need so much more. Endless lockdowns cannot be the answer to combating this pandemic. We need our government to function as it should.
Throughout this pandemic, the largely compromised mainstream media has ignored any criticism of the Modi government, serving instead as a propaganda vehicle. It is incumbent upon citizens and the media to speak up, be vocal and demand accountability from the government. We must all take on the mantle of being the watchdogs that ensure the continuation of this hitherto thriving democracy.
Let India be a lesson to the world about the deadliness of silence.