When India administered nearly 1.4 crore doses on a single day on August 31st, you would obviously expect that those who should get/take credit for this stupendous achievement should be our health care workers, vaccine manufacturers, and administrative machinery. Little would you have thought that Chetan Bhagat (and later Sadanand Dhume) would pat themselves on their backs for this achievement! Needless to say, their self-importance gave rise to some hilarious memes, tweets, and articles – so they did bring some much-needed relief to the citizens of India! 

Ever since India began vaccination for COVID, we have had a “If India vaccinates at this rate, it will take a million zillion years to vaccinate entire population” gang active in the English media. This gang would make vacuous assumptions and dish out article after article without giving single useful advice. Members of this gang competed with each other to mock India in foreign publications. For the purpose of analysing how our English media provided space to this gang, let’s divide our vaccination drive so far into three phases. 

The Phase-1

The first 1 and a half months of Phase-1 was primarily for our health care workers and hence we almost see a flat line during that phase. It was also almost immediately after the approval was given so it would obviously take time to make those doses too. But the English media assumed that this rate will remain constant forever and was dishing out irrelevant graphics and writing angry articles mocking the efforts of all those involved in the process. Even when clarifications were provided as to why the curve was flat all through February, the running commentary on the rate of vaccination didn’t stop. 

The curve began to go upwards from the 1st week of March onwards. Quite expectedly because we opened up vaccination for everyone above 60 years and for those with comorbidities above 45 years. But the gang was relentless even when it was clear that the rate of vaccination was increasing. Even these prioritization efforts were mocked relentlessly, bereft of any logic. When we were peaking on phase-1, our friends at The Hindu write a vacuous editorial titled “Faster, sooner: On the need to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination”.

One of the suggestions given in the editorial was to reduce dependency on the CoWIN platform (something that many countries in the world now want to emulate). Almost every article written in March, when our rate was increasing, was as vacuous as this editorial – no meaningful suggestions but only lofty language asking us to increase the rate further. I had wondered back then if these people were actually assuming that 130 crore doses of vaccines are ready somewhere but the government is deliberately not distributing them, because that was the kind of perception they were building up. 

Phase-1 was also the phase when not only about the rate of vaccination was being “analysed” by the English media, but they were parallelly contributing massively to vaccine hesitancy by downplaying Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN. Congress state governments have openly declared that they will not administer COVAXIN. Instead of calling out this duplicity of the Congress party, the gang was busy furthering Rahul Gandhi’s tweets as the best thing to have happened to India. 

The Phase-2

The dip in vaccination began in the second week of April. The media’s biggest dream had come true. They now went to town screaming incompetence. State governments thundered that “If you can’t do the job, we’ll show you how to do it”. One of the most prominent members of the gang, Shekhar Gupta went bombastic on how Modi wants to control everything and isn’t allowing more competent state governments to show him how the job should be done. The central government’s most passive communication strategy during the beginning of this phase wasn’t helping matters either. It was around this phase that some folks wrote meaningful suggestions – urging the US to lift the ban on raw materials required for the vaccine; urging the central government to have more manufacturing facilities etc. 

The Modi government listened to all the suggestions and accepted some of the pompous demands of the gang too. Starting May 1^st, they allowed state governments and private companies to place orders and vaccinate everyone in the 18 to 45 years age group. And you can see in the graph how the trend continued to fall further. There was not a single article or editorial by this gang deploring the state governments for doing such a shoddy job after demanding the job. Articles and videos were now focused on “pricing strategy”. Cash-rich state governments governed by non-BJP parties were crying hoarse on how they can’t pay 300 per vaccine for the benefit of their citizens – and yet our English media intellectuals didn’t find it prudent to point out the shoddy job. What did they do instead? They started attacking the institutes manufacturing the vaccines! 

The institutes were called greedy, and they were looked at as these selfish profit-making entities that were out to rob the governments – all for 300 rupees per vaccine! The attacks on the institutes intensified so much that Adar Poonawalla had to be provided with security, fearing physical attacks also on him. I know of no other country where the English media is as reckless as ours. 

We were then told that not enough orders were placed! No one told us what was meant by “enough orders” though. The government had indicated way back in December 2020 that we will vaccinate 30 crores by July (and further revised it upwards in Feb) – wasn’t that indication enough of orders placed? In February you mock them and in April you ask where the orders are – how can it be so difficult to see this hypocrisy?

And most importantly, how could we have not studied the impact of the peak of the COVID 2nd wave on the vaccination process? Couldn’t we think, just for a moment, how our healthcare system was overloaded with COVID patients? Couldn’t we think, just for a moment, that those involved in manufacturing are also affected by COVID? That those administering the vaccine are also affected by COVID? That the family members of those involved in the process are also affected? Instead, they mocked the fact that our health care system carried out the highest number of tests at the peak of our second wave. The vaccine process involves a lot of people and to assume that they will all contribute to it unhinged in the midst of their own crises only shows how heartless the media has become. 

The Phase-3

Amidst this gloom, phase-3 begins, and this is when the curve started to go up. This was aided by the private sector buying vaccines and starting to administer them. Some state governments were still busy writing letters to the Prime Minister urging him to spare them the embarrassment of not being able to do the job. While the media was still relentless in dishing out repeated lofty articles without any substance, the Prime Minister addressed the nation and explained this extraordinary hypocrisy to the people of this country. He announced that the central government will go back to its earlier policy of owning the whole purchase and distribution process to the state governments while the state governments will continue to be responsible for the administering of the vaccine. 

When India reached a huge milestone on June 22nd (~90 lakh vaccines in a day), instead of feeling proud this gang started questioning if vaccines were hoarded earlier so that this record can be achieved. All they were doing was echoing their master’s voice. How bereft of logic should you be to arrive at such a conclusion? 

India continued the upward trend of vaccinating more and more people by the day. India finished 40 crore doses by July, as predicted in February. The regional English media mocked the prediction in February. India finished 60 crore doses in August – the international English media mocked this prediction in February. Not a single one of these publications came forward and said sorry for their shoddy analysis. 

Just one day after India administered a world record 1,40,00,000 vaccines in a single day, New York Times publishes an “analysis” that said – “Economists are concerned about the slow rate of vaccinations…”. Just one day after a world record! Our media had lost all sense of proportion and was getting confused with simple things such as the number of doses and the number of people. Just a couple of days back (Sept.13), Business Standard writes an editorial that India vaccinated 72 crore, people, when in reality we administered 72 crore doses (57 crore of them with the first dose). 

At the peak of Phase-1, we are told that the process is slow. At the peak of Phase-3 also, we are told that the process is slow. During the crisis of Phase-2, they gloated instead of helping. At every stage, statistics were randomly interpreted to showcase the progress of vaccination in poor light, as compared to the world. When key milestones were achieved faster than anyone in the world, those graphics were mocked relentlessly. When India set out to help the world, given the global nature of the crisis, those efforts were mocked relentlessly. The competition to get published in foreign publications meant that this gang would plunge to any depth to mock India’s efforts. 

There has not been a single article statistically analysing the havoc that COVID has caused across the world. Many countries have gone through their 3rd and 4th waves despite getting nearly 50% of their populations fully vaccinated, so the nature of this beast is still unknown. Many countries (especially in South America) experienced the longest first wave one could imagine! Vaccinations have of course helped in bringing down the severity of the disease but that still doesn’t mean our media gang will not go overboard when the 3rd wave hits us (looks inevitable, going by the trends in the world). To blame the rate of vaccination in March for the surge in the 2nd wave is naivety at best and hypocrisy at worst. 

All through the vaccination process, our media published so many “studies” that contradicted each other! We were told Covishield is good and bad; Covaxin is good and bad; a combination of Covishield and Covaxin is good and bad! We were looking for meaningful commentary. Instead, we got meaningless running commentary.