One of the enduring traits that define the left-leaning intelligentsia in our country is their shameless ability to twist facts and attempt to manipulate the narrative. Spreading misleading and malicious information to target the central government is almost second nature to the members of such a mendacious cohort.
In conformity with this perverse behaviour, a host of left-liberal ideologues and their supporters today twisted a seemingly straightforward statement issued by the government to claim that it was lying about the number of fatalities the country suffered due to lack of oxygen during the second wave of the coronavirus outbreak.
Earlier today, the official Twitter account of the Press Trust of India posted a tweet that read: “No deaths due to lack of oxygen were specifically reported by states and union territories during second COVID-19 wave: Govt”. Soon after the tweet was posted, several luminaries of the leftwing ecosystem, who either seemed to lack basic comprehension skills or were intentionally manipulative, twisted the statement to give an impression that the central government was in denial about the deaths that happened due to lack of oxygen.
S Irfan Habib, one of the foremost leftist ‘historians’, quoted the PTI tweet and said: “Ask those who have lost their dear ones due to lack of oxygen and hospital support on time”.
Akash Banerjee, an internet troll who pretends to be an intellectual of sorts, tweeted with his Twitter account @TheDeshBhakt that in a few months’ time, the government would report that there was no 2nd wave at all.
Niraj Bhatia quoted the PTI tweet and said: “No one killed Jessica”.
Arunava Singh, an Associate Professor at Ashoka University as per his Twitter bio, had difficulty comprehending the tweet posted by the PTI. In a tweet, he said the news was brought from an alternate universe.
Samit Basu remarked, “Why stop there. There was no pandemic at all.”
Did the Centre really say there were no deaths due to lack of oxygen during second wave of COVID-19?
While the leftists would have us believe that the central government was in denial over the number of fatalities that happened due to lack of oxygen, it is worth noting what the central government responded in the Rajya Sabha today to a question on whether a large number of COVID-19 died on roads and hospitals due to acute shortage of oxygen in the second wave.
Responding to the question, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar informed the Rajya Sabha that no deaths due to lack of oxygen were specifically reported by states and UTs during the second COVID-19 wave. Pawar further mentioned that health is a state subject and states and UTs have been issued detailed guidelines for reporting of deaths by the Union Health Ministry.
“Accordingly, all states and UTs report cases and deaths to the Union Health Ministry on a regular basis. However, no deaths due to lack of oxygen have been specifically reported by states and UTs,” Pawar said in a written reply.
In essence, Pawar was simply answering based on the responses he had received from various states and union territories. None of the states and union territories, according to Pawar, had reported death due to lack of oxygen. It was individual state and union territory’s remit to report the cause of the deaths to the Centre.
However, blinded by their pathological hatred for the Modi government, the left-liberals fell over themselves to misquote the statement issued by the central government and wrongly accuse them of denyinh deaths due to lack of oxygen during the second wave of the coronavirus outbreak.
