Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman along with other BJP ministers has expressed resentment over the infamous Lancet journal that has been constantly criticizing the Modi government’s strategies in handling pandemic in India. While expressing anger, she shared a rebuttal article by Professor Pankaj Chaturvedi. The article calls the editorial in Lancet regarding India’s fight against covid 'biased' and 'misguided'.
Nirmala Sitharaman in her tweet quoted the article, “The Lancet editorial seemed to be solely for the media attention and trending on Twitter while maligning India globally.”
Sharing the same article, Union Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said, “A fair rebuttal to the imbalanced editorial in The Lancet titled ‘India’s Covid19 emergency’ published on May 8th. While the Covid crisis did assume alarming proportions in India, it was indeed important to remain politically unbiased for a reputed journal.”
In the article, Professor Chaturvedi has argued that India has a population of around 130 crores and only 2,62,000 people have lost their lives to covid. He also claimed that India has full control over the coronavirus situation. He further stated that if we compare India’s death toll with America, Brazil and Britain then those countries have much higher death rates.
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According to Professor Chaturvedi’s article, the death rate in India is only 1.1 percent which is really low as compared to other countries like America, Britain, Brazil, Italy and Germany. India’s recovery rate is also higher than most of the countries around the world.
After this move, netizens are lashing out at ministers, saying that government authorities think that any random blog can be a reply for the Lancet, the oldest medical journal in the world.
The editorial published in The Lancet had stated, “India will see a staggering 1 million deaths from Covid19 by August 1. If that outcome were to happen, Modi’s government would be responsible for presiding over a self-inflicted national catastrophe.”