From https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/business/india-covid19-tw...
One of the tweets removed from view was posted by Moloy Ghatak, a labor minister in the opposition-ruled West Bengal state, where Mr. Modi’s party hopes to make big gains in an ongoing election. Mr. Ghatak accused Mr. Modi of “mismanagement” and held him directly responsible for the deaths. His tweet included images of Mr. Modi and his election rallies beside those of the cremations and compared him to Nero, the Roman emperor, for choosing to hold political gatherings and exporting vaccines during a “health crisis.” Another tweet from Revanth Reddy, a sitting member of the parliament, used a hashtag that blamed Mr. Modi for the “disaster.” “India recording over 2 lakh cases everyday,” it said, using an Indian numbering unit that means 200,000 cases. “Shortage of vaccines, shortage of medicines, increasing number of deaths.
A reality of scaring social media companies with regulatory threats.
People call for regulation and unsurprisingly their priority becomes keeping those who might regulate them happy with them.
Unsurprising, and not necessarily unwanted. IDK if you mean people or politicians by "they," but (in a democracy) they're the ones who make rules. Whether it's mandating access, limiting access, moderating, censoring, allowing freedom of speech or just mandating that stated policies are followed consistently... I think social media is unquestionably a "public concern" currently.
That doesn't mean that I support Twitter censoring on behalf of Modi. But, it does demonstrate on how broken the new media is. Zuck and Dorsey have no sense of responsibility, and no idea how to take responsibility even if they did have the sense.
It goes without saying that Zuck and Dorsey have no journalistic ethic. They're not journalism, they just ate journalism. No counterpart to a journalistic ethic, or even a lip-service to one. So... they control the important chunk of media worldwide, and they truly don't know what an ethical approach would even be.
Makes Murdoch look like a saint.
A big part of the problem here, ironically, is that Twitter and FB can get away with absolute arbitrariness. It makes it easy for thuggish political types to get their way.
Actual journalists, that is, people reporting things, are those who have to demonstrate the ethos. But in social media, the people who white the posts are the users, in other words, ourselves.
It seems as if his approval rating is just glued to the 60%-70% mark no matter what, even today.
If it keeps above 60% even with the current royal mess happening, I don't know what else Modi can do to loose the election.
Are people sick, and tired of INC so much that they still prefer Modi over an alternative of INC coming back to power?
ResignModi has been trending on Twitter for days now. My FB feed is full of people angry at the government.
There is no 'censorship' of 99% of such posts. You can't really censor stuff in India, its way too big to control narrative that way.
I don't want to make this post political by mentioning names but this post has good information on the founders and their political background https://www.quora.com/Is-Thewire-in-biased
During this time of crisis, it's common for governments to crack down on speech. You've heard of the "shouting 'FIRE' in a crowded movie hall" analogy, right?
How the hell is this equivalent to shouting “FIRE” in a crowded place?
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/a-wave-of-covid-pati...
> He mentions hating “fake news”. He says, “I don’t think covids is really more than a flu.“ I clarified, “Now you think differently though?”
> He replies, “No the same. I should just take vitamins for my immune system. They (news) are making it a big deal.”
> I’m at a loss for words. Here I am basically wrapped in tarp, here he is in a Covid ICU. How can you deny the validity of covid? How is this possible?
And in a democracy, that goes a long way.
Huge groups of people are being generalized as equivalent to people who genuinely believe COVID-19 isn't real. It makes reasoned discourse impossible.
Though I don't think I'm letting the cat out of the bag here.
That's enough to elect a President and change the direction of the entire Federal government.
The time when these people could be ignored, laughed at, or otherwise dismissed is unfortunately over.
If they're true (read: have sufficiently good reasons to believe them), then it's not extreme to live in accordance with them. In fact, it is arguably insane not to live in accordance with them. Imagine if someone said "Oh, I believe things fall to the ground when dropped, but I'm not an extremist about it". What does that mean?? That you only sort of believe that they fall to the ground? That you only sometimes avoid jumping off of bridges?
If they're somewhat true, then they need refinement and correction because they contain error.
If they're false, then it would be an error to follow them in any way.
So really, if what's being done is evil or wrong, it should maybe be called religious error, or just error.
As an example, I believe that things usually fall to the ground when dropped, but I've seen a number of counter-examples, and I'm aware of some disagreement at the margins over exactly how quickly those things fall. An extremist would say "Anyone who disagrees that things fall with an acceleration of 9.8m/s^2 is a transgressor".
edit: format
person, box, light all are required for the person to declare there is a box. I dont see a box is an observation which is correct for a visually challenged person or person in the dark. they dont become truth.
Extremists believe many of the ideas of their religion with certainty, and act in accordance which can lead to behaviour that is illogical from an outside perspective or ethically unhinged. Extremists are the ones who take their religion too seriously.
You can be an extremist about other ideas too. Like a raw vegan. Arguably regular vegans too - there's no health reason to be 100% vegan vs 95% - probably the contrary.
Seems unrelated to Hindi (via Sanskrit) दिन 'din' meaning 'day' though. (Not that I expected it because 'day' and 'religious' are similar in meaning, just curious because there is overlap, and borrowed terms (well, with Persian, but those in turn often derived or cognate with Arabic, at least in my idly curious Wiktionaring experience anyway).)
I see oxygen production being such a basic industrial process, that I never could've imagined even a most poorly industrialised country having troubles producing it. It's tragic seeing the lack of something so seemingly trivial costing so many people's lives.
Anyways, if anyone really need a really emergency only O2 source:
1. Get a 200A-300A DC welding machine, most importantly with as much safety features as possible.
2. Reasonably fine stainless steel mesh, use most pure stainless you can find. Carbon felt if possible. Roll up in tubes. Weld/braze thick copper conductors the top, make sure they can handle the current without melting things. Make sure to cover exposed copper with something less electrically conductive, in worst case, smoking hot cooking oil. Make sure it does not get onto stainless.
3. Either a U or H shaped vessel from PP or PVC piping, available at plumbing supplies. Alternative, a plastic bucket, and two drinking water bottles perforated a bit in their lower part. Put electrodes into them.
4. Find something to cap vessels, use original caps from bottles. Make holes in them for conductors. Then find hoses you can get through those caps. Use reasonably thick plastic hose to survive hot O2. A proper oxygen hose would be idea. Drill the caps, get hoses through them, and seal any openings with hot glue, silicone caulk, or, in worst case, chewing gum. If you can't find anything to seal it, use the thickest plastic bag you can find, and tape it.
5. Make some semblance of bubblers. Small plastic beverage bottles work well for this.
6. Fill with drinking water, or settled tap water. Make sure there is no chlorine in it. Make sure that water does not reach copper parts, even if they are well protected.
7. Add a table spoon of lye, or soda to water. Mix.
8. Connect electrodes to welding machine.
9. Test it starting with smallest current.
10. If things work, connect hoses to bubblers. Make sure the hydrogen hose goes outdoor, to a very, very well ventilated place.
11. Make some semblance of a breathing mask for the apparatus. Connect it to oxygen supply through a breathing bag. Make some holes in the breathing bag. Eye the calculation so that incoming oxygen displaces at least 10 times the volume of exhaled CO2.
12. Top off water as the thing works using something to protect yourself from being zapped.
13. Adjust the current, holes in the breathing bag, lye/soda content, and bottle position (if used the bottle version) for optimal output.
14. Replace water if it gets too muddy from dissolving impurities from anode, or anything else in the system. It it does, think of finding other materials.
With 200A 220V supply, you can make 1-3 kg of oxygen per hour, 4-5 kg in the most ideal scenario.
Chemistry experiments won't solve this.
Right now, I believe from reports on the ground, that they need just any oxygen to hold on for 2-3 more weeks.
First hand report I got is that LO2 tankers been all around on TV, but despite that all hospitals in the area been empty of oxygen for 3-4 weeks without any resupply coming in sight, and this is in one of richest cities in India.
> Chemistry experiments won't solve this.
Tell this to people about to die. You are so cynical. 1.5-2 kg of oxygen per hour should be enough to support 2 people. 20 at least 10.
The mess, depravity, and despair I heard is such that people have already tried just anything.
Zeolite has been sold out across India for a few weeks.
Hydrogen peroxide sold out.
Any chemical which can be used to produce oxygen chemically is out of stock.
People are already blowing themselves up, and causing blackouts by following Youtube voodoo science trying to make completely unsound electrolyzer designs.
You are not getting any "proper" oxygen concentrators coming any time soon with all of above.
This design is at least less of a voodoo science than ones telling people to breath brown gas.
They know what they need better than you do. They're not going to MacGyver their solution by improvising an industrial chemical production process with welding equipment and random chemicals.
Being able to make oxygen in a chemistry experiment is not equivalent to being able to deliver oxygen to patients in a medically appropriate manner using standard medical equipment.
I advice you to come to India, and tell it to people dying on porches of hospitals. Tell it to doctors seeing people come, and die.
> give the medical system in India at least a tiny bit of respect and stop trying to armchair quarterback
Before demanding respect, one has to learn how to behave respectfully himself.
Please stop this.
If the number of tankers is as much as Indian media show, then the situation should've been resolved weeks ago.
Please read my comment below on what's actually happening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26974630
All those sudden oxygen leaks, equipment failures, or massive amounts of stored O2 disappearing is all about O2 infrastructure being in a bad state long before the Covid, and it coming to surface now.
Ad hoc O2 is better than no O2.
hacking-rig an industrial oxygen generator is a very different thing from being able to generate breathable medical oxygen - when you're done with all the steps you'll end up at something that's very expensive and difficult to maintain in the end
> When you're done with all the steps you'll end up at something that's very expensive and difficult to maintain in the end
Your alternatives?
This article discusses some of the challenges being faced, sounds like most of them are around distribution. India has a large steel industry which is very capable of generating and condensing oxygen.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/coronavirus-second-w...
And hospital with on-site O2 generation should've never had any issue. Any industrial scale O2 production machinery would've had many times the capacity reserve.
But they didn't. Double digit of hospital O2 generators were out of service, and LO2 tanks were never filled to full because hospitals were saving on LO2 service.
Some hospitals with central O2 systems from either tanks, or generators simply had them disabled for unfathomable reasons, had them broken down years ago without any attempt at repair, or simply never ever used them, so they don't know how to operate them.
200A service... , can't say how it's now, but even like 20 years ago, 100A was omnipresent in larger cities. Even with just few kilowatts you should still be easily producing above a kilogram per hour.
> Connect it to oxygen supply through a breathing bag. Make some holes in the breathing bag. Eye the calculation so that incoming oxygen displaces at least 10 times the volume of exhaled CO2
You first need a clean and secure place to store it at pressure enough to be continuously consumed by a living breathing human.
Generating oxygen with this means will inevitably result in mixing impurities via the coating on the electrodes or any pre-existing corrosion on the electrodes. Salts mixed into lye, soda, or other salts added to increase conductivity, can result in toxic chlorine and chloride fumes. Heating at the electrode will result in further unexpected fumes.
You are suggesting plastic equipment around a 200A electrodes. If plastic is melting around the electrodes, imagine those fumes also mixing in.
These are just few of the problems that comes to my mind. I am sure an actual expert will know better. Please refrain from posting such garbage, especially medical information.
I'm not suggesting 200A at electrodes. The actual current will be much less with water resistance, you will obviously melt plastic if you put full short circuit current into it.
It's also welding machines themselves are not created for continuous operation, especially electronics based ones. A 100A ones will croak, and go into safety shutdown even from operating at 10% of load continuously.
> You first need a clean and secure place to store it at pressure enough to be continuously consumed by a living breathing human.
You don't have to store it, it's about continuous generation.
> Salts mixed into lye, soda, or other salts added to increase conductivity, can result in toxic chlorine and chloride fumes.
Obviously you will electrolyze chlorine if there is enough of it, but you need to really be electrolyzing sea water like salt concentration for it to be an issue.
> Please refrain from posting such garbage, especially medical information.
I will not refrain. I will talk more with you once I will see your engineering credentials, which I believe you don't have after reading all of above.
Do you guys still need oxygen there? How is the situation there really?
Then how did we get in to such a situation? The reason is the complete apathy of the government in planning and preparation.
While we are the largest producers of Oxygen in the world, we only have 2000 trucks to transport them. Failure to plan and improve the logistics is one of the reason why all are hospitals are now facing Oxygen scarcity, even though we have a surplus of it! The second reason is failure to upgrade existing infrastructure in hospitals.
According to an opposition leader, we exported 60 million vaccines between January and March of this year, while we had only vaccinated around 30 to 40 million of our own people!
Our vaccine plans also hit a hurdle when a US vaccine by Novavax, that has been licensed for production in India, is facing hurdles of getting the raw material for the vaccine from US (that has obviously prioritized it for its own needs).
According to the same opposition leader, we also exported around 1.1 million doses of Remdesivir to other countries. And our media is showing people desperate to buy Remdesivir from anywhere at any price.
In between all this, the government permitted huge gatherings of people in election rallies and religious occasions.
Summary: We had all the resources. But apathy and poor planning screwed up India's fight against COVID.
It is like toilet paper but for oxygen cylinders.
The irony is that elections that were held is the biggest cause for this spike and the government did not oppose or stop that.
The reports are that people's families are having to source meds and oxygen for their loved ones. The offending tweet was consistent with that and, to paraphrase a bit, consisted of a guy basically saying "Hey, does anyone know where I can get a tank of oxygen for my grandfather??" It seems the the grandfather died by the next day anyway.
The number of frantic oxygen requests I've been seeing in my building society Whatsapp group (a high end upper-class society) in the past few days is very scary. VIPs and people with a lot of connection are not able to source Oxygen or beds which paints the picture if you know India.
A union cabinet minister of the country tried to personally reach out and failed. sent cops to help who now suspect foul play.
Do you know what's worst? A guy was booked yesterday for Tweeting he needed oxygen cylinders which according to a state government is spreading fake news. https://thewire.in/government/amethi-up-police-arfa-khanum-s...
While COVID hasn't been kind to the people of India, The current regime's attempts to curb democracy is quite disturbing.