There’s a new “heart-stopping” dispatch out this morning on the COVID-19 situation in India by New York Times South Asia bureau chief Jeffrey Gettleman that’s going viral right now:
NYT Pulitzer winner @gettleman has reported in war zones, he’s been jailed and been kidnapped in Iraq.
But the COVID crisis in India is a new kind of emergency. This dispatch is heart-stopping https://t.co/UF1qp2POV9
— Ryan McCarthy (@mccarthyryanj) April 28, 2021
Gettleman writes:
“I’m sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease…It is out there, I am in here, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I, too, get sick.” @gettleman on what it feels like to live in the crucible of India’s #covid pandemic. https://t.co/MdBx50WaSv
— Sudarsan Raghavan (@raghavanWaPo) April 28, 2021
And:
"As a foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years, I’ve covered combat zones, been kidnapped in Iraq and been thrown in jail in more than a few places. This is unsettling in a different way", NYT's @gettleman on India's deadly second wave. https://t.co/DuHzabgBEx
— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) April 27, 2021
But there’s one paragraph in there that needs to be challenged.
Gettleman, writing on the “double-mutant” variant that’s spreading in India right now, quotes “some we have spoken to” saying “they had been vaccinated twice and still got seriously ill”:
“Doctors are pretty scared. Some we have spoken to said they had been vaccinated twice and still got seriously ill, a very bad sign.” https://t.co/TSHKSkYNeC
— Jennifer Smith (@jensmithWSJ) April 28, 2021
Um, we need a lot more detail on this one:
?https://t.co/gE47WOxONJ pic.twitter.com/Rlrq7nma7C
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) April 28, 2021
Were the NYT’s science desk editors okay with this language?
I realize this is a personal essay but I’d be interested to know whether and how the NYT’s science desk editors weighed in on that paragraph.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) April 28, 2021
Because “some we have spoken to” isn’t good enough. Details, please:
Listen to the Some We Have Spoken To
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 28, 2021
As for what the science says at this moment in time, this particular variant is stopped by vaccines:
"I don't think there's any evidence that it's an escape mutation [which would mean] it fundamentally can't be stopped by the vaccines," Dr Jeff Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, told BBC News.https://t.co/MtMCp0G28x
— Steve Tyler (@styler_cr) April 28, 2021
So, if what the NYT says is happening is really happening, that’s contrary to all the media reporting on it:
Other good news: Recent lab studies indicate vaccine's ability to neutralize B.1.617, as expected from its structure https://t.co/1GhFhp3Tad /4
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) April 24, 2021
It’s also contrary to what Dr. Anthony Fauci just said about vaccines and variants, and that includes the Indian vaccine COVAXIN:
Quoting the ICMR study, White House’s chief medical adviser dr Anthony Fauci says Indian vaccine COVAXIN can neutralize the B.1.617 variant of the corona virus (Double mutant variant in India). Calls Vaccination an important antidote. pic.twitter.com/i1KKlvi0XM
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) April 28, 2021
More info here:
Full link to the study:https://t.co/A3sP71gveF
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) April 28, 2021
So, who do we trust?
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