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I am a physician and my contribution to this conversation might not be appreciated, but here it goes. I work at a medical university with two medical colleges

by laxmin 5y ago

I am a physician and my contribution to this conversation might not be appreciated, but here it goes. I work at a medical university with two medical colleges and a wide healthcare system and we were involved in the clinical trials for Covaxin (India's indigenous vaccine) as we as Covid care and immunisation. As a foot soldier, I am tired of fighting stories such as yours that raise doubt on statistics with anecdotes. The statistics maybe flawed, but we need some scientific rigour in decrying them. Not 'my parents said' stories. The anecdote about faking covid test results is plainly wrong. There is a mechanism for registering every PCR-RT test that is done along with the Aadhaar Unique Identity Number. The results need to be validated at different levels. These have been digitised. You can access your parents records online and verify and validate them too. All this is available on your mobile apps. The digitisation and workflow management make faking the results very difficult if not impossible. Hospitals are specially licensed to treat Covid. Not all hospitals can admit covid patients. It is not like every small clinic or hospital at the corner can simply admit patients. The total bill for ANY COVID RELATED ADMISSIONS are capped. The test fees are capped. There simply is not much incentive to fake results when the fees cannot be charged on whim. Of course, common people like your parents are fed misinformation by the social media (anti-vaxxers movement in the US) and a lot of fear about corporate profiting, big pharma, etc are the usual trope. Big pharma sure profits, but they profit most off such staple as baby powder and insulin. Their profits, data of efficiency on vaccines etc are under glare of scientific scrutiny, while their pain killers and opioids are where they don't get any investigation. The death rates on the other hand in India are under reported and there is a huge backlog that is being cleared right now. You may not believe it, but India's response to the pandemic has been nothing less than fantastic, given the sorry affairs of its health infrastructure. The mechanisms at every level worked satisfactorily. Were they miraculous? no. Efficient given the resources? Yep. It could have been worse. Far far worse. Edit. Oh I forgot to add... our hospitals lost a lot of money and our entire budget. We had to borrow to keep things running and are in the red for the next few years. So all this 'profiteering'... try running a hospital. Edit 2: The local administration commandeered our hospitals to set up Covid wards. Admissions were made electronically for hospital based observational wards. Food and medicines were made free for all the admitted patients. Also, Oxygen. Did I tell about the overtime payments to doctors, nurses and paramedical staff? All from the hospital funds. Patients paid nothing. Thats right. Nothing. Not a cent.

saurik 5y ago
The way the comment you are responding to was written and explicitly quoted, and yet said the commenter was still trying to get their parents to go despite the multiple objections, made it to me sound like they were not claiming the things you are defending against but merely restarting them as something the parents said.
nonamechicken 5y ago
I also appreciate your contribution. Unlike a lot of the so called NRIs, at least you chose to stay and do your part to make India better.
- gadders 5y ago
  FYI for those wondering - NRI stands for Non-Resident Indian/Not Really Indian depending on how pejorative you want to be.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nonamechicken 5y ago
jowdones 5y ago
Well, I for once, appreciate your contribution :)
reacharavindh 5y ago
Hey. A lot to unpack here. But, first, THANKS!! for everything you do and the care you have for doing things right. Please don't take criticisms such as mine to mean that "everything is wrong and everyone is wrong" instead of its actuality where there is something wrong amidst several right. With that out of the way, I did try to explicitly say that my experience is not first hand and that it is of that from my parents and my frustration that they cannot get tested as often as I can in the NL, and trust the local healthcare setup as I do here. I for one am a lot relieved to hear from you that the digital systems are put to good use in verifying COVID tests, administration of vaccines, treatment, bills etc. Unfortunately, my parents concerns were still not addressed by these re-assurances. One may still test positive for COVID, but not really need the excessive medical procedures that the private hospitals/doctors do with monetary aims. Even worse, a doctor could simply admit someone for a couple of days and run all the tests only to come up and say after 2 days and a bill of several thousand rupees, - "your covid test was negative", please be careful about your other problems we took care of. Secondly, if the regional testing centers or doctor's offices are as badly managed and under-staffed as my dad claims in his region, it is hard to trust the rest of the system to work, and not be scared of contracting covid just by visiting the test centre. I realise that India is big, diverse and unequal so it may not be the case where you are. One of the reasons, I am stupefied, angry and scared is also from your list... > our hospitals lost a lot of money and our entire budget. > Did I tell about the overtime payments to doctors, nurses and paramedical staff? All from the hospital funds. Patients paid nothing At least from a sample size of two (in a country with a couple billion people), it is not true. My uncle and aunt were hospitalised. for "mild" covid late last year, and came back home after 4 days with a fat bill, lot of frustration from defending against what they perceived as needless tests, and of course COVID. A private hospital could still keep the COVID cost to whatever regulatory maximum is, and still do absurd tests to milk the patient's insurance policies :-( The only way for this system to gain trust is transparency. For patients to take hospitals to court with trustworthy judicial system. However, here we are where India reports a few lakh people died, and researchers claim it is wrong by several orders of magnitude :-( I trust the sincere work of yours. But, we have a long way before that can be applied to the majority.

by laxmin 5y ago

saurik 5y ago

The way the comment you are responding to was written and explicitly quoted, and yet said the commenter was still trying to get their parents to go despite the multiple objections, made it to me sound like they were not claiming the things you are defending against but merely restarting them as something the parents said.

nonamechicken 5y ago

I also appreciate your contribution. Unlike a lot of the so called NRIs, at least you chose to stay and do your part to make India better.

gadders 5y ago
FYI for those wondering - NRI stands for Non-Resident Indian/Not Really Indian depending on how pejorative you want to be.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nonamechicken 5y ago

jowdones 5y ago

Well, I for once, appreciate your contribution :)

reacharavindh 5y ago

Hey. A lot to unpack here. But, first, THANKS!! for everything you do and the care you have for doing things right. Please don't take criticisms such as mine to mean that "everything is wrong and everyone is wrong" instead of its actuality where there is something wrong amidst several right. With that out of the way, I did try to explicitly say that my experience is not first hand and that it is of that from my parents and my frustration that they cannot get tested as often as I can in the NL, and trust the local healthcare setup as I do here. I for one am a lot relieved to hear from you that the digital systems are put to good use in verifying COVID tests, administration of vaccines, treatment, bills etc. Unfortunately, my parents concerns were still not addressed by these re-assurances. One may still test positive for COVID, but not really need the excessive medical procedures that the private hospitals/doctors do with monetary aims. Even worse, a doctor could simply admit someone for a couple of days and run all the tests only to come up and say after 2 days and a bill of several thousand rupees, - "your covid test was negative", please be careful about your other problems we took care of. Secondly, if the regional testing centers or doctor's offices are as badly managed and under-staffed as my dad claims in his region, it is hard to trust the rest of the system to work, and not be scared of contracting covid just by visiting the test centre. I realise that India is big, diverse and unequal so it may not be the case where you are. One of the reasons, I am stupefied, angry and scared is also from your list... > our hospitals lost a lot of money and our entire budget. > Did I tell about the overtime payments to doctors, nurses and paramedical staff? All from the hospital funds. Patients paid nothing At least from a sample size of two (in a country with a couple billion people), it is not true. My uncle and aunt were hospitalised. for "mild" covid late last year, and came back home after 4 days with a fat bill, lot of frustration from defending against what they perceived as needless tests, and of course COVID. A private hospital could still keep the COVID cost to whatever regulatory maximum is, and still do absurd tests to milk the patient's insurance policies :-( The only way for this system to gain trust is transparency. For patients to take hospitals to court with trustworthy judicial system. However, here we are where India reports a few lakh people died, and researchers claim it is wrong by several orders of magnitude :-( I trust the sincere work of yours. But, we have a long way before that can be applied to the majority.