The desperate situation still emerging in India is a warning of what happens when pandemics run out of control. The wealthy west has managed to avoid this, thanks to generous medical facilities and being able to afford vaccines. We should count our blessings for both, as India’s COVID desperate people fall prey to scams.
Lessons We Can Learn for This in the West
We are not immune to scams peppering our mail boxes and search results. We are fortunate we are in a safer space, where most of us don’t have to make frantic decisions.
However, things could be different if we were in India caught between their rock and hard place. Theirs is a space where drugs, oxygen, hospital beds and funeral services can’t cope with demand. A place where India’s COVID desperate people fall prey to scams in the absence of another choice.
New York Times posted about this on May 17, 2021. They told of a scrapyard caught recycling fire extinguishers and selling them as oxygen canisters. These were double the price of the real thing, but could explode under the additional pressure.
No Holds Barred as India’s COVID Desperate Fall Prey to Scams
Most of the shady transactions broker online, or in hushed phone calls according to New York Times. There are no limits; even used funeral shrouds repurpose. Delhi police uncovered vials of counterfeit remdesivir drugs used to treat COVID.
‘I have seen all kinds of predators and all forms of depravity,’ a former police chief in Uttar Pradesh told the media. ‘But this level of predation and depravity I have not seen in the thirty-six years of my career, or in my life.’
We can’t point fingers and say these things could not happen in our own countries. We could also fall desperate if our pandemic ran out of control. And there would always be compatriots ready to turn our despair to their profit. We cannot give up the fight now.
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