Numinous:
What you said:

[Call me a COVID-denier all you want, but my personal observations in India suggest that the almighty freakout we have had over the past year to this disease is completely out of proportion to its impact on Indians **(key words are “India” and “Indians”**; I’m not disputing that this virus has caused a lot more distress in other countries).]

[Had the Western world not caught this disease and it had not had such a severe impact on both peoples’ health and psyche there, my guess is that this disease would ***barely have made the news in India. Not even at the level of the Nipah virus. Probably somewhere in the region of our annual affair with dengue.]**

“would have barely made the news in India”, ” Annual affair with dengue” etc etc. You completely minimized CoVId in India to score a point against the government, but when it comes to your own family you are desperate to get vaccinated. What is the rush, especially now? Cases/deaths in India are at 1/10th or less what they were at the peak. Your 71 year old father is not special compared to our relatives who died or were critical whose misery you completely dismissed all because you wanted to score points.
Your hypocrisy has no bounds. And you are now resorting to namecalling. Par for course for hypocritical numbwits like you.

A Texas University suggested in a series of tweets that students should wear face masks during masturbation, even quipping that they should ‘mask-urbate’.

The University of North Texas’s Student Health and Wellness Center fired out the tweets, which have since been deleted because they offered advice contrary to that of the school’s guidelines on coronavirus, according to Campus Reform.

One of the tweets declared “Mask-urbate?! Read below to learn more,” with an accompanying image suggesting that any students with COVID symptoms should “skip sex and stay in.”

An infographic emblazoned with the university logo read “Mask-urbate! Use face coverings during mutual masturbation to reduce your risk,” while also suggesting students “be creative with physical barriers & sexual positions to prevent close face-to-face contact.”

A further tweet declared that students should wear masks during sex, “pick a large, well-ventilated space” for getting it on, “avoid kissing” and “wash your hands before and after.”

The tweets were reportedly removed because the University doesn’t even want students to go near each other.

“Face coverings are not a substitute for appropriate social distancing,” the school guidelines state.

As we previously reported, The University of Georgia published a similar guide on its health website that advised students to consider “wearing a face mask during sex.”

“Not as big of a threat” doesn’t mean “no threat at all”. One can think of a disease as threatening enough to require mask-wearing and social distancing (as I have religiously done over the past year) plus get higher-risk people (like my dad) vaccinated as soon as possible WITHOUT conceding that it required the kind of overreaction we saw all year, including lockdowns, unnecessary disruption to the lives and livelihoods of people, and as a corollary, a reduction in the quality of healthcare for non-COVID-related cases.

Go that in your head, pea brain? Now go troll someone else, you fucking moron!

https://twitter.com/meenaharris/status/1357383504535818241

Prats, I’m connected to some of these folks as well. They have cells operating all the way down to the district level and they recruit influencers. Congress folks followed suit and a few political consultancies emerged post-2014, some even brought US consultants. My impression is that the BJP team as we know it isn’t going to get more savvy all of a sudden, but a significant chunk of the effete chattering classes will pivot to the BJP (think hindol sengupta). The overton window has shifted and i don’t think core hindutva positions are as taboo to hold among the cosmopolitan under-30 crowd.

That sort of response by the GOI would be a a gift to the separatists, they have a lot less to lose if this becomes an ego battle. Punjab is in a tantrum over waning influence and economically developed India needs stability, and a stones throw from the capital even more so. I wasn’t even trying to be condescending but you seemed to enjoy it so there’s that .

saurav:
Yeah that comment was a bit borderline but sometimes the mirror needs to be shown. The hypocrisy was too glaring. That said, I wish Numinous’ father all the best and hope he he can get the vaccine soon.

C’mon Bro. Have some heart.

This is more like short term election campaigning online which all parties do. Infact AAP and Congress seem to do it more than the BJP. A lot of fake news floating around during elections is generated by these operations. Remember the letter against Manish Sisodia supposedly authored by Gautam Gambhir which contained casteist slurs.

What the BJP IT-cell theorists posit is different however. They claim there exists a paid army of lakhs or thousands of internet trolls who drive up support for Hindutva all throughout the year and harass its critics online. Thats just not true. Its never been true.

Regarding right wing, Whatsapp groups again I think it would be a very very far-fletched claim that its not organic and its driven by a political party at non-election times.
All sides have a whatsapp ecosystem today. Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, lefty-liberals everyone. Its strange to say that only among the Hindus it may be driven by a political party.

Numinous:
“Forget Barbados, when are they going to let elderly Indians get the vaccine? I’ve been waiting for my 71-year old dad to get it, but thus far there’s no sign of it being available”
Didn’t you say Corona is not real or is/was not as big a threat as the government made it out to be? And that it as at the level of the annual dengue epidemic. What’s the rush then to get the vaccine and risk side effects?

[Call me a COVID-denier all you want, but my personal observations in India suggest that the almighty freakout we have had over the past year to this disease is completely out of proportion to its impact on Indians (key words are “India” and “Indians”; I’m not disputing that this virus has caused a lot more distress in other countries).]

[Had the Western world not caught this disease and it had not had such a severe impact on both peoples’ health and psyche there, my guess is that this disease would barely have made the news in India. Not even at the level of the Nipah virus. Probably somewhere in the region of our annual affair with dengue.]

Looks like the government can’t win no matter what it does.