Khamenei appeared in front of cameras after quite some time! Since the outbreak has started, he’s been hiding somewhere, nobody knows where exactly! But he shows up every now and then and spew some orders to officials, because they’re lost without him, apparently, and goes back to whatever hole he came out! Today was no different, he was upset about half a billion dollar used to import “luxury American phones,” but then updated his Russian Twitter account with an iPhone! In this video conference, Rouhani gave him some updates about COVID-19 status, and unsurprisingly mostly lies.
As usual, the Islamic Republic President praised his administration and “protocols” the most, saying COVID-19 crisis is well under control, blamed whatever bad happened on people and then claimed the novel coronavirus has only caused 3% shrinkage in Iran economy! They’re all blatant lies. We have been reporting on the wild human catastrophe going on in Iran every day, mostly due to useless “protocols” and “management.” Furthermore, his Treasury Minister testified in Khamenei’s parliament a month ago that COVID-19 has decreased GDP by at least 15%! Although he didn’t provide any specific stats, but according to IMF’s estimation, Iran’s GDP would contract by $66 billion in current year which is twice as much as the whole Iran’s budget in a year!
After Rouhani’s “report” to the COVID-in-Chief, was time for Sima Sadat Lari to play her daily role as Spokesperson for the Ministry of Health! She announced 2,113 new cases and 141 deaths in the past 24 hours, both slightly increased from yesterday! She also mentioned the same 26 provinces in critical condition. Even though she includes 11 provinces in “alarming” category every day in the past few weeks, but in fact, the big cities in those provinces are in “red” status, based on her own admission! In the meantime, Epidemiology Committee of National Task Force issued its “weekly” report after not releasing it for a few weeks! According to this report for the week ending on Aug 21, number of cases are still increasing in at least 9 provinces, including Tehran and Qom, epidemiological data don’t match the cases in at least 11 provinces, which means cases are not reported in time, and only 2 provinces show slight decline in cases, Kerman and Hamedan!
It’s not clear what set of data Rouhani, Namaki, Sadat Lari and other officials have been looking at that have made them “smiling” about better situation across the country, but the daily data provided by the Ministry is full of manipulations, as it’s been established many times in the past! In addition to all that, today, Nahid Khodakarami, a Tehran City Councilwoman, announced there have been 10,200 deaths in Tehran alone in the past 6 months. Previously, she had said 7,167 till July 19, had passed on due to COVID-19 in Tehran. That means from July 19 to August 20 (month of Mordad in Persian calendar), almost 3,033 people have died in Tehran. In the same time period, Ministry of Health has announced a total of 6,076 in the entire country! That means Tehran, with roughly 10% of Iran’s population, has had 50% of deaths!
While the crisis rages on in the country, Moharram, flu season and new school year are upon us, too! End of main Moharram gatherings (the first 10 days), would overlap the beginning of the flu season and schools are to be reopened on September 5, 15 days earlier than normal years! However, the government still hasn’t provided students with a clear plan as to what they should be expecting. Considering all this, the third wave of patients overflowing the already collapsing healthcare system could have unimaginable consequences. But Islamic Republic, as per the past 41 years, has been following the same routine in the face of a crisis: stifling opposite views, not listening to experts, put power ahead of people, deprive people of the truth, and propaganda through main stream media!
The graphs show part of these manipulations throughout the entire 6 months of COVID-19 crisis in the country.
R0: 1.42
Total: 358,905 (+2,113)
Dead: 20,643 (+141)
Healed: 309,464
Critical: 3,841 (-9)
Admitted: 28,798 (+210)
Tests: 3,036,711
