Another day and another Islamic Republic official claiming the COVID-19 crisis in Iran is getting better while their own highly unreliable and widely scrutinized stats show an increase in active cases, closing in on the highest since the beginning of the outbreak in February! In the past 6 months, with Islamic Republic’s inaction and at times mismanagement which had made the situation worse, there hasn’t been a single day without chaos, controversy, and lies from officials about this single crisis, let alone ruling the whole country with more than 83 million population!
Dr. Ali Akbar Haghdoost, Deputy Health Minister in Education, in charge of medical students and interns in the country, claims “we shouldn’t scare people, while not normalize the situation either.” However, his colleagues, bosses and himself have done nothing but normalization since the whole ordeal started! First by hiding it for weeks, then not quarantining epicenters, lying about stats every single day, saying it’s just like flu, contradictions and chaos at every level of the government, premature reopenings, lifting travel restrictions and choosing economy over people’s health, and this list goes on and on!
Sima Sadat Lari, Ministry of Health Spokesperson, repeated the same claim in her daily show. She said, “we can see a relative decline in cases across the country.” Immediately after, she mentioned 28 of 31 provinces in red (13) or alarming (15) status! That’s 2 more provinces compared to days before. Additionally, she makes such a claim when only close to 3,100,000 tests have been done in the country, 3.73% of the total population!
In the meantime, Muharram gatherings have been going on and Khamenei already congratulated and “thanked” people holding ceremonies for their superb job in implementing the protocols. State-controlled media also published a few photos from places and followed Khamenei’s suite. However, today is only the 5th day of Muharram and the main mourning gatherings are on 9th and 10th of Muharram, even though we have already showed and local reports indicate, the protocols are not followed everywhere and a third wave is on the horizon in mid-late September!
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0), one of the most reliable indicators in virus spread in population, is not even measured or spoke about in the country, because they know if they release the data, they would have to admit their “health protocols” have been nothing but malarkey! Graphs depict Islamic Republic’s failure as well.
R0: 1.44
Total: 363,363 (+2,213)
Dead: 20,901 (+125)
Healed: 313,058
Critical: 3,839 (-9)
Admitted: 29,404 (+395)
Tests: 3,088,313
