Another Saturday and another National Task Force meeting presided over by Mr. Hassan Rouhani, the President of Islamic Republic. Unsurprisingly, there was no new restrictions or any new plan, he relied on his Ministry of Health statistics to pass the time and get out of the meeting, a group of people who are supposed to lead people in weathering this crisis, are themselves master problem makers. Rouhani is either way behind in reading reports, he doesn’t listen to the news or he just likes to be on top of the news regardless of the reason!
On July 4, Dr Mardani, a member of the National Task Force said that based on serological tests (ELISA), by estimation about 18,000,000 Iranians have contracted the disease. On July 14, Raisi, Deputy Health Minister in Health Affairs, said, serological tests are not for diagnostic purposes and only used in epidemiological studies. He even went further and said, “In my opinion, they’re fraud if used for diagnosis.” On July 15, Dr. Zafarghandi, head of Iran Medical Council, implied that “herd immunity” pursued by the government is condemned to failure and his multiple letters to the “President” has gone unanswered. Now, July 18, is Rouhani’s turn. He said, “According to this report, so far, 25,000,000 Iranians have contracted the virus. More than 200,000 have been admitted to hospitals and close to 14,000 have lost their dear lives. We estimate that about 30-35 MILLION more Iranians will be infected.”
So many questions need answering. Immediately after the meeting, Secretary of Science Committee of National Task Force tried to explain what Rouhani “meant”, which is strange, because he was very clear. Dr. Mostafa Ghaneie blamed it on ELISA kits and said they’re not used for diagnostics, and the president meant the people who haven’t had any symptoms. But having symptoms or not is not what “infection” or “confirmed cases” mean. Basically, what every day Sadat Lari or before her, Jahanpur have been saying is the fraction of what’s happening in Iran, just like we’ve been saying for MONTHS. Now that it’s confirmed by the head of National Task Force, let’s have a simple calculation. If we take Ministry’s death rate at 5.6%, for 25,000,000, it means 1,400,000 deaths in the past 5 months and if their estimate is correct, it translates to 1,500,000 to 1,750,000 more deaths in the future at 5% death rate! Even if the death rate is discounted to 2-3%, it’s devastating, it’s a genocide at the hands of Islamic Republic. All because Khamenei and other leaders in the country would rather sacrifice Iranians than use the money they have stacked up in the past 41 years to help the people and close down the country for a few weeks to stop the spread.
Despite all this, Ministry of Health Spokesman, Sima Sadat Lari, announced 2,166 new cases and 188 deaths have been confirmed in the past 24 hours. While the number of tests are up and down across the country, the hospitals from most provinces are in dire need of fresh blood in human resources and new beds, Sadat Lari only mentions 10 provinces in red status and pretends everything in all other provinces is fine. She even so proudly announced declining number of admissions in Khuzestan and Zanjan! Since yesterday, there is no mention of “alarming” province altogether, hiding the truth from Iranians even more. In reality, however, 25 provinces are still struggling to battle the virus.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) and graphs show the ongoing crisis while Islamic Republic wants to achieve “herd immunity”, despite the fact that countries which tried it have failed already, but as usual, Islamic Republic is to show how it’s “best at everything.”
R0: 1.33
Total: 271,606 (+2,166)
Dead: 13,979 (+188)
Healed: 235,300
Critical: 3,529 (+20)
Admitted: 22,327 (-449)
Tests: 2,123,518 (Number of labs wasn’t mentioned in today’s news. Officials may have finally figured out there are discrepancies when they lie.)
