In the past, far-left propagandists, in a bid to pull down the Modi government, used to criticize India without basis. Now they’ve graduated to hyping up other countries without basis.
The Print’s Shekhar Gupta, who often spreads fake news, today made a somewhat startling claim. “Germany also has piles of AZ (Astra Zeneca) surplus, available to any adult on demand,” he claimed on Twitter, hinting that while India now has vaccine shortages, Germany has plentiful vaccines for all those who need them
But this claim was so laughable that it could be disproven with a simple Google search. Less than two weeks ago, Reuters had published a news story on how Germany was facing vaccine shortages of its own. “German vaccine seekers getting aggressive, doctors say,” the story was titled.
“Germans desperate to be vaccinated against the coronavirus are becoming increasingly aggressive, doctors said on Wednesday, as frustration mounts after six months of lockdowns even though infection rates are now falling,” the story said.
The story added that Germans were getting so desperate and angry at not receiving the vaccine that they were showing up at doctors’ practices even without their turn, and turning aggressive.
“”The pressure on vaccination centres and doctors’ practices is growing. People pushing for vaccination are becoming more demanding,” Anke Richter-Scheer, the deputy head of the German association of family doctors, told the Funke media group. As Germany extends priority for vaccines to more groups, it is becoming less comprehensible to many people why they should have to wait behind others, Richter-Scheer said. People are showing up at doctors’ practices and trying to get vaccines even though it is not their turn, with the mood getting more aggressive, she said,” the Reuters story said.
So far from Shekhar Gupta’s claim that Germany had “piles” of vaccines which were available to any adult on demand, Germany was actually facing a shortage of vaccines which was causing people to become aggressive with doctors. This was also corroborated by several tweets from German people, weeks before Gupta had made his claim.
“I just want the fucking vaccine. Like I am out here risking my life every week just so ppl can continue to do their grocery shopping it shouldn’t be that complicated for me to get the fucking vaccine. I hate Germany for that,” a German Twitter user had tweeted 6 days ago.
Other people were publicly celebrating getting vaccine appointments in Germany, which would hardly happen if the country had piles of surplus vaccines. “I got my dad a vaccine appointment in Germany for next week!!!! I’m so happy because all of my close family will be fully vaccinated soon,” another Twitter user had written four days ago.
Another user said that getting a vaccine appointment in Germany was “close to impossible.” “i got my vaccine appointment!!! in freaking Germany, which is close to impossible lol but YAYYY,” they’d written on 19th March.
Gupta is now getting on in years, and probably thinks that he can continue to spread fake news about faraway foreign nations as he’s done for most of his journalistic career. But this is the age of information technology, and it’s easier for Indians to catch his lies, even if they pertain to events half a world away. And as Reuters’ report and numerous anecdotal accounts show, Shekhar Gupta’s claim that vaccines are plentiful in Germany was completely fake, and carefully designed to try to make India look bad in comparison.
