Hope for the crest: an Omicron wave hits India
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2022
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The country has the world’s worst estimated covid-death total—but as another variant takes hold there are reasons for optimism. Mexico’s president has some old-fashioned notions about energy, and his pet legislation would make it both dirtier and costlier. And the Orient Express was itself a murder victim, just one line in a continent-spanning rail network that may yet be revived.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:08.0 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.0 | An amendment to Mexico's constitution, wending its way through the legislature, would wind |
| 0:22.2 | back the clock for the country's vast energy sector. We ask why the president is so determined |
| 0:27.6 | to make energy worse for the planet and for pocketbooks. And back in the 1970s, there was a murder |
| 0:35.2 | of the Orient Express. |
| 0:37.6 | We look back on the slow decline of a continent-spanning rail network that was far more than |
| 0:42.4 | just a mystery novel setting, and it died at the hands of more than just one murderer. First up, though... |
| 0:57.0 | In India, testing revealed nearly 160,000 new COVID infections on Sunday. |
| 1:08.0 | That's assuredly just a fraction of the real total. Several states |
| 1:13.2 | announced restrictions imposing curfews and closing schools and gyms. The Omicron variant |
| 1:18.7 | is becoming dominant in India's largest cities, places scarred by memories of the Delta variant. |
| 1:24.5 | At least six hospitals in the Indian capital Delhi have completely run out of oxygen. |
| 1:30.3 | Other hospitals say they have just hours left of supplies. |
| 1:33.3 | They have burned over 800 bodies here in the last three weeks, in what used to be a car park. |
| 1:40.3 | Estimates drawn up by the economist suggest that about 5 million people have died from COVID in India more than in any other country. |
| 1:48.2 | Prime Minister Narendra Modi, though, highlighted India's successes on Friday. |
| 1:56.0 | Health workers had administered 1.5 billion vaccine doses and had begun vaccinating teenagers. |
| 2:06.5 | It's one source of hope for Indians that this wave might be different. |
| 2:11.2 | The pattern in India will likely be similar to other countries that are experiencing Omicron, |
| 2:15.5 | which is to say that the numbers are going to rip up very, very, very fast. |
... |
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