A member of the Australia Federal Parliament, Craig Kelly, wants the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Adityanath to manage the Covid-19 crisis in Australia.
Vivek Asri
Fetured image: “Craig Kelly, Liberal for Hughes” by Stilgherrian is licensed under CC BY 2.0
In a tweet, Mr Kelly expressed how impressed he is with the work UP Chief Minister has done to manage the coronavirus pandemic in his state.
Applauding UP, he said, “Any chance they could loan us their Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to release the Ivermectin sort out the mess our hopelessly incompetent State Premiers have created (sic).”
Mr Kelly shared a tweet by data analyst J Chamie which says that Uttar Pradesh, with 17% of the country population, had 2.5% of the deaths and less than 1% of the cases in the last 30 days.
Chamie compared UP with Maharashtra, saying, “Maharashtra with 9% of the pop had 18% of the cases and 50% of the total deaths (sic).”
“Maharashtra is India’s pharma hub. Uttar Pradesh is the champion in using Ivermectin.”
In Uttar Pradesh, over 1.7 mn people are so far affected by novel coronavirus covid-19. 1,683,058 out of 1,707,350 have recovered while 22,698 patients have died, according to official reports.
River beds dotted with graves
However, according to a BBC report, “there is a massive discrepancy between the official Covid-19 death figures and the actual numbers on the ground in Uttar Pradesh”.
A journalist told BBC that 96 people had died from the virus in Kanpur between 16 April and 5 May, but the data from seven crematoriums showed nearly 8,000 cremations.
Hundreds of corpses have been found floating in the river Ganges or buried in the sand of its banks.
‘Spreading misinformation’
Though, many in the medical fraternity and civil society do not agree with Mr Kelly’s observation.
Dr Haroon Kasim of The Humanism Project says Mr Kelly should not spread misinformation.
“As we struggle with the resurgence CoVID-19 epidemic in NSW – it is important that we do not support misinformation on CoVID-19. It is also important that we don’t enable leaders who spread bigotry and Islamophobia. We ask that Mr Kelly reconsider his views on Ivermectin in management of CoVID-19 and his validation of Mr Adityanath – given his deeply troubling background of bigotry and Islamophobia,” said Dr Kasim
Dr Kasim says Mr Kelly is promoting Ivermectin while it has been scientifically proven that this medicine has little effect on Covid-19 patients.
A study published by Oxford University Press has already concluded that Ivermectin does not reduce “all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients.”
“In comparison to SOC or placebo, IVM did not reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease. IVM did not have an effect on AEs of severe AEs. IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients,” concluded the authors of the study published on 28 June 2021.
Who is Craig Kelly?
Craig Kelly is serving as a member of the Division of Hughes in the Australian House of Representatives since 2010. He was a member of the Liberal Party, which he left in February this year.
Kelly’s views on the COVID-19 pandemic were described as “crackpot” by the head of the Australian Medical Association.
Facebook removed one of his posts where he said that forcing children to wear masks is child abuse. Instead, he advocated for hydroxychloroquine to be used in Australia to prevent COVID-19, a medicine that, the majority of researchers say, has no effect on Coronavirus.
In December last year, Kelly said that he would not vaccinate himself or his children if a vaccine became approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. However, he later clarified that he was not anti-vax.
He then switched to promoting Ivermectin, a head lice treatment, as a COVID-19 treatment. The Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly, has stated that Craig Kelly’s posts are “not scientifically based”.
Follow NRI Affairs on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
