As the second wave devastates India, there is a Nero-vian feel to it all: a smug, inert state indifferent to the smell of burning<\/p>\n
In India\u2019s capital city, citizens are dying in their hospital beds because they can\u2019t breathe. Their lungs, clotted with Covid-induced pneumonia, need oxygen to function. Overwhelmed by India\u2019s tsunami-like second wave<\/a> and undermined by the smug inertia of the state, hospitals run out of oxygen and patients choke to death in front of their horrified families.<\/p>\n Sometimes hospitals will discharge patients on oxygen support, casually giving their relatives a day or two to find rare air. They set off on frantic odysseys around Delhi, looking for one of two sources of oxygen: a heavy cylinder that weighs 50kg or more and looks like a dented relic from the Industrial Revolution, or a concentrator which extracts oxygen from the air in the room and pipes it into the patient. Delhi is something of a seller\u2019s market. Prices vary. The going rate for a concentrator this week is 160,000 rupees, or slightly more than \u00a31,500. That is a month\u2019s salary for a tenured professor in a public university.<\/p>\n