“We kept on moving.. moving moving.. showed no signs of slowing down.. up, up, up we go!”

In July of this year, a music video titled ‘Up We Go’ was released as the ‘Kerala Anthem’ as a tribute to the much hyped “Kerala Model”. In the video, Kerala Chief Minister Comrade Pinarayi Vijayan is shown leading the way with Comrade ‘Coronavirus Slayer’ KK Shailaja behind him and others like Congress MP Shashi Tharoor following.

The video shows how KK Shailaja and the Pinarayi government in Kerala have been leading the fight against the Wuhan Virus flashing pictures of articles from the Al Jazeera, Huff Post, The Guardian, etc.

https://youtu.be/WplzCoRH3Ms

Ever since the pandemic started spreading its tentacles across the country, KK Shailaja was elevated to the status of a messiah by a few media houses both inside and outside the country. In May 2020, BBC interviewed KK Shailaja on Kerala’s success story in containing the Chinese virus.

In this interview, the ‘corona slayer’ made several factually incorrect statements while responding to a question about number of COVID19 deaths and even called the Goa state, a Union Territory.

She belittled the efforts of other states like Goa in the interview saying that it had no hospitals to which Goa CM Dr. Pramod Sawant gave a strongly worded response in a series of tweets. He mentioned that Goa has outstanding healthcare facilities with Goa Medical College being one of the oldest and finest medical colleges in Asia, where for decades, large numbers of non-Goan patients from neighbouring states were getting treatment and also corrected Minister Shailaja that Goa is a full-fledged state and not a Union Territory.

All self-proclaimed experts and journalists started carrying stories about ‘how Kerala fought the virus’. The India Today went to the extent of conferring the award for Best State combating COVID19

After floating in the air amidst the hollow adulations, the ‘rock star’ Health Minister has finally landed coming to the grips of reality. Over the past few weeks the Kerala has been seeing a spike in the number of Wuhan virus cases. The state recorded over 1,20,000 cases in September alone. 8135 cases were reported on a October 1 alone.

As things stand today, Kerala has the second highest number of cases being reported per day. It ranks third in the number of patients undergoing treatment and has the highest in the active cases ratio in the entire country.

The state has now imposed Section 144 across the state with the rising pandemic.

Earlier, the ‘rock star’ Health Minister KK Shailaja had said that she expected the cases to rise at a pace of 10,000-20,000 per day.

However, the PR agents of Pinarayi who were glorifying Comrades Pinarayi and KK Shailaja and the so called success of the ‘left politics’ and “Kerala Model” have now gone on mute.

The lines from the music video ‘Up We Go’ – “We kept on moving.. moving moving.. showed no signs of slowing down.. up, up, up we go!”  – with the picture of Comrades leading the way has now gained an ironical twist.

S Kaushik

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