EP 163: WHO finally says COVID is CCP Virus, was preventable; Ethereum founder donates $1B to India

Sree Iyer: Namaskar. Welcome to Daily Global Insights Episode 163. I am Sree Iyer and joining me as always, is Sridhar Chityalaji. Thank God, it’s Friday. It is our goal to cover the top 20 items of the day in 20 minutes. Here we go!

In US News, the Republican bill aims to restrict critical race theory from schools. Some say it wants to ban critical race theory from schools, workplace military and while the Republicans are taking that stand, the AMA supports critical race Theory. Sir, we have discussed this at length previously, one of the hangouts. What chance do the Republicans have of passing this bill, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: The Republicans probably don’t have the votes to get this passed because they have to prioritize, but as a symbol of defiance, they’re going to introduce the bill and, you know, put it to vote. It may become all even Stevens and then obviously Miss Harris will do the filibuster. But what’s happening is very clear that as is the case that’s going on, you’re going to have the Republican States passing bills which will ban in their respective States, whatever Biden is trying to get passed or the Democrats are trying to get passed in the House and the Senate that’s just what is going to happen. And then you will have some of the institutions like the American Medical Association, which officially announces that its Association supports the critical race theory and the use of the word equality, rather than meritocracy,

Sree Iyer: Interesting and viewers, please stay through this hangout. We have got some big reveals coming as we progress in giving you the news, White House, end in sight in gas, disruptions after Colonial pipeline resumes operations. A Canadian Oil Company defies the Michigan Governor order to shut the oil pipeline. So, this is a side story, that is started now, isn’t it?

Sridhar Chityala: The side story that has started here is, that there is a major pipeline that is owned by the Canadians and operated by the Canadians. I think is called as the Enbridge, the Enbridge pipeline, which runs from Michigan right across. The Michigan Governor, you know, has made the comment that it’s a sitting time bomb, you know, going through Lake Michigan and needs to be shut down, whereas the company has stated in, given the present circumstances of energy shortages it is not prepared to shut the specific pipe down. So, there’s nothing that one can do, you can bring federal agencies and so on but, you’re not going to shut it down if the company refuses to do so. In the given circumstances which are namely that there is a significant shortage and rising prices.

Sree Iyer: In all these things you know Democratic Governors want to do things a certain way. Republican Governors want to do certain things a certain way, almost every one of these things is along partisan lines. What happened to governance, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: The governance is determined by the present prevailing dictum in the United States, who has the might has the right to do what they want to do. And it is about their respective policies and asserting the policies. So, this new green Journey that they are embarking on is all about anything that is going to cause disruption to this Green Theory, namely emission controls and upsetting the ecosystem and potential calamity to the populations. Now, this is always been contested by the Republicans. We have seen that from Keystone Pipeline to the Alaskan oil fields to the reserves in that region. Everywhere you have seen contention and what you are now seeing is, far more forthright approach because you have a president, you know who is in limbo and you have a progressive regime, which is running the administration. That is one of the reasons why you have this major problem. There’s no leadership because the leadership is fragmented. Even from the president side, you will soon see that one of the ex-Republican Treasures or secretaries making the comment who is running the United States.

Sree Iyer: Yes, indeed, that’s a reveal that I was referring to. In fact, we are going to gloat over it because we were the first ones to perhaps go online and say this thing out loud. America under siege under Biden watch as cyber-attack Gains momentum, Colonial pipeline, Florida Water Treatment Plant, Hospital IT systems, VPN network Gap in the Defense and Solar Winds hack.  It doesn’t seem to stop. It is just coming out of the Woodworks. Sir, what is now, the plan, I mean the US now is vulnerable for close to six to nine months, since we have been hearing all these attacks coming across, Where do we stand now is in a concentrated order or a cogent policy that the Biden Administration is coming up with to tackle all these things?

Sridhar Chityala: So I think that they’re coming up with a plan, basically, to search detect and apply appropriate punishment, which could be ban, which would be enforcement, which could be a specific type of measures very similar to what you’d see apply across countries like Iran. And so on going after the officials and going after the people and imposing severe types of sanctions. So that’s one part of the enforcement process in terms of what the Biden Administration is trying to do. The second is they are also enhancing probably allocating Capital to make sure that there is a very defined cyber policy in terms of tracking and much more on monitoring on a pre-emptive basis. Right now, we are in a reactionary mode rather, than in a pre-emptive mode. One would assume that we would have already gone into the situation of being proactive and pre-emptive and having deterrent measures in place. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. In, meanwhile, the lawmakers are saying that if some of the states are been passive because if it happens to be, For example, you have seen, you know, in the case of Israel, so you have some organizations you have people within Democratic party supporting the Palestinians and Hamas and then few members within the Democratic party supporting Israel. Now if this kind of what you call a dichotomy or descent steps into States, then states could have a problem in terms of enforcement. So the lawmakers are introducing Bill also to support local and state governments. Both from a funding point of view, tracking, monitoring as well as enforcement just in case there is any deterrent. These are the two set of actions that have been announced yesterday, in terms of our response to this Cyber-attack now.

Sree Iyer: The Cyber Security executive order that Biden has signed. Hopefully, this has some teeth in it. And we also need to understand and I think this is more for the lawmakers of the United States, the Congressmen and women at least for 24 hours looks like iron lady Nancy Pelosi has put a kibosh on some of the loudmouths from certain sections of the Democratic Party. I shall not name them beyond this. Republican states progressively rollout anti-Biden policies with Florida and Texas leading the state. Sir, I have a problem with this.

I think, you need to look at what is good for the country first, you can take partisan line, but I think before that the country’s interest comes, I don’t know what is laws, perhaps you can expand this for me, shouldn’t be opposing it just because it is an anti-Biden.

Sridhar Chityala: No, I think it is a principal issue around its policy, for example, gun control. You know, some of the states are going to oppose the gun control laws and some of the specific implementations that the Democrats have in mind, which they’re passing through executive order number one. Number two, they’re going to take position specifically around the critical race Theory we have alluded to that which has talked about it as number two. The third is this whole thing around mandatory vaccinations so, states are going to say you know, we’re not going to mandate everybody to have vaccines though we would recommend people having vaccines that’s number three. Especially so when you have more and more you know complaints, today we even have had complaints that the Pfizer vaccine has some clogs and consequences, Moderna has had this issue, J&J has had this issue, AstraZeneca, we don’t use much had this issue. So you are going to see this policy difference between the two. So that’s fourth for you. It’s already established that many people are not coming back to work, which is acknowledged by Biden because of this unemployment policy and unemployment benefits that is getting rolled out. So you are going to see your Republican states basically saying we are not going to give unemployment benefits unless, you know, you can qualify to a specific threshold and people have to better get back to work. So, these are the subtle differences and you’re also going to find differences in the Environmental Policy, emission control policy, Green accords. So, what you are seeing is that wherever you have had a 180-degree shift in policy, you’re going to see the Republican states quite vehemently, opposed it because that’s been what they have been following thus far.

Sree Iyer: And then the next piece of news, I can remember, we said it first here, several weeks ago, Richard Grenell, who served in Trump Administration blasts Susan Rice for acting as Shadow president for a weak Biden. Sir, we have been proved right again.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, when you look at some of the flip-flops that happen from a policy point of view, one has to guess that you know, that something is fundamentally wrong. The fact that Richard Grenell who was in the National Intelligence Agency in the Trump Administration to come out blasted Susan Rice for saying, hey you know, you are really, pushing out orders or pushing out policies almost acting as a shadow of president. It’s not good for the country. But well, you know Biden appears to be quite weak. It appears to be also, don’t know what’s his relative state of health is. But you’re beginning to see contradictory policies. The other thing that we have also been stating is that this looks very much, as the Obama administration. We talked about, Susan Hennessey yesterday, many, many members of the Biden Administration are very much the surrogates and of the old Obama administration and some of these policies that are getting rolled out seems to push the United States into much more push policies into confrontation. Look at the inconsistencies, we have a West-Asia Peace Accord, and then we have a problem. We have an Iranian negotiation, we have a problem, then you have the issue in Syria,  Iraq you have a problem, you have a pullback in Afghanistan, we have a problem. So we’re beginning to see a whole raft of policy inconsistencies are trying to reset the policies to the old Obama administration that is creating a problematic situation for the United States, which begs the question is this Biden or is this someone else running the show?

Sree Iyer: Sir, if this is what’s going to happen in the United States and what moral right does the United States have commenting on other systems and other democracies across the world?

Sridhar Chityala: Well, you know, this is geopolitics. So, you try to preach values that you don’t follow. So that’s just a common thing.

Sree Iyer: It’s not necessary that you have to practice what you preach.

Sridhar Chityala: It is not the case, that’s geopolitics. Unfortunately, you support dictator on one side, then you go and talk about democracy on the other side. So this is the base that has been geopolitics, so we can’t win this one.

Sree Iyer: In India news, After our sessions, India announces its vaccine program, including the roadmap for two billion, vaccines many Indian homegrown vaccines are now going to be made available. Now, you heard it first here in one day, we had two different sessions where we stressed, the need for open communication a roadmap on part of the government of India for, their vaccination plan. And I think they have delivered, we’re going to give you some more data as this thing comes along. Sir, you have thoughts.

Sridhar Chityala: My thoughts are I think it is a pretty good plan. In fact, some of the words that are spelt out there’s a big video presentation that has been given some of the things that are spelt out the principles that we are laid out is okay, everybody is talking about oxygen shortage in a talk about oxygen shortage. Do we have enough? Well, they have seems to have responded to that. Then we have talked about vaccination. We have only 178 million people vaccinated doesn’t seem to be enough, vaccines audit Plus in a backdrop or backup that is built out. So does India have a roadmap in terms of vaccinating the people? So I think the health Ministry has, you know, clearly laid out. In fact, they say there’s a whole series of mini paper that we have put out, which list various things that is,  at work. What’s happening in the Indian government is doing a lot of a piecemeal announcement and communication there is not an integrated set of data that says, you know, what are the various things not just purely the vaccines, oxygen, the ecosystem that surrounds it, what some of the complications that come out of it, like the fungus infection that has been noticed. What is the specific medication that has that they have come up with from a treatment point of view?  What is some of the tablets and pills that they are going to use very similar to Hydroxychloroquine? So there is a fairly detailed plan that they walked out. But what is most refreshing is there are close to two billion vaccines that have been announced from a supply point of view and this is expected to be availed by the Indian government between August and December. So, if they can get access to these two billion vaccines, they are given the numbers, the rapping of the production of Covaxin, and CoviShield to about 178 million per month from August. Sputnik is going to come into play and there’s another setup of vaccines, which are local, manufactured in India, that is listed that you can see in the diagram and that means that India is got a pretty good ecosystem coming. There is pain, there is suffering. Nothing is achieved overnight. All these things take a bit of time.

Sree Iyer: I have that the covid numbers here on the screen. Now, first off, let’s take a look.  Since you mentioned, this will go back to the other thing later sir. First, let us take a look at the world numbers. We have at the US, 33.586 million total cases, and the number of I’m trying to read the number of serious critical is at 8707. Active cases are 6.368 million and so on. So but if you look at this whole thing, India still per million, India is still one of the lowest.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think, this is the contention that contention is, when you look at the Indian numbers, India has performed a relatively well, compared to the other countries that two theories, which basically try to argue against this one are whether the numbers are understated. Now, we have tried to validate the numbers to the extent possible. What we are hearing is that some of these death numbers are directly correlated from deaths reported in, some of the morgues and graveyards and so on and so forth. So there is to some extent validity in the numbers that are being presented. For example, if you take the case of India, the number of deaths that are reported is 256,000 or 258,000 or 260,000, take the case of the number of people who have discharged is close to about close to 20 million. Recovery is close to 20 million people on a total of 23 million still, the outstanding number is pretty high. Those who are getting hospital, treated is about 3.7 million, but it’s coming down, we discuss these numbers. The point that we’re trying to make amongst the top 10 countries here, when you take a look at the relative population of this country’s, you know, India stands out as the country with the largest population but seems to be doing relatively well, given the size of the country, plus the state of the development of the infrastructure. Yes, they underestimated wave two’s intensity and the transmissibility of wave two but, again you know all the countries are dealing with this issue.

The third-largest economy, namely Japan which you don’t find, here again, we discussed it yesterday is still short of vaccines. They still haven’t got a full-fledged vaccination program being rolled out and they have Olympics that is awaited.

Look at some of the other countries numbers when you get time. But the reason we wanted to point out is these are not small numbers, the United States is 600,000, India is about to 260,000, look at Brazil is 428,000, you know France is more than 107,000. You look at the population in terms of deaths, when you look at Russia is about 115,000. When you look at the UK it’s about 127,000, when you look at Italy, it’s about 123,000 deaths. These are big numbers on a relatively small population compared to India.

Sree Iyer: That’s true, sir. Thank you very much for sharing those things. Once dismissed, as something that’s not going to work out Indian railways Oxygen Express has emerged as a key part of the medical oxygen supply chain, over 100 oxygen expresses have delivered 6260 tons of liquid oxygen so, in fact, Rail is the safest way to transport liquid oxygen, isn’t it?

 Sridhar Chityala: They are. Indian railways have pretty much-moved anything and everything from people, to Army, to tractors, to cars, to anything that you can think of. It has both it around the country from point to point, whether it is East to West or it is North to South. It has done a commendable job. But what is important to point out is that it has now become an important part of the cogwheel in the medical oxygen supply chain. So, therefore, it is fairly well anchored. I think one of the things that I am a little disappointed about is that, we touched on this yesterday in our session, is namely that they built a fantastic set of temporary hospitals by converting the railway coaches. In my view, they should have continued it and probably they should retool it and keep it maybe for another two to three years just to see what happens with various variants that are likely to come out and begin to enhance it around various parts of the country. Because you have the Northern Railway, Western Railway, Eastern Railway, Southern Railway, South-Central Railway etc. So when you have various kind of Zone Wise, Sub-Zone Wise rail infrastructure then clearly the rail infrastructure should be leveraged. In the good old days when I used to be a young man and or young fellow, they used to be Railway hospitals attached to many, many medium to small stations. I don’t whether they still exist today but that also needs to be further enhanced to deal with a crisis like this. In summary, the railway infrastructure should be leveraged. It clearly has become one of the logistical component cogwheels in the value chain of the medical delivery process.

Sree Iyer: In other news, the Sterlite plant in Tuticorin dispatches the first batch of liquid oxygen. Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Donates $1 Billion in Cryptocurrency for India COVID Battle. Wow. Even if it is Bitcoin, still a billion dollars, isn’t it, Sir?

Sridhar Chityala: Firstly, I’m delighted to see the controversial and political banana – Sterlite plant back in action and then doing some terrific work with the first batches of oxygen. I think they’ve also got a deal with the Karnataka government where they plan to propose to establish a liquid oxygen plant.

In terms of Ethereum, we discussed Bitcoin. He probably said here’s one Bitcoin. I’m giving you a billion dollars. Redeemable. You can probably redeem it in one of the Ethereum exchanges. One coin and you have got your billion dollars. Transfer the money to either PMCares fund or wherever he is transferring it to and up he goes. Does Bitcoin have a non-profit dispensation mechanism? It is a simple, efficient and easy to distribute model rather than, using your $9.95 using a credit card bank account so on and so forth. You transfer a Bitcoin and then they go and redeem it through appropriate exchanges, and the money is in the account. Firstly, I congratulate Vitalik to have done this. It is a highly commendable charitable effort by him.

Sree Iyer: Yogi government in Uttar Pradesh is going to ramp up its pediatric ICU in districts and build medical infrastructure. I think these are all preparations for a possible third wave, isn’t it, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: I think sometimes a crisis gives the opportunity for a country to augment what it should have done as a natural course of evolution of the ecosystem which they haven’t. But now, it has given them the opportunity for putting the money to work.

Sree Iyer: In Global News, Israel-Palestinian clashes rattle the West Asian peace deal and the Biden foreign policy under threat. Clashes spread from Missouri to Temple Mount to Chicago. Now Chicago is a surprise, sir. Why do you say that the riots have spread to Chicago?

Sridhar Chityala: I state that the classes have spread to Chicago, basically, because there was a big protest yesterday in Chicago. We saw that day before yesterday in New York, not as big as what one observed many supporting the Palestinian cause and of course, there were also the Israeli supporters supporting it. There were definitely clashes here in New York. As far as the West Asia peace deal is concerned, these clashes between Israel and Hamas is definitely creating some rumbles. And thus far, it has not detoured into the rest of the countries but it could easily backfire and spin out of control. So the whole foreign policy attempts by Biden could be coming under threat. This is one of the areas where we have a problem.

If you’ll recall, we had talked about $125 million of covid money being sent to the Palestinian territories. So it’s almost like flagging, we are supporting your cause. This in conjunction with this sudden relaxation in the Iran policy, and then attempting to bring Iran to the table, when all the time the world was talking about minimum preconditions of the terms of the United Nations of sanctions being met around enrichment of uranium, around the development of nuclear capabilities. You find that these two policies suddenly begins to ratchet up some of the issues that can rapidly spread. We have also discussed some of the incursions and some of the challenges that the Iranian gunboats have posed to the US ships in the Straits of Hormuz and in the upper Indian Ocean.

Sree Iyer: John Kerry denies sharing Israel operations with Iran. Remember, we also talked about this a week or two ago. It seemed to have died down then, but now it has raised its ugly head again, sir.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think that is a continuous saga in terms of making sure that he is called to action because it’s quite a serious offence. John Kerry continues to deny that he has shared any Israeli operations with Iranians. There is also a little bit of political bickering by the Republicans. They should have put this issue to rest given the inflammable situation that we are in. But anyway, be it, as it may, it has propped up. He continues to deny until there is some kind of an investigation because there was a leak of the recordings, the voice recordings. So this is what popped up the whole problem.

Sree Iyer: Marie Le Pen leads in the first poll while Macron is in the second position, increasing support for police. France is now beginning to tilt right and noticeably so. Even all of Europe is now starting to tilt right? Sir, before I let you answer this question, I want to tell our viewers that we’ve had several Hangouts with Prof. R Vaidyanathan for the last three years or so. And we’ve been stressing this, that Europe is doomed unless it does something about it. In fact, the favourite quotes of Prof. RV have been, ‘the average age of a policeman in Belgium is 41 and so is his waist size in inches.’ Sir, go ahead.

Sridhar Chityala: I think the whole propagation, the whole advocacy of this is coming from – you hit the nail and Prof. Vaidyanathan as well, around the constant police attacks. The police are well respected in many of these European destinations and they find that many of these attacks come from either the communities that have not integrated or new immigrants who have made their way during the Arab Spring or over the period of time. So the attacks seem to stem from those people. So, under these circumstances, one would expect people to wake up and this is very similar to defund police forces versus the fund police movement that we have seen, which some states support and some states don’t. But by and large, Europe seems to be moving that way.

France has taken very strong views and very strong approaches in terms of dealing with these issues and they have been unequivocal in stating that people must integrate into the value and the culture system if they choose to live in France and follow and abide by the rules. Madame, Le Pen definitely is a big Advocate and that is why the numbers are propping up. Macaron is also a big Advocate and he is backing up with his scheme. The question, therefore, is macaron a little more global whereas La Pen is much more nationalistic. That could be the reason why there is a marginal difference in the first and second polling. But clearly, France is leading the way and many other people are moving towards that type of mindset in Europe.

Sree Iyer: Next news is just as interesting. As migrants land in the UK, I’m assuming this is the United Kingdom and not Ukraine, Italy pushes the EU to buy revitalize scheme to spread migrants across Europe. This is what started the whole problem a few years back, isn’t it?

Sridhar Chityala: I think that the UK is coming up with a much more stringent policy in terms of dealing with migrants. Now, this is not Ukraine, this is very much the UK. One of the underpinnings of the Brexit was, as part of the EU you had to support the broad EU policy of refugee intake which the UK was unwilling to do, given the UK itself is inundated with refugees and immigrants and illegal immigrants and so on and so forth. So, therefore, as more and more migrants land in the UK and get expelled because the UK has a much more stringent policy, Italy is saying that look at what the UK is doing and I’m getting a lot of people by boats into… Now, we have even Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans, and all kinds of other people. Apparently, this is now a legitimate-illegitimate operation of carrying all these people in the boat and trying to push them into Italy. So EU is saying that I can’t have come up with a scheme that allows me to harmonize and normalize this.

Sree Iyer: The United States cannot do a climate deal with China which uses slave labour to make solar panels say, Republican Senators.  Well, the whole world has been using solar panels for two decades now. Why now, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: Why now? Because you have to come up with valid and right, righteous excuses. You tolerated certain principles for a long time and you allowed this to go. So, now the famous words in terms of containing China, China tilted our… you saw what happened between 2008 and 2016, the whole South China Sea, Spratly Islands, claim for Indo Pacific Islands, then infiltration into various countries, universities influencing the academic, political thinking that has happened. So suddenly people say that if you’re going to talk about human rights in certain countries, we have to start with China and China has got a big human rights problem. We saw that in Hong Kong, but now, a law has been passed in Hong Kong which actually delegitimizes Democratic Legislative Council membership, as well as the voice of dissent. So now, the world is waking up and saying let’s go to Uyghur, we have a problem in Uyghur because their problems are becoming visible. This is one of the things that is coming up and China is trying to make a backdoor entry back into the United States. ‘Oh well, Mr John Kerry, I’m very happy to do a deal with you on the climate but I’ll do it on my terms.’ Obviously, the Republicans are saying, ‘hey hold on here for a minute. You want to bring them back on the climate deal and they’re violated every rule and every law. If Solar or alternate energy is the mechanism, they’re violating human rights using slave labour to do it. SO, therefore, it is not acceptable. So that is why it has sprung up to the surface. We will see similar things on the South China Sea, and democracy and all those kinds of things prop up. But there seems to be a global coalition growing in terms of Uyghur condemnation.

Sree Iyer: I look forward to the day when Vice President Kamala Harris leads the delegation to Uyghur-stan with Ilhan Omar and Rasheeda Tlaib and Pramila Jaipal in to see the expressions on their faces. It should be priceless.

Taiwan restores far as After outages hit minions. So, sir, this is now country after country, they are experiencing these outages. I’m wondering which company gave them the infrastructure. They need to really looking-out for the bugs in their software.

Sridhar Chityala: This is the third-largest plant in Taiwan which is the Hsinta power plant which is in the Kaohsiung Province. This operates on both, coal and hydroelectric. The plants which run on both coal and natural gas power generators is the third-largest power plant. There was a malfunction apparently in the power grid which meant the power plant could not distribute electricity and that led to multiple power outages across Taiwan. They are not advocating whether this was a result of an attack. But I’m sure that, in the first instance you don’t hear and suddenly this issue may prop up. There seems to be a pattern around these power plants being attacked around the world. Taiwan is not an isolated case. If it is the case then, one can conclude. We have seen this in India, we have seen this in the United States and probably in a couple of smaller other countries and then it has come to Taiwan which is one of the hot spots of the world presented in the global confrontation between China and the rest of the world.

Sree Iyer: Yes. Indeed. In covid news, the Chinese Communist Party Pandemic was a preventable disaster, terrible breakup call says WHO commission panel. Wow, they’re calling the CCP pandemic.

Sridhar Chityala: Yes, they’re calling it the CCP Pandemic was a preventable disaster. But it was a terrible wake-up call says the WHO commission panel. The panel is basically stating that then to say ‘Hey, ‘we could have we still need to work away but we could have done a better job. It is a tremendous admission of what the world is facing.

Sree Iyer: We are already showing you the data about how covid has been affecting various countries. So I’m not going to go into that.

In markets, the Producer Price index has spiked to 6.2% for the 12 months that ended April. This is the largest increase since 2010. 6.2%. Wow. That’s a big, big number, sir.

Sridhar Chityala: It’s not a quarter for the year ended April which means rolling back from May 1st of last year to April 30th of this year, you have seen the Producer Price Index what’s called a PPI spike of 6.2%. It is the largest growth or largest spike since they kept records. We used to have the only CPI but the PPI records were held so it’s the highest spike. One way to look at it is, positive but the other way to look at it is it simply implies that there is a shortage cost by recalibration that is also going on as a result of import substitution, that is taking place in the industry. There is plenty of cash available in the system. There is a demand, there is a growing demand for buying some of these products and so the producer PPI is up on the run. This does not augur well if it is sustained to Mr Biden’s infrastructure plan and the loose economic policy. We have seen CPI increases, now we see the PPI increase. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the next three months. Yesterday, that is Wednesday, the markets spooked. On Thursday, the markets came back. Let’s see how the markets roll out. All the indices were up between 1.1% to 1.4%. The oil also touched 64 at $67 between Brent and WTI crew.

Sree Iyer: Yes, indeed. That brings a close to today’s segment. Stay safe. Stay at home. Be careful. This virus is not done yet. It’s still making the rounds and I think this is the new normal. I just lost another near and dear family member in India today and this doesn’t seem to stop. People are beginning to resign from reality, unfortunately. We are in this battle together. Stay safe, stay at home again. Namaskar, sir and we’ll be back again, early and bright on Monday.

Sridhar Chityala: Namaskar and my condolences for the loss of somebody who is near and dear. And condolences to all those who have suffered the pain of covid in your respective families, friends and other circles. Also, we are dealing with an unknown because all these new manifestations and new types of ailments is not something that you can blame the people and blame the government. But I think the world has dealt with it to the best of its ability. I am from New York, we have seen this for almost eight, nine months, the pain and suffering that we experience, the numbers that we saw last year, we are all now feeling really relieved and happy. But best wishes to everybody and we hope to turn the corner very soon and have a wonderful weekend.

Sree Iyer: Namaskar, sir. Thank you.