(May 12) As the virus burns through India, a sense of futility and fear has become commonplace. The country is reporting nearly 400,000 confirmed infections and 4,000 deaths every day, tallies that are certain to be drastic undercounts. In Delhi, public parks have been requisitioned as makeshift crematoriums, with rows of funeral pyres burning where kids once played cricket. Hospital beds and oxygen cylinders are in short supply, as are doctors and nurses. Some researchers predict that the total number of fatalities—currently at 250,000—could top 400,000 by mid-June and then keep climbing. The crisis in India is horrific on its own terms, generating misery and loss at an enormous scale. It also has worrisome implications for the rest of the globe. Home to the world’s largest vaccine industry and, until remarkably recently, recording only a modest number of coronavirus cases, India was central to international plans to inoculate developing countries by churning out low-cost doses. Instead its exports have largely ceased, with available vials prioritized for domestic use, and there’s no timeline for when they might resume. Meanwhile, an unchecked outbreak in a nation of over a billion citizens creates ideal conditions for new variants to take hold. It’s hard to imagine a more effective way to come up with mutations that might resist current vaccines. Epidemiologists and armchair experts debated a range of theories to explain the decline in infections, as well as India’s relatively low number of deaths among those who did get sick. Many cited the protection afforded by its youthful population, with a median age of just 27. Others suggested the warm climate of South Asia might be slowing viral transmission, or speculated that enough Indians had already been infected to reach some degree of herd immunity. Then there was the so-called hygiene hypothesis: the notion that, in a country of crowded cities and poor sanitation, people are naturally resilient to new diseases. Some scientists urged caution. For one thing, no one could be sure the figures were correct. India’s testing rates are less than half those in the U.S., and mortality statistics are notoriously unreliable. Even in normal times, about 1 in 5 fatalities are never reported to the authorities, and official records often don’t list a cause of death. In December, the country had detected its first cases of B.1.1.7, the variant initially identified in the U.K., prompting concerns about out-of-control spread. Yet politicians needed little encouragement to bring life back to normal. Even as infection rates began to rise in February, multiple state elections drew huge, largely unmasked crowds to hear candidates speak. Modi bragged about the size of the rallies he and his right-hand man, Home Minister Amit Shah, had managed to hold ahead of the vote in West Bengal, a densely populated state of more than 90 million people. Officials also encouraged citizens to participate in the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival on the banks of the Ganges that is the world’s largest human gathering. Millions did, packing shoulder to shoulder by the edge of the sacred river. By mid-March, the number of infections reported each day had more than doubled from a month earlier, while India’s vaccine rollout remained sluggish. At the World Health Organization in Geneva, chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan fretted that her home country was ignoring a viral time bomb. “It could take off again at any time,” she said on March 13. “We should not become complacent.” It was already too late. --- Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2TwO8Gm Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world. To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/qt/live, or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app. Connect with us on… YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bloomberg Breaking News on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BloombergQuickTakeNews Twitter: https://twitter.com/quicktake Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quicktake Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quicktake