Nearly a year ago, the Tablighi Jamaat controversy took over India’s media. Around 3,500 foreign nationals had visited India to attend the Tablighi Jamaat event at the Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque in Delhi.

With the lockdown being announced on March 24, 2020, several attendees had moved to different parts of the country to attend smaller gatherings in local mosques.
Around 960 foreign nationals were held at quarantine and in states like UP, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, etc. were sent straight to prison.
There was an outpour of Anti-Muslim bigotry in much of Indian news media with this event where it ramped up its demonisation of the community.
For weeks, the attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat event were named the “super-spreaders” of COVID and in several cases, Maulana Mohammad Saad was called a terrorist and “the maulana of death”.
The Tablighis were bigotedly and unjustifiably blamed for aggravating the COVID situation in the country leading to egregious effects on many Muslims across the country.
On March 31 2020 during his news time show called “Bindaas Bol” Suresh Chavhanke of Sudharshan News called the Tablighis “human bombs carrying coronavirus” and proclaimed that what they did was, in fact, “corona jihad”.
OpIndia wrote several articles on how the attendees of the event had engaged in unlawful and unethical behaviour by spitting on people, attacking doctors and nurses, etc. All of these reports were later fact-checked as being fake news formulated to criminalise Muslims.
On his show, DNA, Zee News editor Sudhir Chaudhary, accused the Tablighi Jamaat of lying and betraying the whole nation. He also tweeted aerial images and videos of the Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque by making it look like the prime source of COVID cases in India.
Arnab Goswami of Republic TV asked whether this event was a conspiracy to turn Delhi into Italy and questioned the loyalty of the attendees to the nation.
Zee News came back into its communal frenzy on April 2 2020 when Aman Chopra, during his show Taal Thok Ke, crafted a new form of Jihad known as “spitting Jihad” which was aimed at targeting the attendees of the event.
Rahul Kanwal’s infamous sting on India Today, a channel that normally postures itself to be liberal, accused two Madarassas in Delhi in Noida of hiding their children in violation of lockdown and linking their teachers to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation.
He called this special investigation “The Madrassa Hotspot”. India Today also published a poster to analyse the COVID statistics in the country which was evidently loaded with communal symbols meant to demonize Muslims.
It’s nearly been a year since the media trail of the Tablighi Jamaat. Using the discourse of "COVID nationalism" dominant across the globe with a twist of home-grown Hindutva-oriented Islamophobia, this media trial went on for months.
Countrywide, there were cases of Muslims facing discrimination at the hands of their neighbours and government officials because of the numerous communally hate-filled stings and reports by the Indian Media.
In December 2020, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Arun Kumar Garg acquitted the 36 remaining foreigners from 14 countries of all charges in the case which involved Section 3 of Epidemic Diseases Act, Sections 51/58 (1) of Disaster Management Act, 2005, and Sections 188/269 of the..
…Indian Penal Code.
A year on, in terms of the prejudiced origin stories of COVID in the country, not much has changed. Several media houses still stand by their narratives that the Tablighi Jamaat attendees were the source of the pandemic in the country.
Large-scale damage has already been done.

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I've seen many news articles cite that "the UK variant could be the dominant strain by March". This is emphasized by @CDCDirector.

While this will likely to be the case, this should not be an automatic cause for concern. Cases could still remain contained.

Here's how: 🧵

One of @CDCgov's own models has tracked the true decline in cases quite accurately thus far.

Their projection shows that the B.1.1.7 variant will become the dominant variant in March. But interestingly... there's no fourth wave. Cases simply level out:

https://t.co/tDce0MwO61


Just because a variant becomes the dominant strain does not automatically mean we will see a repeat of Fall 2020.

Let's look at UK and South Africa, where cases have been falling for the past month, in unison with the US (albeit with tougher restrictions):


Furthermore, the claim that the "variant is doubling every 10 days" is false. It's the *proportion of the variant* that is doubling every 10 days.

If overall prevalence drops during the studied time period, the true doubling time of the variant is actually much longer 10 days.

Simple example:

Day 0: 10 variant / 100 cases -> 10% variant
Day 10: 15 variant / 75 cases -> 20% variant
Day 20: 20 variant / 50 cases -> 40% variant

1) Proportion of variant doubles every 10 days
2) Doubling time of variant is actually 20 days
3) Total cases still drop by 50%

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MDZS is laden with buddhist references. As a South Asian person, and history buff, it is so interesting to see how Buddhism, which originated from India, migrated, flourished & changed in the context of China. Here's some research (🙏🏼 @starkjeon for CN insight + citations)

1. LWJ’s sword Bichen ‘is likely an abbreviation for the term 躲避红尘 (duǒ bì hóng chén), which can be translated as such: 躲避: shunning or hiding away from 红尘 (worldly affairs; which is a buddhist teaching.) (
https://t.co/zF65W3roJe) (abbrev. TWX)

2. Sandu (三 毒), Jiang Cheng’s sword, refers to the three poisons (triviṣa) in Buddhism; desire (kāma-taṇhā), delusion (bhava-taṇhā) and hatred (vibhava-taṇhā).

These 3 poisons represent the roots of craving (tanha) and are the cause of Dukkha (suffering, pain) and thus result in rebirth.

Interesting that MXTX used this name for one of the characters who suffers, arguably, the worst of these three emotions.

3. The Qian kun purse “乾坤袋 (qián kūn dài) – can be called “Heaven and Earth” Pouch. In Buddhism, Maitreya (मैत्रेय) owns this to store items. It was believed that there was a mythical space inside the bag that could absorb the world.” (TWX)