THE PANDEMIC LIKE A MONTAGNE RUSSE Are we going back to normal or not?

It's been three weeks since the exit from the state of emergency, and the daily number of infected with Sars-Cov 2 reported by the Group for Strategic Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs should clarify if the easing period would expand, remain in place or if we return to stricter restrictions. Unfortunately, the chart of cases of infections with the new coronavirus is muddy, and zigzags all over the place, like a montagne russe.

The authorities do not explain why the charts look like that, they claim that the easing measures for now have no effect on the cases of infections reported daily and that we shouldn't worry because we are on a downward trend. A trend which yesterday, according to the official press release from 13:00 hours, has seen a new variation upwards, through the 238 newly infected with Sars-Cov 2, compared to the 152 cases seen a day earlier, 119 cases on June 2nd, and 190 cases on May15th - the first day of the state of alert. Yesterday's situation was also seen last week, between May 26th and May 28th, when over 200 new cases of infected were reported daily.

Because of that, information has appeared which states that the authorities have been fudging the numbers, that they do not meet reality and that the way they are presented is intended to conceal the financial interests of the political cronies of the government.

One of the most fervent among those disputing the data provided by the authorities is deputy Varujan Vosganian, who claims that the number of daily cases is being reported randomly, because it does not match the daily confirmations.

Varujan Vosganian told BURSA: "The reports aren't being made on time, and the daily reports have nothing to do with the daily cases of infection. The authorities do not have a clear evidence of the names and locations of the cases reported daily, and if you track the statistics, 25% of the cases do not mention the county they come from, which is not alright at all. Also, the statistics have 2000 people who have healed that do no appear in any county, which is unbelievable, as long as they've been reported to have been infected someplace, and then the place where they have been healed is not specified. That is why I think there is a lot of approximation in the daily reports".

He also said that another question mark is the fact that only the number of infected is being presented, not that of active cases.

The deputy says the data provided by the authorities is being finagled, starting with president Klaus Iohannis and all the way through to the Group of Strategic Communication, who have constantly said that the peak of the pandemic has not been reached, even though in actuality it has. Vosganian says that the peak of the pandemic has been surpassed in the second half of April, which would also be confirmed by the statistics of the last week of the month in question, which have recorded a constant drop in the number of cases.

• Varujan Vosganian: "The state of alert - a business of at least 100 million Euros"

Moreover, Vosganian states that if statistics were made across counties, we would find that infections come from hotspots: hospitals and centers for the care of the elderly. The deputy also says that right now, 35 of the 42 Romanian counties have no case of Sars-Cov 2, which means that almost 80% of the country shouldn't even be under a state of alert.

Varujan Vosganian says: "We are basically witnessing data manipulation. Statistics manipulation is used to keep people in a state of panic and constant tensions and to give the authorities a role they shouldn't have at this time. Then there are major inventories of protection and medical equipment that needs to go. Let's take the case of protective masks. The requirement to wear masks should have been in place during the state of emergency, not now, during the state of alert. But during the state of emergency they did not have masks, and now they have too many which need to be sold, and for that, they needed to institute the state of emergency. The government, through its emergency ordinance approved on May 21st,, estimated that it needed to buy protective masks for 2.3 million people belonging to disadvantaged social layers. The quantity of 50 masks for every person, in other words 115 million masks in total. The price of a protective mask is 2 lei. Essentially, the Government has increased the budget of the Ministry of Healthcare by 230 million lei for the purchase of the masks in question, which are still not distributed yet. Under these circumstances, if we add up the masks bought for the public institutions - Government, Parliament, etc., and for the education institutions, we are talking about a business of at least 100 million Euros. Add to that the money resulting from the mandatory thermal scanning of people in closed public areas and at their jobs".

On top of that business made with public money, Vosganian also adds the buying of tests, a procedure considered useless by the ALDE deputy, because in his opinion, the key indicator is the number of people in Intensive Care and that has nothing to do with testing, just like testing has nothing to do with the evolution of the pandemic.

This «Ode to the pandemic» circus is an instrument for favoring political cronies, of promoting people who are hangers on to the government, who are appointed as hospital managers, and for keeping the population under control", Varujan Vosganian said in closing.

• Vlad Voiculescu: "The blame for the mistaken reports lies on the county departments of public healthcare"

The statements by the ALDE deputy match the recent opinions of lawyer Gheorghe Piperea, who has in fact already challenged in court, at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, the decision by which the Orban government has instituted the state of alert due to the restrictions of rights and liberties which should have been done by law, as the Constitutional Court has recently ruled.

In his posting on an official gazette on the Facebook page, concerning what is happening in the country, Gheorghe Piperea wrote: "What has happened during this pandemic, the ambiguities, the contradictions, the stupidity of some of the measures, the absurdity of some restrictions, the dictatorial style of some of the < < saviors > > who are bragging with having kept the pandemic under control, the money - the huge piles of money made through the selling of fear and through the intentionally flawed management of panic -, all of these things have smashed trust in doctors and in medical science. It will be hard to regain it. Here is who is bringing us back to the medieval stage, where medical science was heresy".

Former health minister in the Cioloş government, Vlad Voiculescu, does not agree with the politicians who say that the data presented daily is being manipulated by the authorities.

Vlad Voiculescu told us: "The data presented is correct, but sometimes it contains errors. Over time, many data has been modified, the numbers have been changed, because some deaths based on Covid-19 have been recorded later rather than at the time that they have occurred. This does not involve a conspiracy, just a lack of professionalism among the county public health departments".

• Adrian Marinescu: "The statistics are being influenced by the reports and by the numbers of daily tests"

Doctor Adrian Marinescu, epidemiologist at the National Institute Matei Balş, also claims that the information presented by the authorities is correct.

Adrian Marinescu told us the following: "The data being presented is not being manipulated. The differences being seen depend on reports that fluctuations in the numbers of tests made in one day. There is an actual variability where those tests are concerned. The statistics are correct, but they are influenced by the daily reports and by the number of tests performed".

Speaking about the interminable talks about the peak of the pandemic, doctor Marinescu told us: "We have crossed the peak of the pandemic sometime before May 15th, but we couldn't tell at the time, because it takes time to see if the curve in question continues to slope downward".

With or without data manipulation, with mistaken information presented as true by the county public health departments, the situation in Romania seems bizarre. The daily fluctuations concerning the number of new cases seen allow the local and central authorities a lot of room to maneuver in terms of the measures they can take during the state of alert. And if push comes to shove, it is possible the Government may decide to extend the state of alert by another 30 days. Because it might as well, why the hell not, it has already ordered 50 masks for each of the 2.3 million of disadvantaged citizens. Masks that still haven't reached their intended recipients.