This evening the AIIMS Director, Dr Randeep Guleria, answered almost every question that one may have about the deadly coronavirus in about 45-minute programme on the news channel Aaj Tak. He busted many myths about the virus, shed light on vaccination, went into causes of black fungus, tried to make prediction how the future would likely be, etc. It was really a very informative programme.

In short, Dr Guleria suggested everyone to get vaccinated. As the vaccination would still take six or seven months to complete, if everything went as planned, he cautioned everyone to adopt corona appropriate behaviour. Till the targeted population is vaccinated, there is no alternative except wearing mask, washing hands repeatedly and maintaining social distance, he said. It’s a war of survival: Humans are trying to protect themselves, and virus is also trying to protect itself leading to mutation.

The commercial break in the programme has sponsored feature from Uttar Pradesh. It featured many young people getting jabs and exhorting others to get them as it caused no problem to them. The break dished out statistics on number of vaccines administered, number of tests carried out, number of cases detected, number of active cases, and so on and so forth. It was good to see that Uttar Pradesh is making impressive progress on corona front.

While Dr Guleria and Uttar Pradesh Government advocated for vaccination, another commercial in the same programme went on like this. Vaccination ke complications se bachne ke liye research and evidence based medicine coronil le (take research and evidence-based medicine coronil to avoid complications of vaccination) in the voice of Baba Ramdev.

Lots of words have been said and written about Baba Ramdev’s aggressive drive to sell his ‘wonder medicine’ coronil, which is at the base of ugly slur we have seen recently. I don’t want to go into all that – there are people more informed and qualified than me to debate that.

While watching today’s programme, as a layman I just wondered whom to believe. Dr Guleria? Uttar Pradesh Government commercial? Baba Ramdev’s commercial? Will somebody guide me?