[HN Gopher] India's second wave of Covid-19 feels nothing like i...
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India's second wave of Covid-19 feels nothing like its first
Author : divbzero
Score : 248 points
Date : 2021-05-01 04:51 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| MarkMc wrote:
| Suppose I know of a number of people in India who have covid
| symptoms and difficulty breathing but cannot get treatment in any
| hospital due to overcrowding. As someone who lives in a Western
| country, what is the most effective way to help them?
|
| I could simply send them money, but they might use it to bribe
| hospital staff for treatment, or outbid other people for oxygen
| cannisters. They would benefit but other people would lose out.
|
| Maybe I should buy medicine in my home country and send it to
| them? Or maybe buy oxygen concentrator machines on Alibaba and
| have them shipped to India?
| [deleted]
| dehrmann wrote:
| For the most part, India's fate over the next month is sealed.
| It was like when people got really excited about making
| ventilators, they were already a month late.
| elihu wrote:
| Maybe one somewhat-helpful simple thing you could send them
| would be a pulse oximeter. If they need to get to a hospital
| and can't get in, it won't help them much, but it might in some
| cases be helpful to at least have a thing that at least tells
| them if they're getting better or worse.
|
| Another option is maybe send them a decent quality room air
| filter if they're in a city with heavy pollution, so it's one
| less thing for their lungs to deal with.
|
| It's kind of a tough question; I'm neither a doctor nor have I
| been around anyone who has gotten Covid, so I don't really know
| first-hand what's most helpful.
| jayp1418 wrote:
| Thanks mark for wonderful thought but money won't solve issues
| India facing. There are multiple problems. I think most
| important thing is to educate rural people about why they need
| to follow guidelines strictly. Many people refuses vaccines
| because they think it is elobrate plan to eliminate them. So
| education is the way govt.can move forward.
| kepler1 wrote:
| I hate to bring up this point but I think it's not totally
| irrelevant.
|
| India in general has a problem with hygiene and public health
| being compromised out of offending people's political / religious
| sensibilities, inability to follow rules and impose requirements
| on people, inability to lay down the law consistently. There's
| just a little too _much_ democracy in this country.
|
| Hygiene of people preparing food and in daily life (for many) --
| not good. Regulatory oversight -- not good. Animals wandering the
| street, garbage thrown anywhere, pollution of water supplies for
| religious rituals -- not good. Agricultural fires allowed to burn
| for fear of clamping down on farmers -- not good.
|
| And you see people in government saying meaningless assurances
| that the wave of infection will pass -- not good.
| ppf wrote:
| How did it take so long for India to have a second wave?
| chunkyguy wrote:
| COVID never actually went away. Just that the people and the
| government ignored it until it mutated to a deadly version.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > until it mutated to a deadly version
|
| Do we know this, yet?
| ppf wrote:
| Of course it didn't go away. So you are saying that Western
| countries, that took all the Covid precautions, had an early
| second wave. However, a densely populated country that took
| very few precautions didn't have a second wave, but a deadly
| version months later? Do you have any references for the idea
| that India is suffering from a new variant of Covid?
|
| For that matter, do we have any accurate information about
| the situation in India, except some choice photos in the
| media?
| hesarenu wrote:
| I think most of the pics, articles like this one are from
| Delhi. Which i think is in terrible shape. With cases not
| decreasing most hospitals would any way be stressed. But i
| assume it not terrible everywhere. My citie's Govt Hospital
| and Pvt ones are not over crowded or even anyway looks
| stressed as of now.
| ashishmax31 wrote:
| Do we have evidence that the virus has mutated into something
| more deadly? Such mutation is clearly not beneficial to the
| virus. My guess would be that the virus mutated into
| something with a higher R-0. Read more about the optimal
| virulence here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_virulence
| nnq wrote:
| Optimal virulence is kinda bullshit with rapidly evolving
| things on small timescales...
|
| Sure, if a mutation that makes it give deadly miocarditis
| 50% of the cases pops up, that strain would have a clear
| evolutionary disadvantage ...but if a strain that gives 2x
| worse pneumonia (and maybe a 2x death rate, that overall is
| still low) with 4x more coughing evolve, it will have an
| evolutionary advantage, more caughing => more virus in the
| air etc.
|
| So _you absolutely can have viruses evolving towards
| increased lethality_ , as long as people infected with the
| new strain spread the virus more and don't die too soon...
| you won't get to smth. evolving its way to 80% lethality,
| but it can very well evolve from <1% to ...50% (scary!).
|
| _The whole optimism about patterns of viral evolution is
| 100% wrong, unless you 're thinking at very large
| timescales, and in environments where humans have not added
| so many accelerator factors!_
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Dynamics of the virus spread is quite interesting.
|
| 3Blue1Brown made a fascinating video about how an epidemic
| spreads: https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs
| baybal2 wrote:
| I'd say it's a third wave by now already
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Weather / season is what I've seen speculated the most.
| spikels wrote:
| I would like to know this too. Why didn't it take off last year
| and why now?
|
| My prior is that the virus took time to evolve to be hyper-
| infectious in the local conditions. Fits timescale and may fit
| theoretical models (many suggest viruses become more infectious
| but less deadly - not sure if this is the case in India).
|
| Would be great to see good research on this but it will take
| many months. Early reports and analysis are likely to be wrong.
| ppf wrote:
| How did it do that, while not just creating a regular second
| wave like most of the Western world?
| intended wrote:
| Yes. In hindsight this type of analysis is obviously
| critical. Sadly it seems india only started focusing on
| improving sequencing in December 2020.
| divbzero wrote:
| The US too [1] has been slow to implement large-scale
| sequencing efforts. We have the technology to track the
| virus more closely [2] [3] but seem oddly unhurried to
| deploy it widely.
|
| [1]: https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/06/stem-the-pandemic-
| nation...
|
| [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/wast...
|
| [3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33468686/
| mxcrossb wrote:
| > evolve to be hyper-infectious in the local conditions
|
| I've never heard that idea before, very interesting. I wonder
| if we will figure out if certain mutations work "better" on
| certain populations, environmental conditions, etc.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| The most puzzling thing about this wave is that even the young
| aren't being spared. From the start of the pandemic, I assumed it
| was patently clear that it's the old (>60 age) are vulnerable.
|
| What I am seeing in Delhi is people from all walks of life
| without any comorbidites succumbing to the disease - peoples in
| 30s, 40s, and even 20s. Granted death rate of younger people
| isn't absolute zero, but in India, it's happening way too often.
| Could it be because of lack of hospital care? Maybe, it would
| interesting to see death by age group for hospitalised patients.
|
| Unfortunately, there's no way to investigate this since I don't
| think there any publicly available data that shows deaths by age
| group.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _What I am seeing in Delhi is people from all walks of life
| without any comorbidites succumbing to the disease - peoples in
| 30s, 40s, and even 20s._
|
| Roughly 10% of people need hospitalization when infected with
| COVID, and when hospitals are full, some of those people are
| going to die when they wouldn't have had they received care.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think the 10% ratio against all infections will turn out to
| be a significant overestimate.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Granted death rate of younger people isn't absolute zero, but
| in India, it's happening way too often. Could it be because of
| lack of hospital care
|
| Lower standard of living, if not poverty, seems like the
| simplest explanation. You're comparing the richest countries
| with an emerging market country that has an astronomical number
| of poor people. They'll have worse health outcomes in general.
| Also, polution in India is terrible drom what I understand.
| [deleted]
| ummonk wrote:
| A new variant arose that combines the Californian L452R
| mutation with an E484Q mutation as well (similar to the E484K
| mutation in the Brazilian and South African variants). It's not
| really the same virus that hit India earlier.
| trhway wrote:
| second wave of Spanish flu was also shifted toward younger ages
| (W-shape). May be some evolutionary dynamics - the second wave
| is the strains which successfully outcompeted others. May be
| also the protective measures like lockdowns/quarantines during
| the first wave provide selection pressure for more virulence.
| Syzygies wrote:
| The virus uses our immune system against us. Think Aikido using
| your opponent's strength, or a gravity assist for
| interplanetary flight. A modern virus attack is higher order,
| which is what makes designing vaccines so hard. Screw up, and
| you're just helping the virus. Early variants of COVID-19 were
| hardest on the old in part from weakness, but in part because
| of a well-developed immune system to target.
|
| Anyone who's been to India can see that even the young have
| robust immune systems. Virus variants have finally dialed this
| in.
|
| Anyone who's been listening in on research seminars since the
| pandemic start has heard many versions of this. Here is a
| recent lay account:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-the-corona...
| Gauge_Irrahphe wrote:
| Could the mRNA vaccines be used to convince the body to NOT
| make antibodies?
| wolfretcrap wrote:
| Psychologically average Indian young person is more unhappy and
| unstatisfied than ever, this is both because of lack of new
| opportunities and employment and now Indians are able to see on
| YouTube and compare living standards to people in foreign
| countries, psychologically most Indians are devastated because
| of this new found info.
|
| When you are in doom and gloom state, probably immune system
| also doesn't perform quite as well and it doesn't help that
| even basic medicines and healthcare facilities are not
| available to many of us in India now.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted, but what you said
| applies to everywhere not only India, of course chronic
| stress means higher cortisol, which lowers immunity.
| djmips wrote:
| Because that's a constant and would have been present the
| entire time and would not adequately explain why a second
| wave would have more young people succumbing to the
| disease.
| wolfretcrap wrote:
| During first wave, many people would have savings. After
| that they expected recovery but now stuck in 2nd wave.
|
| Price of things that people want have shot up
| considerably while for most income source has dried up.
| lambdaba wrote:
| There have been numerous headlines in media about the
| psychiatric illness epidemic resulting from social
| distancing measures, and all the downstream effects of
| the whole situation, including continuing uncertainty.
| Common sense alone would tell you that mental health has
| worsened since last year, particularly in those who were
| already on the edge.
| consp wrote:
| There was a report today in the news here (Netherlands) that
| more younger people are hospitalized as a percentage of the
| total. This could mean many things, my guess here would be the
| elderly are more and more vaccinated and thus less likely to
| need ICU/Hospital care, but maybe there is more happening on a
| global scale.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| In Belgium too. Younger people in ICU, don't remember about
| comorbidities.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Obviously if one group is hospitalized less, another group
| will be hospitalized more, as a percentage of the total.
|
| You have to be careful not to end up with one old guy in the
| hospital and stating 'wow 100% is male and old'. That's not a
| useful statistic.
| consp wrote:
| Absolutely true, but the question remains if that is the
| only cause which also muddies the numbers a bit if there
| are different factors at play. I mentioned it as it is seen
| elsewhere too and I think adds to the discussion.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| You can't solve that question using these statistics. You
| need to carefully define your question and then look up
| the data. A lot of it actually is available!
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Being infected isn't a binary thing. There is a big difference
| from swallowing 30 Coronavirus particles from touching your
| face to breathing in 300,000 from someone coughing in your
| face.
|
| If you're young the first is probably a mild cold while the
| latter is a trip to the ICU.
|
| Part of bringing the virus under control is reducing the amount
| of particles people are exposed to so they have a better chance
| of fighting off the virus.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| How do you know?
|
| It depends on how fast the virus population doubles. And how
| fast the immune system kicks in.
|
| If the virus population doubles every second then the person
| who swallowed 30 virus particles will be at 300,000 in just
| 14 seconds.
|
| If it doubles once per minute, it is 14 minutes. If it
| doubles once per hour, it is 14 hours.
|
| The question if that is a meaningful headstart depends on how
| fast the immune system reacts. And if it reacts faster to
| 300k viruses than to 30.
| sateesh wrote:
| Won't the immune system acts better when it gets infected
| by 30 (say) virus particles than swamped by 300k viruses
| (say).So my guess (as layman) is when infected with 30
| viruses the growth might not be as uncontrollable (doubling
| per second). I think the virus load indeed matters too.
| corty wrote:
| It doesn't only react faster, it will react differently. Up
| to a reaction called "sepsis" that can kill you even
| without the virus doing anything anymore. Research points
| to most covid complications being such (there are lots
| more, the immune system is the worst kind of spaghetti code
| you can imagine) massive immune reactions gone haywire.
|
| I'm not saying you are right or wrong. I'm saying that
| immune reactions aren't linear, straightforward, harmless
| or predictable. And that "more virus" usually isn't better.
| berkes wrote:
| As a type1 diabetic, I love the 'spagetticode' reference.
| Our biology is amazingly complex. And in a somewhat
| constant broken state. My immune system decided that
| crucial pieces of my own body, are dangerous invaders,
| and it then decided to attack it. The attack is ongoing,
| and successful: a crucial subroutine of me is being
| destroyed faster than another part of me can rewrite it.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| >If the virus population doubles every second then the
| person who swallowed 30 virus particles will be at 300,000
| in just 14 seconds
|
| That was also my intuitive response at the beginning of the
| pandemic. I assume one virus was plenty due to exponential
| growth. Having read every article I could in the past year,
| it's extremely rare to run across any details but:
|
| 1. I've read that scientists believe a coronavirus takes
| hundreds of viruses to successfully infect us. Not, for
| example, several dozen like some other viruses.
|
| 2. Next obvious question to me is, is this because one has
| to land on a lucky spot on the body and the rest somehow
| die before they can reproduce (so it's statistical odds
| that one virus gets the conditions it needs just like one
| sperm makes it to the egg)? Or can the body fight off a
| dozen or two dozen covid19 viruses so quickly that they
| never take hold? I only see two possibilities here.
|
| 3. If it is the latter, an answer I can't find anywhere,
| why did we need to waste so much time developing a vaccine?
| Wouldn't it be equally efficacious to introduce one virus
| to the body on day one, four on day two, and so on until
| immunity is achieved? Evidence of this possibility would be
| mixed in with the population they believe are asymptomatic,
| so unless researchers look for this they won't find it.
| (Basically a natural immunity hypothesis - based on
| repeated low viral count exposure.)
| celticninja wrote:
| What you are referring to is the viral load. How much
| does it take to make you really ill. It matters because
| your body can fight a few dozen virus cells more readily
| that it can a few thousand. Sure it can make more
| antibodies but they take time, time the virus has to
| replicate, so now you need more antibodies, and yiu
| aren't exactly sure which ones work.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4763
| Zanni wrote:
| That's called variolation [0], and it was floated early
| on by some pundits, but not seriously. It faces the same
| sort of pushback as challenge trials.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
| amluto wrote:
| Sort of. Variolation also involved intentionally
| inoculating with a naturally occurring less deadly
| strain. Also, introducing intentional Covid infections in
| a naive population would likely infect many contacts of
| the inoculated patients before they got inoculated, which
| would defeat the purpose.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| A virus that doubled in a second would be perceived as a
| swarm that dissolved people before our eyes as it quickly
| ate the biomass of the planet. Think 2^86400 in one day.
| Fortunately it would need faster than light travel to
| keep replicating at that rate for long.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Why would it need ftl?
|
| Aren't all the doublings local?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I'm assuming it would consume all local mass shortly.
| beowulfey wrote:
| to your last question--when we develop a vaccine or
| treatment, it's about making sure as many people as
| possible get the minimum degree of protection with the
| least amount of risk. giving live virus is a tremendous
| risk, even if you found a way to just give one particle
| at a time effectively.
| javagram wrote:
| > If it is the latter, an answer I can't find anywhere,
| why did we need to waste so much time developing a
| vaccine? Wouldn't it be equally efficacious to introduce
| one virus to the body on day one, four on day two, and so
| on until immunity is achieved?
|
| Introducing the virus like this, you've created a live
| virus vaccine. The work involved in creating and testing
| such a vaccine isn't really any less than creating the
| vaccines we did make. You still have to develop
| technology to grow the virus and distribute exactly the
| right quantity. Moreover, the risk of complications is
| far greater if someone fails to fight off the small viral
| load infection.
|
| The vaccines such as Moderna only took a week or two to
| prototype in January 2020. The entire rest of the time
| was scaling up production and running tests to prove it
| worked in the population. We could have skipped running
| the trials and deployed the untested vaccine instead. A
| lot of lives would have been saved but no way to know
| that without doing the trials, I suppose.
| bumbada wrote:
| A very important thing is the topology of the infection. I
| had COVID last year and it progressed linearly over time,
| from the back of my nose(probably from a big water droplet
| I breathed)forwards(towards my nose) and downwards towards
| my lungs. I could measure the progress day after day.
|
| It progressed linearly because the breathing system is a
| duct. Like a fire needs a boundary to expand, a frontier.
| It is not 3D but 2 dimensional.
|
| You just can not do an exponential calculation, without
| taking into account the physical limits of the environment.
|
| Just before entering the lungs I did beat it. I coughed for
| a month or so,specially for the irritation in my glottis,
| but nothing serious.
|
| This year I got it again, the progress rate was very
| similar but my immune system reacted sooner.
|
| What is interesting is that I did not developed antibodies,
| my antibodies test were negative but the PCRs positives.
| This means that my T cells were already fighting the
| infection.
|
| That probably had something to do with living in China in
| the past and having developed immunity against SARS.
| thro1 wrote:
| > Just before entering the lungs I did beat it.
|
| How long it took / how fast it progressed from one drop
| almost to lungs (with what treatment)?
|
| Do you think this could have helped early in your case:
|
| _Use of Povidone Iodine Nasal Spray.._ https://papers.ss
| rn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3563092 (March 2020)
|
| or this: _nasal rinse and mouthwash, Listerine
| Antiseptic_ https://doi.org/10.1002/jmv.26514 if the
| virus landed on the throat ?
| javagram wrote:
| > That probably had something to do with living in China
| in the past and having developed immunity against SARS.
|
| Only about 8000 persons have been recorded to come down
| with SARS. Were you one of them with a diagnosed case of
| SARS (10% fatality rate)? The vast majority of residents
| in China would have no exposure to SARS.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Viral reproduction rate is not that fast. It's about 8 to
| 72 hours depending on the type of virus. This is why low
| viral load is generally associated with milder disease
| outcomes, the body has a significantly longer time to
| generate an immune response before the viral load becomes
| significant.
| raphaelj wrote:
| Parent was referring to the doubling rate.
|
| Cells produce more than one additional particule per
| reproduction cycle, so the doubling rate is lower than 8
| to 72h.
| rscho wrote:
| You absolutely don't know that. Disease severity vs.
| contaminant load correlation is unknown.
| sgt101 wrote:
| You are right, but in the early phase of the pandemic this
| was raised by medics in the UK as a reason why some of them
| were dying. The pathology mentioned then was that a
| cytokine storm got kicked off in people with strong immune
| systems exposed to high load. This prompted changes in PPE
| for hospital staff - from light gear that would be worn in
| the face of flu patients (of whom, as we know some 1000's
| are hospitalised and die every year) to the space suit
| style gear that is now used in ICUs with COVID. If you are
| young and nursing a bunch of relatives at home it's
| reasonable to say that you are effectively exposed to ICU
| risks without ICU gear.
| celticninja wrote:
| https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4763
| squaredisk wrote:
| It makes logical sense, is there any study to support this
| hesarenu wrote:
| Maybe better healthcare. Kerala case fatality ratio is around
| 0.3 that is many times better than other states.
| sn41 wrote:
| One feature of the Kerala case, which does not get discussed
| much, is that the load is more or less evenly distributed
| throughout all the districts. This makes it easier to handle
| critical cases well.
| lenkite wrote:
| Kerala setup 23 Oxygen plants - most of them setup in the
| last year. It is now exporting oxygen to the other Covid-hit
| states. The vast majority of beds now have oxygen supply -
| even all medical colleges.
|
| People actually planned and did things right in Kerala. No
| one did so at the capital.
| hesarenu wrote:
| But if the number of cases increases its very difficult to
| manage. Recent reports indicate Kerala might face shortage.
| Karnataka which also had enough oxygen can face a deficit
| in coming days if the cases keep up.
| jopsen wrote:
| There is so much focus on oxygen, but is scaling healthcare
| facilities actually a solution?
|
| It seems that even in rich countries hospital capacity is
| overwhelmed as soon as infection rate is out of control.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| No, because a significant proportion of people who enter
| the hospital (and especially intensive care) will still
| die, even with proper care.
|
| The biggest problem is that it is a really tough sell if
| you run out of capacity. Even if it would be better to
| use that capacity for other cases.
| dilawar wrote:
| Someone who is from UP and lived in Kerala for few months,
| that state is world apart in terms of basic facilities. I
| mean computers in primary school (not to mention Linux)!!! In
| U.P., you won't find teachers teaching in most scholls.
| guerrilla wrote:
| How were they able to achieve this?
| jeswin wrote:
| I've lived in Kerala for twenty years. Can attest to this
| being due to better healthcare. There's also very little
| underreporting of deaths happening (my sister's a doctor
| directly involved with the government effort).
|
| It's a bit like Cuba, with the Communist past and
| healthcare/life-expectancy that stands out (compared to say,
| per-capita income which is average).
| aneeshnl wrote:
| And we used the calm times to ramp up the infrastructure. But
| if cases are rising beyond control, this will fail too.
| pas wrote:
| Or simply a lot more young people are exposed.
| prestigious wrote:
| It's not puzzling it's because the so called "double mutant"
| variant is common there. It affects younger people more. It is
| escaped into my city Vancouver and kept death rates high
| despite our old people being vaccinated. This variant is
| stronger and more spreadable.
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/this-doub...
| girishso wrote:
| I am from India and this is just a personal theory based on
| interactions with my doctor and pharmacist friends. Most
| Indians are dying because of lack of medicines and oxygen, and
| it's due to the inept Indian government.
| ahurmazda wrote:
| I am hearing the same. Cases that would have been treated
| with O2 and dex are otherwise turning into fatalities. There
| was very little health-system to begin with. Now it's just a
| humanitarian disaster.
| tasuki wrote:
| I heard once someone needs oxygen, their chances aren't all
| that great anyway. Something like 65% I think?
| arcticfox wrote:
| Even so, what would be their chances _without_ oxygen? You
| might easily be doubling the overall death rate without it
| krcz wrote:
| Are you sure that statistic wasn't for ventilators, not
| oxygen?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Maybe it's a very mutated strain?
| truth_ wrote:
| There is no such thing as "very mutated". Something is either
| mutated or not.
|
| Your comment goes aligned with the governement propaganda
| that this is happening only due to the more dangerous strain.
| I would agree with it if people were dying AFTER GETTING
| proper medical care. You cannot solely blame the mutation as
| people are dying without any treatment. It's the dismal
| healthcare system and the governments who should be blamed.
| We are not seeing a surge of death among patients with this
| strain in UK, and US.
|
| The central government's hubris, and every government's not
| listening to the experts, behaving relaxed which are to
| blame.
| comex wrote:
| It's certainly possible for one strain to have more
| mutations than another (relative to the variant that
| initially spread in China), though that doesn't necessarily
| correlate with dangerousness.
| jowdones wrote:
| >> There is no such thing as "very mutated". Something is
| either mutated or not.
|
| Well if there are 1 billion genes and one virus strain has
| 1 mutated gene while another virus has 1,000,000 mutated
| genes then the latter is "very mutated".
|
| Like a white human and a black human are somewhat mutated
| relative to each other but both humans are "very mutated"
| as compared to a chimpanzee. Although 98% humans and
| chimpanzees are the same animal, let's call it humpanzee.
| hesarenu wrote:
| The cases spiked after April. If it was not mutation the
| total number of active cases would have still going up from
| last October. Active cases suddenly dropped from October
| with no good factors to indicate why it dropped.
|
| I have been to 3 wedding after the drop. Almost no one was
| wearing mask. As far i know govt was still asking people to
| wear mask. There were major Hindu festivals after October
| and coming winter were everyone was worried the cases would
| rise. Did the virus simply hide and rose rapidly?
| Sathi wrote:
| I also observed this - the slow rise from end-Feb to end-
| Mar and then the sudden very very steep rise in covid
| positive cases from end-Mar.
|
| In India, people started opening up during Sep/Oct 2020.
| I too relaxed the strict restrictions/rules that I was,
| till then, sticking to. Went to restaurants with friends
| and teammates (with masks wherever possible) and many
| people were doing inter-state travels, political events
| started happening, many festivals/gatherings started
| happening etc. Life was returning to normal. My important
| observation is that from then (Sep/Oct 2020) onwards,
| lots and lots of people were not following covid
| protocols properly. Social distancing was not followed.
| Many people did not even put on masks. Am not sure why,
| but even with all these behaviours which should result in
| increasing covid positive numbers, the covid positive
| numbers were continuously going down. I think it hit
| bottom during second half of Feb 2021.
|
| And then the numbers started to rise - slowly from end-
| Feb to end-Mar and then suddenly very very steeply rise
| from end-Mar 2021. And by mid-Apr 2021, things got very
| alarming. Most of my circle of friends knew that
| generally the second wave will hit harder than the first.
| But we also that because vaccination has been going on
| for 2 or 2.5 months by then, it can help. The strictest
| (to follow the restrictions) among my friends also
| started to loosen up a bit. The previous reports that the
| second wave will hit us during Jan/Feb did not come true.
| So, we were hoping that there won't be a second wave.
| Even the US thought that they can start banning the
| export of raw materials needed for the production of
| vaccines in India.
|
| So, I do not know if anyone predicted (with numbers to
| backup their estimates) that the case load will be this
| bad during Apr 2021. The second wave caught lots of us by
| surprise. But I believe, like the US and UK survived
| their second waves and are doing pretty well now, India
| too will hopefully emerge better and stronger.
| hesarenu wrote:
| I returned to Bangalore on April when cases were barely
| going up, Vaccine drive was the way and all seemed good.
| And now were are in a lockdown!.
| sateesh wrote:
| * >> But I believe, like the US and UK survived their
| second waves and are doing pretty well now, India too
| will hopefully emerge better and stronger. *
|
| and scarred. Some of the stories I read in newspapers,
| and heard are gut wrenching; reports like families losing
| more than one person in quick succession, quite young
| folks dying.
| [deleted]
| mrintegrity wrote:
| I was in India ~10 years ago, upon entering the airport i was
| shocked to see smoke everywhere and assumed there had been some
| kind of fire. Nope, i was seeing the air, i could see the
| normal air _inside_ the airport terminal. Pollution is a huge
| problem in Delhi which surely contributes to bad covid
| outcomes.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| It was like that 20 years ago. You can see the pollution.
| fractalb wrote:
| The air pollution was there even the last year. But, the
| situation was not this bad. Surely the air pollution is a
| problem, but there must me more to the current crisis which
| was not there last year.
| fragmede wrote:
| The air quality was bad for the first wave (H2 2020) as well
| though, so it can't be helping, but it can't be what's
| causing this second wave to be such a catastrophe.
| Zenst wrote:
| That was my thought, though the whole nutritional aspect of
| diet may also play a factor.
|
| I wanted to find a map of Indian pollution averages, pull
| that up and a map of covid deaths -
| https://aqicn.org/map/india/ does real-time air-quality and
| does give some idea.
|
| Also other factors that may or may not play a part would be
| the climate, we know how well virus's do in winter over
| summer, equally peoples health. Now India climate wise - the
| only difference that sticks out this time of year would be
| that on average the humidity is at it's lowest point of the
| year, as is rainfall. Are they factors, maybe and equally
| less rain would also mean more particulates in the air and
| that we can measure with air quality.
|
| [EDIT ADD] AS for nutritional - let us be mindful that the
| impact of a whole year upon business and income in India may
| well of seen peoples nutritional intake decline due to
| trickle down economics being quick to pass on the bad times
| over the good, and for many income wise this year not been
| good and not everybody gets paid to stay at home in every
| country.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| You always can tell you're about to land in Delhi because you
| can smell the air _before you touch down_.
|
| That said, I don't think this alone is an explanation, since
| COVID is currently also tearing through Indian cities like
| Bangalore where air quality is better. (Not good, mind you,
| but nowhere near as bad.)
| lostlogin wrote:
| > You always can tell you're about to land in Delhi because
| you can smell the air before you touch down.
|
| What a great description. It sounds like Terry Pratchett
| describing Ankh-Morpork.
| herbst wrote:
| Not sure what virus (or rather media) you witnessed, but just
| because the death rate was rather low with younger people never
| ment the infection rate was too. Long covid is much more evenly
| distributed between age classes for example
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I mean, the current accounts suggest the entire reason hospital
| care is being denied to some is because there is no room.
|
| When we have seen total healthcare breakdowns (Wuhan, Italy,
| NYC, etc.) the efficiency of hospital care drops like a rock
| due to both overstressed medical staff and the staff themselves
| also catching COVID. I would expect India to follow the same
| pattern, but exacerbated by the lack of capacity.
| dantheman wrote:
| NYC didn't have a healthcare breakdown, it did send covid
| positive people to nursing homes.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| WSJ, March 26 2020: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospital-
| capacity-crosses-tippi...
|
| > New York, home to the nation's largest outbreak of
| Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, is
| rushing to build a temporary hospital in a Manhattan
| conference center in the hope of staying ahead of the fast-
| spreading disease.
|
| > Hospitals in parts of New York City have become so full
| of critically ill patients that they have steered
| ambulances elsewhere. The full-to-capacity morgue at
| Elmhurst Hospital in Queens is using a refrigerated truck
| to hold some of the dead. Thirteen people died in the
| hospital in the last 24 hours, said NYC Health + Hospitals,
| which operates Elmhurst.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Having _some_ hospitals be full is not a system-wide
| breakdown. Even before COVID emergency rooms would be
| "on diversion" when particularly busy, and ambulances
| would go elsewhere.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| For about 4-5 hours at a time,max, and believe you me it
| wreaked utter hell on my nights in the back of the
| ambulance when it happened.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Mine too!
| nojito wrote:
| No patients were ever turned away at NYC hospitals. There
| is a highly sophisticated patient transfer system in NYC.
|
| Morgue capacity makes sense simply because of the
| population who was coming down with COVID at the time.
| mandis wrote:
| NYC sent the elderly, covid positive people to nursing
| homes, where they died. Is that not a breakdown?
| atat7024 wrote:
| According to...well, everyone, that was a NYS thing, not
| NYC specifically.
| napier wrote:
| More broadly it was a nationwide CDC advisory and not
| only that, the same shuffling of elderly infected back
| into nursing facilities happened in countries across the
| (mostly western) world. Probably based on shared
| implementations of policy briefing/ pandemic planning
| documents.
| votepaunchy wrote:
| The order by Governor Cuomo sending infected patients
| into nursing homes was preemptive, which then led to
| strain on the health care system.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_COVID-19_nursing
| _ho...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It's worse because then they go and infect the rest of
| that vulnerable group.
|
| I can understand not being able to treat them but at
| least isolate them...
| simonh wrote:
| It very much depends on the definition of breakdown. Some
| people see a breakdown if hospitals run out of beds, others
| will pretty much never accept there is a breakdown in
| health care because it's contrary to their conviction that
| COVID-19 is 'just a flu'. To be fair, it's a continuum,
| there's not going to be an easily agreed fine line between
| broken down and not broken down. So the real question is,
| what constitutes the health care system breaking down, and
| did that happen in NY.
|
| Without agreement on that though, we're just shouting at
| each other.
| riffraff wrote:
| Let me add one data point: Hungary has currently the highest
| mortality for covid-19 in the world, and still currently
| higher than India, for apparently the same reason, healthcare
| over capacity.
|
| (The trend is different though, there's hope)
| puranjay wrote:
| I would not believe any numbers coming out of India right
| now. I have family in the medical field and they all agree
| that deaths are underreported by a factor of 5-10 based on
| where you are located. The FT did a story on it as well
| that showed the deaths were grossly undereeported
| KumarAseem wrote:
| Yes, correct. The govt reporting of every figure is less
| by a factor anywhere from 10-50, or maybe even more as
| well. The ground reality in India is way worse than what
| even the media is able to show. And, at present no light
| in the tunnel. Heart cries at this but it is us at fault
| only for putting such incompetent people at the helm.
| Gauge_Irrahphe wrote:
| India reports 155 deaths per million. Hungary is at
| 2,874.
| data_acquired wrote:
| The cases are being under-reported too. The question is
| whether deaths are being under-reported to a greater
| degree than cases. Even the test-positivity rates vary
| from state to state not only because of the extent of
| infection in different states but also because some
| states contact-trace and test while others don't. Its a
| mess. And to see people try to fit models to this data
| and fight amongst each other is darkly hilarious.
|
| Plus, at least in the first wave in Bangalore (where I
| grew up), there were no instances of crematoriums melting
| down and such. So the under-reporting of deaths was
| likely not as bad in the first wave as it is right now,
| but the under-reporting of cases was certainly quite
| large as testing capacity took a while to come online.
| mulvya wrote:
| The CFR in Mumbai is half that of earlier waves.
|
| See https://postimg.cc/Xpn7hthc
|
| -----
|
| Delhi looks more severely affected, likely due to its air
| pollution. See https://aqicn.org/city/delhi/
| petertodd wrote:
| Delhi weather is also extremely hot right now, with highs of
| over 40degC, and lows of at least 30degC, six out of seven
| days a week. While it's a dry heat, heat stroke might still
| be a factor in the higher death rates.
| gkcgautam wrote:
| I'm from India. I extremely doubt that the air pollution has
| anything to do with this. Our healthcare system has
| completely collapsed. People are struggling to find medical
| oxygen and are dying outside hospitals without getting any
| care. Hospital are literally begging for oxygen on Twitter
| every single day. Significant number of these could've been
| saved if the Government had prepared for this by improving
| the healthcare infra. Instead they overconfidently declared
| victory, kept on hiding data, organized religious and
| political rallies. The worst is that it has just gotten
| started and would keep getting worse in the coming days.
| techrat wrote:
| A disease that affects peoples' breathing and you don't
| think air pollution has anything to do with how severely
| the outbreak has affected people?
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| At least 2 car factories stopped to let oxygen to hosiptal.
| gkcgautam wrote:
| The Maruti Suzuki plant shutdown is from May 1 to 9.
| Which means it's starting from today and hasn't provided
| any of their oxygen to hospitals so far. Too little, too
| late.
| lenkite wrote:
| Delhi has screwed up badly. In the South Indian states, in
| Karnataka and especially Kerala, Oxygen is well
| provisioned. Karnataka is also ramping up further everyday.
| Looks like someone in the Delhi state govt forgot capacity
| planning.
| mulvya wrote:
| At this stage, it's evident that the primary mode of SARS-
| Cov-2 transmission is through aerosols, not droplets nor
| fomites.
|
| The level of air pollution affects the duration of
| suspension of bioaerosols as well as the performance of the
| innate immune system. Low humidity is also linked to higher
| transmission.
|
| See
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.04.21249249
| v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.202
| 15236v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.0
| 7.20057216v...
| fragmede wrote:
| The level of air pollution is relatively the same now as
| it was last year for the first wave though. The air
| pollution isn't helping things but if it were that one
| thing, why would the second wave look any different from
| the first?
| mulvya wrote:
| > The level of air pollution is relatively the same now
| as it was last year for the first wave though.
|
| No, they are not. See table 1 of
| https://www.orfonline.org/research/air-pollution-delhi-
| filli... - it hit a low point in October, but was much
| better during lockdown and relatively better post-
| lockdown although trending towards worse levels.
| pfranz wrote:
| Chris Christie spoke about when he got Covid prepping for the
| debate. 7 people contracted Covid during that prep session. He
| got it the worst, the second worst was Donald Trump, the next
| worse was Hope Hicks who was in her early 30s and a daily
| runner.
|
| http://tal.fm/736 about 49 minutes in
| 2sk21 wrote:
| Exactly - the enormous population of India means that there
| are definitely going to be huge numbers of younger people who
| scum to the disease. Straightforward arithmetic.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| *succumb
| throwaway4good wrote:
| "If only 1.7m tests are being conducted per day, what can that
| 386,000 really mean? Is it that 0.0004% of the country has come
| down with the virus since yesterday, or that nearly 23% did?
| Obviously, the true number lies between those absurd extremes,
| but who knows where?"
|
| Why is there not a proper estimate on how big a part of the
| population is infected? And with which strains? Surely with a
| randomized, representative survey you could find this out,
| instead of all this speculation? It also would give authorities
| better grounds for their decisions.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _It also would give authorities better grounds for their
| decisions._
|
| The authorities need to do those studies or commission them.
| Instead, the authorities are busy politicising vaccine
| distributions (vote us in for free vaccines) [0] and polarising
| on religious fault lines.
|
| The country has gone to the wolves.
|
| [0] https://archive.is/dNYo4
| throwawaysea wrote:
| In general it is quite hard to get accurate representative
| samples if there is an unknown or high degree of variance
| between locations (are you scaling up the right samples to
| arrive at an accurate estimate). As for knowing which strains,
| that would certainly be useful but it requires significant
| sequencing infrastructure, which is not easy to scale up. The
| Washington Post noted
| (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/29/india-
| surge-...) that India is #102 among nations in sequencing per
| capita. It notes:
|
| > Sequencing takes a high level of infrastructure and funding.
| India, which spent very little per capita on health care before
| the pandemic, has not been able to quickly make the investments
| to scale up, said Gupta.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I understand your calculation, it seems like the lower bound
| is around 0.03%, not 0.0004%.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| You are so completely and utterly full of shit. You are just
| making a bunch of random guesses at some symptoms you had.
| Seriously shut the fuck up.
| rzz3 wrote:
| Is there a paywall bypass for this? I wish HN would ban links
| that require payment/registration.
| dang wrote:
| If there's a workaround, it's allowed. Users usually post
| workarounds in the thread.
|
| This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
| and there's more explanation here:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
| pabs3 wrote:
| No JS, no cookies works for the Economist, or you can use an
| extension for paywall bypass:
|
| https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
| Clewza313 wrote:
| https://archive.is/2021.05.01-051853/https://www.economist.c...
| sumedh wrote:
| Do you also work for free?
|
| If you cannot pay, just dont read the article or use some
| workarounds.
| spikels wrote:
| For this and many sites that rely on JS for their paywall try
| putting remove-js.com/ in front of the URL like this:
|
| https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/diary/2021/0...
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| wow this is such a cool hack
| blueblisters wrote:
| The demand for oxygen in the National Capital Region and
| surrounding North Indian states brings up an important question -
| is respiratory distress worsened due to air pollution? I hope
| researchers are studying this because, if true, this could be a
| potential trigger to ramp up the need to tackle air pollution now
| rather than kicking the can down the road.
|
| I have a feeling air pollution is not that important politically
| because people haven't felt adverse health effects in the short
| term.
| HotVector wrote:
| My asthma flares up everytime I go to Bangalore, forget Delhi.
| There is merit to this idea.
| op03 wrote:
| Mumbai has been hit quite badly too.
|
| I have a feeling everyone in the districts lands up in Indian
| cities during such events cause the district/block level health
| care facilities in India are a crap shoot.
|
| According to the sustainability dev goals India has 10 docs per
| 10k ppl. 30 per 10k if you include nurses and other support
| staff.
|
| What can anyone do with such numbers when the tsunami hits
| other than say send the patient to the nearest city with the
| most resources.
| AmIDev wrote:
| > I have a feeling everyone in the districts lands up in
| Indian cities during such events cause the district/block
| level health care facilities in India are a crap shoot.
|
| While this is true, the opposite is also happening, where
| people from Mumbai/Pune are being admitted to hospitals in
| smaller cities where beds _might_ be available. Patients from
| Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and other neighbouring districts have been
| reported in my district.
| tarsinge wrote:
| Good point. Last year when the north of Italy was particularly
| affected it was during a huge air pollution episode. At the
| time I had heard particulate pollution helps the virus
| circulate, but maybe it also worsen the symptoms.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| It is possible, Delhi has one of the worst air qualities of
| major cities. It could be a factor in the disease progression
| in Delhi.
| thweor234234 wrote:
| Oh ffs, stop it with this fear porn already.
|
| The state got rid of a lot of the previous makeshift facilities
| from last year, and this is the reason for this sudden crunch.
|
| India's death's rate is ~10-20x lower than that in the US. Of
| course, you'll have the innumerate "conspiracy" idiots who claim
| 10x deaths, and you have the occident which is _obsessed_ with
| the failures of non-Western countries to prove to itself of its
| self-worth.
|
| Then there are the Anglo leftovers of the British colonial
| administration who form the elite-ruling class of India. These
| morons have all the more reason to spread terror and doom about
| the native "heathens".
|
| Really makes you wonder why humanity is in this state, where
| every moron has turned into a apocalypse doomer. I suppose,
| instead of research into "Artificial" Intelligence, we need to
| consider ways to make Humans intelligent.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I still tend to think that this can most easily be explained by
| the fact that India hadn't been hit hard up until now and that a
| lot of people started to believe magical theories about how they
| were immune, and now we're just seeing the virus ripping through
| high population density cities and overwhelming the health care
| system.
|
| If you want to talk about variants, though, then there's a couple
| of things to consider. The first is that the "avirulence" theory
| that pathogens evolve to become less virulent over time was
| pretty decisively falsified in the 90s, so forget everything you
| think you know about that idea being true. There is a fairly
| well-studied tradeoff which has replaced that between
| transmission, virulence and in-host viral replication. That
| doesn't suggest the direction of evolution though. However, there
| have been studies of incomplete vaccination and immunity which
| suggests that it actually works to increase selection pressure
| for higher transmission variants and for virulence. This
| intuitively makes sense since as, say, half the population has
| immunity that increases the pressure on the virus to increase its
| fundamental transmissibility since an R0 of 3.0 will no longer be
| anywhere near as effective -- and the mechanism to do so is to
| just increase viral load and thereby increase virulence and kill
| more infected.
|
| And this may have been observed in 1918 with the more lethal
| later waves of the pandemic which affected younger people. That
| virus later evolved into seasonal influenza, probably as a result
| of widespread immunity producing pressure for immune escape
| variants which came at an overall cost to fitness by mutating all
| the epitopes on the surface proteins so that it could re-infect
| already immune individuals. That will probably happen here as
| well, there'll be a limit to how virulent and transmissibile this
| virus can get and it'll have to start making costlier immune
| escaping mutations eventually -- but in the short term I wouldn't
| be too surprised if we start to see a lot of dead younger people
| in third world nations that don't have as much access to vaccines
| going forward.
|
| But at any rate, none of this particularly matters. The lesson is
| still all the same which is to lockdown and avoid catching and
| spreading the virus until you have a chance to get vaccinated.
| Which is what it has been all along. People still try to argue
| with the virus and engage in magical thinking about how certain
| populations have magical immunity to it, but that continues to
| keep getting falsified. India most likely just got lucky that
| they didn't get hit early, then the prior wave they had was their
| "seeding" wave which was likely just tamped down by people
| voluntarily taking precautions. Then based on their success
| everyone dropped their guard and thought it would all be over in
| 2021 and the virus just took advantage of that.
|
| People in the US who are vaccine-hesitant should also consider
| that if they've managed to not catch it so far and develop any
| immunity that you really want to avoid rolling the dice with
| later versions of the virus. Also it should be noted that while
| the virus kills a lot more people over 80 that the doubling rate
| of fatalities is every 8 years of age while the doubling rate of
| hospitalization is only ever 15 years -- so a 40 year old person
| is 32 times less likely to die than an 80 year old, but they're
| only 6 times less likely to be hospitalized (although it falls
| off a cliff once people get under-20 and the very young are much
| less likely to be hospitalized). The way that American culture is
| so focused on our mortality to the exclusion of all other
| outcomes means that we're heavily discounting the possibility
| that we could survive the virus but be physically crippled by it.
|
| > "Virulence evolution and the trade-off hypothesis: history,
| current state of affairs and the future." >
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101...
|
| > "The Origin and Virulence of the 1918 "Spanish" Influenza
| Virus" > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/
| known wrote:
| God save Indians from Modi regime; He is charging 28% TAX on
| vaccine;
| known wrote:
| People are 'morally' corrupt by birth due to
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)
| divtiwari wrote:
| Lol, now we attacking Hinduism for spreading of Corona?
| Expected something like this tbh. :)
| revendell_elf wrote:
| HN has racists too it seems.
| dang wrote:
| Religious or nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here,
| regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
| No more of this, please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| We've warned you repeatedly not to use HN for political,
| national, or religious flamewar. Since your account has shifted
| into using HN primarily for that, I've banned it. I hate to ban
| an account that's been here since 2007, but what you're doing
| is clearly an abuse.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| known wrote:
| "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and
| he who dares not is a slave" --Sir William Drummond
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| A friend went to a presentation about covid.
|
| There they said that lead in the air ( eg. Car heavy cities) had
| a direct consequences on covid particles that get more and deeper
| into your body.
|
| So cases there would be more severe.
|
| ( It's 6 months ago that i heared it and didn't hear any research
| about it. It does make sense when India has it worse)
| bsaul wrote:
| i've heard many people talk about the catastrophic situation in
| india, and yet i see numbers of 4k deaths a day.
|
| Which is a lot, but still way below what for example france had
| at the pic last year ( 1k a day, for a 60 millions people
| country).
|
| Is there something i'm missing ?
| sumedh wrote:
| The 4k number is the official number which you cannot trust, it
| will be more than that, some comments here are saying its 2x -
| 5x the official number.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| One explanation I heard from a doctor recently is this:
|
| the younger population is infected/affected more this time
| because they have been infected and has been asymptomatic or mild
| all these months and with that the virus has mutated more amongst
| younger people. So the second wave is affecting the younger
| population much more intensely this time than before.
|
| I don't know how scientific this explanation is.
|
| My own gut thinking is that lockdown nowhere nearly as effective
| this time as last year. Even simple social mechanics that were in
| effect last year - like telcos changing their ring/busy tone to
| covid PSA message isn't there. People are not being reminded to
| take social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks precautions
| seriously.
|
| And people are not doing it as seriously as they did last time.
| This has been the reality for the months of March and April where
| it seem to have spread silently. The weather change between Feb-
| April (very windy, cold to dry heat conditions) could also be a
| factor. And now, it is too serious and now people may change
| their behavior but it is too late.
| Aachen wrote:
| If that were true, we'd be seeing the mutation in sequencings.
| We all know India is doing pretty badly on that front, but it's
| also a huge huge population. It's rampant enough that it seems
| to me they'd have found at least some samples of what you're
| saying. As it is, B1.617 seems to be the most common there
| (though it seems hard to find absolute numbers a la [1]), not
| your friend's speculative mystery strain. Whether they are a
| doctor..; since what I heard from other doctors near the
| beginning of the pandemic, it seems they're no better equipped
| to deal with this than the rest of us and will speculate
| unscientifically just as much, except people parrot it more.
|
| [1] Table with sequencing results for the Netherlands. If
| someone knows where to find this for other counties, I'd be
| very interested! https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-
| covid-19/virus/varianten
|
| Bonus link: latest WHO update contains some info about variants
| (unfortunately not much, e.g. just saying a country has had a
| case of <insert variant> without _any_ info on its prevalence
| there): https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-
| epidemiologic...
| ummonk wrote:
| GP's friend is clearly referring to the B.1.617 variant, not
| some mystery strain.
| contravariant wrote:
| If you want more detailed info you should probably check out
| https://nextstrain.org/.
| geogra4 wrote:
| I have had multiple Indian co-workers (from our Chennai office)
| test covid positive and get sick. Young healthy people.
| durovo wrote:
| This thread is full of people pointing fingers at:
|
| 1. Election rallies
|
| 2. Kumbh Mela
|
| 3. Farmer Protests (Yes, they are still going on)
|
| 4. The government's incompetence.
|
| And all of these are completely valid reasons. But does anyone
| living in the country really believe that these are the only
| reasons? There are still people who believe that Covid is a hoax.
| People who had not worn a mask for the last 6 months now wear
| paper thin masks in large crowds and expect to not get Covid.
|
| My neighbor contracted Covid recently, but they have not told
| anyone about it. All of their household help is still coming.
| Some of the family members still go out to meet others.
|
| This situation is really a reflection of the selfishness of the
| people. I have seen medium-sized business that cut salaries if
| employees take leaves due to covid. So these employees hide their
| symptoms and report to work. If you are doing any of these
| things, please self-reflect.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Where I live (Germany) all of these actions would be illegal.
|
| I think broadly speaking governments do a lot to set the tone
| of what's acceptable in the pandemic, by what they say, and
| what they do. A big government rally is powerful legitimation
| for being selfish.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| From what I have read online, I would say that very few people
| in news media are blaming the farmers' protests (at least in
| international coverage), even though those protests are longer-
| lasting and larger gatherings than most of the others. What I
| am mostly seeing is Western liberals blaming the conservative
| government of a developing nation by pointing at election
| rallies (which only took place in a few states and were held by
| all parties), religious events (because liberals are often
| anti-religion or Hinduphobic), or the government (who actually
| has been highly competent in managing the pandemic overall).
|
| I don't think there is enough evidence (yet?) to call any one
| factor a "key contributor". We simply don't know. People in
| India were increasingly mobile as their pandemic conditions
| improved into a low steady state
| (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/changes-visitors-
| covid?co...). I am guessing that some combination of the things
| you listed, plus general increase in mobility, plus some new
| variant of the virus that spreads more easily, is what led to
| this situation. India went from normal conditions to hitting
| the previous peaks within a month, and that feels like
| something more than just a few isolated events.
|
| > This situation is really a reflection of the selfishness of
| the people.
|
| That might be fair to say in a developed nation that is
| wealthier. But in many other nations, people simply need to
| work or go to places where they are around other people. They
| don't have the infrastructure, wealth, and luxury of remote
| work or delivery services to just avoid society altogether or
| reduce society-wide mobility. They also don't have the same
| amount of home entertainment choices like streaming services or
| expensive video game consoles or whatever else. I imagine
| shutting down cities is a much more significant challenge in
| places that are denser than, for example, American cities, but
| without the same economies, standards of living, disposable
| income, and so on.
| benque wrote:
| Yes. These are the major reasons not the "only" reasons. Sure,
| there will be a few percentage of people who are irresponsible,
| but we have to look at the big picture as well. Mass gatherings
| are far more responsible for the spread than a few people not
| wearing masks.
| durovo wrote:
| Absolutely, I am not trying to defend that stupidity here.
| Also, it was not a 'few' people not wearing masks. It has
| always been a few people wearing masks. And what qualifies as
| a mask for most people should really be questioned.
| mxcrossb wrote:
| Deep down in the human psyche, I think we all believe that
| disease is a punishment for our bad behavior. So we always see
| comments saying it's because of X or Y. But from what I've
| seen, this disease is very chaotic in its spread. So I think
| the discussion has to be less "it's because of X" and more
| "things like X have increased the risk factor"
| alwayshasbeen wrote:
| Well, if a country if full of people believing COVID is a hoax
| and wearing a mask is useless - what do you think you will get?
| You get exactly what's happening now.
| mandis wrote:
| wearing a mask wont do jackdiddly if you organize large
| gathering with 100,000 people.
| sunilg78 wrote:
| Don't need to be panic and also don't create panic. We at
| tamilnadu India has solution via traditional siddha. Acalypha
| indica ( 7 leaves ) and pepper , to be boiled cup of water until
| one third. Once in three days.
|
| It's very clear that we destroyed our ozone and polluted , so
| it's nature turn to set it back. One such act is this Corona
| worldwide......
|
| so let's get back to minimal life style and reduce consumption,
| stop polluting etc.
| rualca wrote:
| Please tell me you forgot to add a sarcasm tag.
| 0xmohit wrote:
| This sums it up:
|
| India's devastating second wave was fuelled by a series of
| crowded events, including mass rallies addressed by Prime
| Minister Narendra Modi [0].
|
| > Fuelling the catastrophe was a series of crowded events, like
| mass rallies by politicians such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
| religious holidays and pilgrimages on the Ganges river.
|
| > As governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers, including
| Modi, touted victory over the virus, people relaxed their
| vigilance and stopped wearing masks and maintaining social
| distancing.
|
| [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/4/29/indias-deadly-
| vi...
| strategyanalyst wrote:
| Modi is responsible, but not due to rallies and religious
| festivals. Surge in cases weren't related to these events.
|
| The trend lines were rising a month ago and government was
| waiting for someone sort of miracle to change its direction.
|
| No one really knows why cases in India fell to such low numbers
| and why they increased suddenly.
| intended wrote:
| I want to add that the overall chart shows that there was a
| small bump in, an uptick around 19th feb. However this trend
| was only actionable in a better data oriented environment.
|
| People explained away or ignored that small bump.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| I would not really take AlJazeera as a un-biased source. For
| one, in the article above, it mentions the massive rallies by
| the ruling party, BJP, but does not mention anything about
| rallies by other political parties, like Congress, TMC and
| others.
|
| A google search highlights only rallies of BJP.
|
| I found only 1 site that talks about other rallies.
|
| https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/all-bengal-rallies...
| dagmx wrote:
| If you're claiming AlJazeera is biased and then linking the
| Hindustan Times, then I question your perception of bias.
|
| For an American audience, this would be like saying MSNBC is
| biased, here's an article by Newsmax or OANN.
| KrishnaAnaril wrote:
| Hello, It was election time in few states and all parties
| organized rallies not just Modi. I'm from Kerala, India.
| ahurmazda wrote:
| Just in case, here is Arundhati Roy in her own words[1]. She is
| one the brightest activist voices from India. She paints a
| haunting tale of what's been happening in the past year and
| beyond leading us to today. > "Let's try and
| not be a cry baby." -- Tushar Mehta, India's solicitor general,
| speaking for the government of India
|
| [1]https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/28/crime-
| against-h...
| revendell_elf wrote:
| But those rallies were conducted in West Bangal and highest
| COVID cases are in Maharashtra. I'm definitely against these
| rallies but logic seems to fail us here, isn't it?
| pas wrote:
| Any Modi/BJP (or otherwise government permitted) rally
| anywhere sends the signal that people can be more lax.
| revendell_elf wrote:
| Even if they're in two opposite ends of India? Also, I
| don't want to take sides, but all other parties rallied
| during elections so why single out BJP? Once again, I'm
| strictly against these gatherings and I firmly believe that
| they should be banned without delay but this selective
| outrage is rather obvious that the agenda or the narrative
| is something else altogether.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| A certain section of western media is distinctly biased
| against the ruling party. So there seems to be a lot of
| marketing for a certain point of view, nudging the facts
| aside.
| HotVector wrote:
| Might be because BJP is a right-wing nationalist party.
| revendell_elf wrote:
| any data to back your statement? I'm genuinely curious as
| to how one label a political party as right or left wing?
| BJP is a nationalist party no doubt about that though.
| pvsukale3 wrote:
| Testing per capita is not same across the country.
| Maharashtra has been doing a lot of testing. I have been in
| touch with my friends in UP and it is really hard to get
| tested there. So the current official numbers are not
| accurate there.
| bluzeee wrote:
| It is very unfortunate that a single guy using one single
| resource is creating a false narrative about an entire country
| and is misusing this forum to spread false narrative. While
| even scientists are puzzled on the cause [0], a few like the
| above commenter for sure knows the causes conclusively
|
| India unlike U.S. and other western countries needs more
| careful analysis due to its diverse nature, larger informal
| economy and lack of proper data collection practices. Any
| simple attribution like the commenter is doing is simply false
| narrative
|
| 1. Anyone who has been tracking India covid cases closely
| knows, the most affected and contributing (72%) states for the
| second wave have been Maharastra and Kerala [0]
|
| 2. And, as second wave picked-up just 6 states contributed to
| 86.37% of new Covid-19 cases as per the data tracking [1]
|
| 3. Why did it spike in Maharastra ? Read [3] & [4] Importantly
| note the point on variant "This surge has started from
| Vidarbha, and it is hard to believe that mutant variants didn't
| have a role to play"
|
| 4. Now, lets talk about variant found [4] "Two leading experts
| recently contended that a new coronavirus mutant strain was
| reportedly detected in Amravati, Yavatmal, and Akola, all in
| the Vidarbha region in the eastern part of the state"
|
| 5. Above comment talks about religious event which is kumbh
| mela which took happened in Haridwar, Uttarakhand state. Do you
| see the state in any of the listed states contributing to the
| raise ? No. Let's put today's status, is that state even in the
| top: 10 [5]
|
| 6. And do you know you need a permit and negative covid test
| report to participate in this religious event ? [6]
|
| 7. He talks about Narendra modi rallies. Seriously ? He took
| rallies in the states where elections being conducted by Indian
| election commission, like all all other political parties he
| has to support his party. This is saying like Biden cannot take
| election rally while Trump goes on giving daily speeches.
| Importantly, do you see the state of Westbengal where election
| allies happened in the top ?
|
| 8. As Maharastra went into curfew, poor migrant labor mainly
| from Bihar and UP and people from other states rushed back home
| and there is no data how this might have affected
|
| 9. Did BJP declare victory over virus ? Yes. But there is no
| scientific or data based attribution of spike Or the commenters
| indirect attribution of peoples laxity and not wearing masks to
| victory declaration is misguiding
|
| [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indias-massive-
| co...
|
| [1] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-
| updates-f...
|
| [2] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/6-states-
| contribut...
|
| [3] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-
| is...
|
| [4] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maharashtra-
| hits-1...
|
| [5] https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-
| affairs/ne...
|
| [6] https://www.covid19india.org/
|
| [7] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kumbh-2021-limited-
| to-30-day...
| indian1947 wrote:
| > 6. And do you know you need a permit and negative covid
| test report to participate in this religious event?
|
| Well if this were true, how were hundreds of people there
| found to be infected [0]? In any case, there was absolutely
| no need to allow it at a critical time like this. We're
| probably very lucky that the event did not end in absolute
| catastrophe, like it very well could have.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56742231
| intended wrote:
| This is a narrative to protect a naked emperor.
|
| The vidarbha strain is also spread through out the country,
| and its not like the same mutations cannot appear elsewhere
| independently.
|
| The most populous state in India, UP, with 220 mn people, the
| worst medical infrastructure has better numbers than
| maharashtra. However having a Chief Minister who has gone
| ahead and threatened people for asking for help and even
| arresting/threatening journalists.
|
| This was a preventable apocalypse. Modi spent all of last
| year talking about how India is self sufficient and we are
| magnanimously helping other nations.
|
| The promoted cow urine, homeopathy and naturopathy when those
| resources could have been used last year.
|
| The Major religious events were brought forward. When 8
| phases of elections were allowed and the opposition asked for
| shorter elections, the BJP was the one who objected.
|
| The data has been intentionally fudged to leave governments,
| local and central looking better and the most partisan
| calculus has been at play when the center decides who gets
| help in the states.
| sinyug wrote:
| > When 8 phases of elections were allowed and the
| opposition asked for shorter elections, the BJP was the one
| who objected.
|
| The 2011 elections were held in 6 phases.[1]
|
| The 2016 elections were held in 6-7 phases.[2]
|
| Why should it be any different this year?
|
| If everyone was so concerned about the pandemic, they
| should have requested that president's rule be declared in
| Bengal till the pandemic is over.
|
| Every Indian knows how violent Bengal elections generally
| are[3] and how voters are intimidated. Hundreds of BJP
| political workers have been terrorized and murdered in
| Bengal over the last few years.[4]
|
| When it comes to the Bengal elections, COVID is just an
| excuse. Shorter elections with reduced security is a nice
| way to murder democracy.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_West_Bengal_Legislati
| ve_A...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_West_Bengal_Legislati
| ve_A...
|
| 3. https://www.thequint.com/news/politics/polling-advances-
| in-b...
|
| > Taking advantage of this slackness, some state police
| personnel and TMC supporters became active in pressuring
| rural voters and taking recourse to unfair means. The most
| serious incident of TMC intimidation occurred in Shalboni's
| Adharnayan villages where about 100-150 ruling party
| activists attacked some journalists and the CPI(M)
| candidate Shaymsundar Pande.
|
| > According to reports, the TMC goons beat up Pande and the
| media persons, snatched away the camera of one news
| channel, damaged vehicles and tried to set fire to a few
| parked vehicles. The reports alleged that CPMF jawans stood
| by without taking action against the TMC cadres. Despite
| repeated appeals to rescue the journalists, the jawans did
| not move.
|
| > Additional reports suggested that in Nayagram area under
| West Medinipur constituency TMC workers threatened
| villagers with dire consequences if they dared to leave
| their homes to cast their vote. The villagers complained
| that since they were BJP supporters they were ordered by
| the TMC workers and state police personnel not to leave
| their homes. The BJP candidate there was also similarly
| threatened by them. In Taldangra, Bankura, a state police
| assistant sub-inspector was seen taking bribes inside a
| polling booth.
|
| 4. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/amit-shah-in-
| west-be...
| intended wrote:
| There wasn't a pandemic in those years.
| indian1947 wrote:
| > 7. He talks about Narendra modi rallies. Seriously ? He
| took rallies in the states where elections being conducted by
| Indian election commission, like all all other political
| parties he has to support his party. This is saying like
| Biden cannot take election rally while Trump goes on giving
| daily speeches. Importantly, do you see the state of
| Westbengal where election allies happened in the top ?
|
| Yes he was not the only one conducting mass rallies but as
| the leader of the nation, was it not his responsibility to
| set an example in the country's fight against covid? Should
| we not hold the Prime Minister to a higher standard? Yes,
| every party held mass rallies and shame on all of them - it
| does not excuse Modi though.
|
| He has a termendous fan following in India ready to do what
| he says (lighting lamps, clanging vessels) - he just does
| seem to be able to channel that devotion into something
| positive.
| squaredisk wrote:
| This. This is the problem in india. Vedic books. Especially
| with the well educated priestly caste who had the exclusive
| access to education before the britishere's arrived. The
| vedic scriptures (basis of hindu religion) advocates
| stratification of society(caste) and give privilege based on
| birth. For this reason no matter what, there are literate
| people who will support and justify the actions of anyone who
| tries to uphold the vedic principles. BJP, RSS, Modi are all
| just a pawn in the grand scheme of preserving the privilege
| by birth advocated by veda's.
| madtantric wrote:
| Citation needed. Which vedic text advocates privilege based
| on birth?. On what basis is Modi privileged by birth? How
| does any of these matter in a discussion on covid. What
| about other religions in India, are they not affected?
| sanmon3186 wrote:
| I seriously don't understand, how whatever you wrote
| relates to the original comment.
| squaredisk wrote:
| I am pointing out the cultural reason for the western
| readers who are wondering or puzzled by the support for
| the current ruling party, even at this dire situation
| which the government could have avoided. It becomes clear
| when one understands what the vedas advocate, the
| privilege by birth offers and why it is so important over
| anything else for the priestly caste.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Modi is Brahmin now?
| mandis wrote:
| >6. And do you know you need a permit and negative covid test
| report to participate in this religious event ? [6]
|
| We dont have capacity to test the number of people who were
| attending the Kumbh mela daily. 10k tests may be the capacity
| appx, while appx 10 million people will be attending over a
| month.
|
| https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-
| news/over-9-1-million-p...
|
| Please understand India as reported by media is way different
| from the ground reality.
|
| https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/health/kumbh-amid-
| covid-...
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| > We dont have capacity
|
| By we, do you mean you personally? Or do you have the
| entire state machinery reporting to you.
|
| You keep talking about ground reality. You mostly seem to
| be adding to the chaos.
|
| Maybe when all this is over, have the government setup a
| commission to investigate negligence, profiteering and
| other acts but how exactly are you helping anyone by
| spreading more panic
| mandis wrote:
| >7. He talks about Narendra modi rallies. Seriously ? He took
| rallies in the states where elections being conducted by
| Indian election commission, like all all other political
| parties he has to support his party. This is saying like
| Biden cannot take election rally while Trump goes on giving
| daily speeches. Importantly, do you see the state of
| Westbengal where election allies happened in the top ?
|
| He is the head of the nation. The larger the power center,
| the larger the responsibility. This guy literally boasted
| about the size of the crowd less than 10 days back, in the
| bang middle of the pandemic.
|
| He deserves to be tried for murder, as well as the election
| officials.
| [deleted]
| djmips wrote:
| > negative covid test report to participate in this religious
| event
|
| It depends on the type of covid test, if this is going to be
| useful. Tests range from negligible error to significant
| false negatives.
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Probably due to opening of schools and colleges across country.
| That's why it's hitting young people harder.
| akudha wrote:
| I am seriously worried where this is going. People don't seem to
| take precautions (masks etc), the government doesn't seem to care
| (they seem more interested in suppressing data/news). Unless
| you're rich, Indian healthcare isn't great even in good times. It
| is just not equipped to handle this bad of a situation.
|
| This looks like chapter one of a giant disaster, only waiting to
| get even more worse
| qart wrote:
| https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/we-are-all-respons...
|
| The author is a surgeon. He says things that many of us have been
| saying all along. Hopefully, his professional background will
| help wake some people up.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| India was quite successful in handling the pandemic until this
| second wave, which rose from a low case count to new peaks
| within a month. Cases lag infection events, and it takes time
| for the data to be reported, for people and governments to
| react to it, for changes to be made, and so on. It's easy in
| hindsight to say some action must have been taken by some date,
| but while it's happening live, it's hard to tell a new and
| different pattern apart from "normal" fluctuation. For example,
| when I was looking at the case graphs a couple weeks ago
| (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-tests-and-daily-
| new...), there was a temporary dip in case counts between the
| initial portion of the second wave and subsequent faster rise.
| That dip is no longer visible, and likely got filled in by
| delayed data, but my point is that it's hard to figure out
| what's an under-reaction or over-reaction to a live and chaotic
| situation. For leaders without the luxury of hindsight, it's
| challenging because they need to carefully balance health
| impacts with social and economic impacts.
|
| _> (from the Indian Express article) We need to accept that
| the politicians do not decide what we do in our everyday
| routine._
|
| The federal government of India, for its part, was very much
| cognizant of the surge. Their press releases noted the surge in
| a few states as early as February 20th
| (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1699596), which
| was a very fast reaction. The federal government provided
| updated guidance to the affected states the very next day
| (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1699735), but
| did not force any decision on individual states, in keeping
| with the cooperative federalism that governs the health
| ministry's decisions. Regular guidance updates and
| interventions continued thereon.
|
| Like your article suggests, my feeling is that this situation
| will end up being attributable to a mix of increased general
| mobility across society, combined with the unfortunate advent
| of more infectious variants, rather than any singular factor.
| Looking at the latest mobility graphs
| (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/changes-visitors-
| covid?co...), we can increasing mobility preceding the surge
| and then a big drop in mobility around March 27th, when the
| daily number of cases was 3x the low point but half the prior
| peaks. We can wish for earlier change in behaviors now, but the
| timeline of how society reacted is not entirely unreasonable -
| it's simply the reality of seeing data and reacting to it with
| some natural time delay. As for the risk of new variants, per a
| breaking Reuters article (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-
| pacific/exclusive-scienti...), some scientists identified that
| certain new variants were responsible for many cases and that
| they also seem to be able to escape antibodies:
|
| _> A version of that draft, seen by Reuters, set out the
| forum's findings: the new Indian variant had two significant
| mutations to the portion of the virus that attaches to human
| cells, and it had been traced in 15% to 20% of samples from
| Maharashtra, India 's worst-affected state.
|
| > The draft statement said that the mutations, called E484Q and
| L452R, were of "high concern." It said "there is data of E484Q
| mutant viruses escaping highly neutralising antibodies in
| cultures, and there is data that L452R mutation was responsible
| for both increased transmissibility and immune escape."_
|
| The findings were shared with the Health Ministry on March
| 10th, and publicly released on March 24th. This article notes
| that it is unclear if this report was ever sent to Modi.
| Interestingly enough, this Reuters article mentions many
| possible missteps or contributing factors, but also quotes a
| scientist who is careful not to place singular blame on anyone,
| just like the Indian Express article you linked:
|
| _> To be sure, some scientists say the surge was much larger
| than expected and the setback cannot be pinned on political
| leadership alone. "There is no point blaming the government,"
| Saumitra Das, director of the National Institute of Biomedical
| Genomics, which is part of INSACOG, told Reuters._
| intended wrote:
| This wave is showing that it was Dumb luck that made it
| possible to handle last year.
|
| > It's easy in hindsight
|
| In a whole year of time to prepare, with examples in numerous
| nations, who could possibly have fathomed that a rapidly
| mutating virus would evolve to overcome the immunological
| barriers presented in India?
|
| Many people! Not only were experts and opposition members
| warning about a possible disastrously second wave, we even
| have district collectors who acted on such fears.
|
| And it is apparent today, to normal people, that creating
| reserves of oxygen, vaccine and preparation was possible last
| year. It is entirely the failure of this government to
| instead have indulged in its beliefs of "naturopathy,
| homeopathy, unani, cow urine" and the rest.
|
| Not to mention, this is Modi being hoisted on his own petard.
| He has built a system that bows to him, waits for his
| decisions and his action. He has built that image and acted
| according to it. He has weakened every independent body and
| applied pressure everywhere.
|
| So if he is adding his image to COVID vaccine certificates,
| is it also not his charge to have protected the country from
| this disaster?
| egghese wrote:
| Opinion columns are not scientific sources. To the article's
| credit recklessness from people are is the reason for the
| spike. But doesn't absolves a leadership that claimed to have
| concurred Covid-19 and have no clue about disaster management.
| Indians deserved better.
| qart wrote:
| There have been more than enough scientific sources published
| for the effectiveness of masks. I hope you still don't doubt
| that part. I will not cite them. People have been crowding
| and not wearing masks across the country. Do you want a
| scientific source for that? There may never be one. The
| Indians who step out of their homes are aware of this
| already.
|
| No government or healthcare system can keep up with people
| flouting the scientific recommendations on such a scale.
| egghese wrote:
| I was not disagreeing with the articles claim people
| flouting rules caused a spike. But the people or the
| country isn't by itself responsible. Rather a callous
| government that was indifferent to this pandemic is. It had
| an year to prepare. It did nothing more than PR works
|
| - If the health infrastructure could not take it, what was
| the reason for this narrative ?
| https://www.thequint.com/news/india/in-january-pm-modi-
| had-e...
|
| - Did they not know about vaccine demand ?
| https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2021-01-20-india-
| phar...
|
| - Why did they take away the states ability to prepare ?
| https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/apr/09/as-
| per-n...
| qart wrote:
| > It did nothing more than PR works
|
| What's with the hyperbole? To disprove your point, I just
| have to point to _one_ thing that the government did that
| was not PR?
|
| - What narrative, specifically?
|
| - At the time, I too was in support of supplying vaccines
| to countries who were in desperate need of it. I still
| don't mind waiting a few months if the vaccines that
| should have come to me go to a healthcare worker in some
| other country instead.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26346021
|
| - There is no reason to take anything Shiv Sena says at
| face value. This is the single worst party in India. If
| law and order had worked in India, these people would
| have been declared terrorists long before most of us were
| born. They continue to mistreat doctors
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vUUQEpJEG4) and
| threaten hospitals
| (https://twitter.com/amitsurg/status/1299352826636722176)
| across the state. Also, while all other states had the
| pandemic somewhat under control at one time or another,
| MH consistently stayed at #1 or #2 among the worst
| affected states.
| indian1947 wrote:
| Shiv Sena is for sure known for their thuggery and being
| a party of regionalistic goons. They're hardly very
| different from their erstwhile allies the BJP though.
| qart wrote:
| Any thoughts on their current allies?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXtH0NQFqZI
| Xplune13 wrote:
| The response from the government for this wave is pretty bad
| and they took way too much time to act for sure. But, what
| you are saying is polar opposite from the article that OP
| posted. The reason isn't one or the another, it is the
| combination of both. Yes, Indians deserved better but the
| people's recklessness is so out of bounds in large cities
| (speaking from my own experience) that many knew this type of
| wave can happen and it did happen. The worst part is people
| ignored all the self-precautions and acted like everything is
| back to normal. So in the end, it is the combination of both,
| people's recklessness and delayed (unplanned as well)
| response from the government.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| It seems that Indian medical fraternity is placing too much faith
| in Remdesivir and Convalescent Plasma. In some way it is similar
| to the Ivermectin fad in South Africa for Covid treatment. These
| treatments are not recommended by WHO, but medical practitioners
| prescribing the same is leading to scarcity and blackmarketing of
| the same.
|
| As I see it there is total chaos in medical protocols for covid
| treatment, and this could be a significant driver in mortality in
| this wave in India.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| Someone should cut your head off with a chainsaw. Lying cunt.
| alwayshasbeen wrote:
| Is there a study that tells if the current wave is related to
| Kumbh Mela that was celebrated extensively?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| No there's no such study. There has been a lot of focus on
| election rallies and Kumbh Mela in press, but it seems to be
| mostly due to people turning the tragedy of the second wave
| into a political opportunity to attack Modi. But Kumbh Mela is
| one event, and elections are only taking place in a few states.
| The reality is that India was handling the pandemic quite well
| through a policy of highly localized containment, and general
| mobility among the populace was increasing in response to
| improved pandemic conditions and the trickling of vaccines
| (although India gave away tens of millions of vaccine doses to
| other nations and hurt its own drive as a result of that
| generosity). I suspect that the reality of this wave is that
| many factors contributed - increased general mobility, some
| large events, and likely new variants that aren't well
| understood yet and may spread more easily. Prior to that,
| everything and everyone being blamed right now is just
| speculative and opportunist.
| mlnj wrote:
| > But Kumbh Mela is one event, and elections are only taking
| place in a few states.
|
| Kumb mela gathers tens of millions of devotees at a single
| point in the most densely populated state in the sub
| continent.
|
| Just on April 14th 2021, more than 900,000 people taking a
| dip in the same river. The central government is the
| authority responsible to stop the event this year given the
| impending crisis, but only encouragement was seen from the
| ministers except that the event was cut short to 30 days
| instead of the many month ordeal it usually is.
|
| > There has been a lot of focus on election rallies and Kumbh
| Mela in press, but it seems to be mostly due to people
| turning the tragedy of the second wave into a political
| opportunity to attack Modi.
|
| > everything and everyone being blamed right now is just
| speculative and opportunist.
|
| This thread is a testament to the aggressive brigading to
| deflect all blame from the Central Government. Contrarians
| spewing random questions to avoid focus on anything being
| discussed. It has been a pattern for the past half a decade
| now.
|
| Nobody is denying that there are multiple factors and people
| responsible in the current crisis, but this line of excuses
| is a steady pattern of a concerted effort to deflect blame on
| the untarnishable image of a strongman Modi emanates. It
| happens on every crisis. every blunder Modi makes.
| revendell_elf wrote:
| But Maharashtra had been seeing record cases even before
| Kumbh which happened in Uttar Pradesh. How come Maharashtra
| had those cases then?
| revendell_elf wrote:
| And... You'll be downvoted to hell again since you stated
| facts and asked questions around them.
| alex_smart wrote:
| The data suggests that Covid had already become so
| widespread in India by the time Kumbh happened that the few
| thousand of cases happening represented only a tiny
| fraction of cases in India.
|
| Of course, after you point his out, the piece de resistance
| comes out, calling the data itself fake based on no
| argument at all.
| alex_smart wrote:
| If anything, the data suggests the contrary. They were testing
| people extensively in Haridwar when the event took place. The
| cases that were detected from the city during the time the
| festival was happening represented less than 1% of the total
| number of cases happening in India.
|
| https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-over-1700...
|
| > Medical workers conducted 2,36,751 tests over the five-day
| period in the mela site. Out of these, 1,701 came out positive
| for coronavirus.
|
| For context, at this time, India was already registering over
| 200,000 new covid cases a day. The test positivity rate (<1%)
| from the mela site is also much lower than most other parts of
| the country (~5-10%).
|
| Basically, covid had already spread so much in India by the
| time Kumbh Mela happened that the cases from there were only a
| drop in the bucket.
| nojito wrote:
| COVID has an incubation time of 7-14 days.
|
| Why would people be positive at the event?
|
| The amount of nonsense data coming out of India is just
| ridiculous.
| alex_smart wrote:
| > COVID has an incubation time of 7-14 days.
|
| That's for symptoms. Covid is usually expected to show up
| in tests after 4-5 tests.
|
| >Why would people be positive at the event?
|
| The Kumbh Mela is not a one-day event. The event had
| already been underway for 10 days for the period under
| discussion.
|
| In any case, testing data is available from Haridwar for
| the entire month now. Is this a fourth mutant of Covid that
| never shows up in tests?
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| Are we going to have a India second wave discussion every single
| day?
|
| How is this "hacker" "news" @dang .. it's only unnecessary
| political bickering about how bad the government is from a bunch
| of India haters. Same talking points imported from Twitter
| everyday.
| revendell_elf wrote:
| You're downvoted so much that I can't even read the text
| anymore. Lol. Good luck trying to defend your country against
| Westerns who denied sharing their vaccine formulas with India
| and left it to rot.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| My comment reads this isn't "hacker" "news"
| blueberry8998 wrote:
| Where is the defense? Sprouting some crap is not defense.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| Maybe if you can't read the comment you should shut up
| dang wrote:
| You've been breaking the site guidelines badly. A comment
| like this is obviously completely unacceptable, and your
| account has also been using HN for political and/or
| nationalistic flamewar, which is not cool. We ban
| accounts that do that.
|
| I'm not going to ban you right now because you've posted
| good comments about other things in the not-too-distant
| past. Please stick to that and don't post any more
| flamewar comments.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for using HN primarily for
| political and nationalistic flamewar. That's not allowed
| here, regardless of which politics or nation you're battling
| for. It destroys this site for its intended purpose.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.
| ..
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| That's not an accurate description of the thread, except in
| patches where people have been starting and fighting political
| flamewars. You're right that that's not ok here. Your account
| shouldn't be doing it either. We ban accounts that use HN
| primarily for such things, regardless of which side of whatever
| flamewar they're on. We don't care what color the flames burn--
| we care about not burning.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| movid wrote:
| Absolute clusterfuck it is right now in India. And thank you
| international media for bringing this to light.
|
| This could've been averted if the government wasn't busy
| promoting quackery [1], pandering to astrologers and hardliners
| by organizing a massive religious festival in the middle of
| pandemic [2]. And they did fuck all to improve the medical/oxygen
| infrastructure for the past one year and are promoting fake news
| that puts the blame squarely on provincial governments. [6]
|
| Our supreme leader Modi was busy canvassing and praising crowds
| attending his rallies as recently as 17th April while the country
| was burning. [3]
|
| Modi's heir in the making who has the potential to make him look
| like a saint has recently threatened to file cases against people
| and seize their properties if they take their grievances to
| social media.[4]
|
| And even now, the government is more concerned about their image
| than controlling the situation. And the establishment's toadies
| are busy online(I see a lot of them here too) defending their
| dear leader even now with the same enthusiasm they show to credit
| him for anything positive.
|
| The people are to blame too ofcourse for relaxing but what can we
| expect when the leaders at helm proclaimed the pandemic is over.
|
| PS: I had to post this from a newly created account cuz I
| wouldn't want this to weigh against me when I apply for a
| passport. [5]
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/56172784 [2]
| https://science.thewire.in/health/leaders-listened-to-astrol...
| [3] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/west-bengal-assembly-
| electio... [4] https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/yogi-
| adityanth-oxygen-... [5] https://thenextweb.com/news/this-indian-
| states-police-force-... [6]
| https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/no-centre-did-not-allo...
| mandis wrote:
| Ground reality-
|
| * 400,000 new infections reported yesterday. Number of deaths is
| being suppressed- 10x more deaths than reported. Crematoriums
| everywhere are overflowing, yet only 3k deaths per day as per
| official record.
|
| * Basic resources like Oxygen, Meds (Favipiravir, Remdesivir,
| Monitors), Hospital beds keep running out in many cities and
| towns. Everything is on sale for 2-10x the official prices. For
| example, Remdesivir selling for Rs 20,000 ($300) instead of Rs
| 2,000. Ambulances charging Rs 25,000 for a half hour transport,
| instead of Rs 2,500.
|
| * Beds are a tragedy. People are dying in their cars
| (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/no-bed-
| in-4-n...). Day rent for beds in nursing home corridors (yes,
| actual narrow corridors) are selling for an amount equal to the
| average monthly salary of a middle class citizen.
|
| * The government organized election rallies and religious
| gatherings and overruled the concerns of many educated voices
| over the last 2 months. Lockdown in election bound states was
| only announced yesterday, once all rallies and multi-phase
| election was finished. Votes/Power over lives, that's the mantra.
| One head of state went as far as to pass an order declaring
| anyone posting stories of O2 shortage will be prosecuted and
| arrested. (https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/covid-up-
| hospitals-defy...)
|
| * People have stepped up as the govt has abdicated
| responsibility, sharing resources on their stories and working
| all day to verify their availability by calling hospitals and
| crematoriums. However the scale of the tragedy is immense and
| people who could have been saved are dropping like flies. This
| wave is affecting 40, 50 year olds, without any comorbidities.
| Apparently the strain is a double mutant (mutation of the strain
| from UK), and now a triple variant is also being reported.
|
| * EDIT- Also for the sake of PR, the central govt sent more than
| half the vaccine produced abroad. Apparently the concept of
| stockpiling and reserves isn't common knowledge with the Indian
| political elite. So today we are at a situation where we are
| importing the vaccines we had exported, as we are desperately
| short on stocks and there is no relief in sight. Only 1.9% of
| India's population has received 2 doses of the vaccine. Long
| story short, many people will die.
| thweor234234 wrote:
| Stop spreading FUD dude.
|
| 10x deaths ? Do you know the nightmare and level of competence
| required to "cover" this up ? A lot of the backlog in
| crematoriums is due to the insane doomer-porn based "covid
| precautions".
|
| > Also for the sake of PR, the central govt sent more than half
| the vaccine produced abroad
|
| FFS dude, this is part of the contract that f-ing contract that
| SI signed with Oxford-Astrazeneca. Have basic decency to read
| things before spouting your self-conceited mouth.
| buyx wrote:
| _Basic resources like...(...Remdesivir)_
|
| I've been following this on social media, and the Indian
| desperation for Remdesivir struck me (now it seems to be for
| oxygen, sadly). It's heartbreaking, but also interesting to see
| how many people are desperate for the drug. Is this based on
| evidence? What's driving the demand: doctors or the public?
|
| We've seen a similar craze for ivermectin in South Africa, and
| there was the HCQ craze in the US. It would be interesting to
| see if there are parallels.
| nojito wrote:
| Yes. If given early enough it has been shown to cut down
| length of stay and severity of disease.
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle.
| ..
| pessimist wrote:
| Agree with almost everything. Health care is collapsing around
| us.
|
| 10x death-undercount nationwide is probably not accurate. Major
| states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala are reporting
| close to accurate numbers. 2-5x nationwide is likely, with
| places like UP, West Bengal and Gujarat undercounting by 5-10x.
| mandis wrote:
| I hope and pray its not 10x and only 5x. You might be right
| about the state wise discrepancies, sadly don't think we will
| ever know the real picture, as even crematoriums are fudging
| records in many places. So much for being better than China.
|
| Btw since this is HN, might there be a way to approximate the
| number of deaths from the size of one's social circle and the
| number of circle members who have passed away from covid?
| hesarenu wrote:
| There were similar claims last time as well. It seems
| Kerala reported 20k less deaths in 2020[1]. There might be
| disparity but saying 5x or 10x is too much.
|
| [1]https://theprint.in/opinion/if-you-claim-indias-covid-
| death-...]
| throwawayy12 wrote:
| Say 1/3 of the crematoriums are seeing 3x dead on average
| nation wide. That'll be `1400m/(70*365)/3*2 == 36k` extra
| death per day which is 10x of official number..
|
| [edit]: i used the same logic to predict the number for
| Wuhan in Jan 2020 which turned out to be fairly accurate
| Zenst wrote:
| One big factor that is different in India than this time last
| year would be economic.
|
| The incomes of your average person in India has declined due to
| the whole pandemic and can be seen here:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111510/india-coronaviru...
|
| That would in a country with many living day by day, be one
| difference over say this time last year, in which air-quality
| would of also been a factor as much as currently. Whilst not
| good, combined with a reduced nutritional intake, may of tipped
| the balance.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Also collapsing oxygen supply.. maybe simply with more stock
| and distribution capabilities the wave would have been less
| deadly.
| Zenst wrote:
| The oxygen supply shortage is due to demand and whilst does
| not explain the increase demand and certainly would play into
| the deaths, it wouldn't be at the scale we are seeing as it
| is the increase in cases and the oxygen supply shortage is a
| product of the knock on demand and not a causality in that
| demand. Yes it is a factor in increased deaths, but not the
| major factor, which is increased numbers of infected.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| This is happening everywhere in the world (except a few countries
| where most people are vaccinated and/or tested heavily): people
| ran out of money, goverments failed to help them, and at this
| point it's worth to take the risk of getting COVID for much more
| people than to stay hungry and get homeless.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Alternative explanation. In japan people dont care anymore and
| we are hit by a new wave which is definitely looking like a new
| peak of infections. Add to that absolutely no border control
| and lazy authorities and thats a recipe for things getting out
| of control.
| pudmaidai wrote:
| What do you mean by "absolutely no border control"? As far as
| I know quarantine is required to enter Japan.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Not for japanese nationals
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| ... lucky there's no world sporting event that will
| congregate thousands of people from around the globe in Japan
| in a few weeks time.
|
| They should have cancelled the Olympics to at least 2022... I
| hope historians don't look back at sports ball being the
| catalyst of third/fourth waves and stronger/newer strains all
| across the globe in 2022.
| cyrksoft wrote:
| International spectators are not allowed at the Olympics
| this time. And there will be strict protocols for athletes.
| Not sure how this can cause such a massive new wave.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You think Japanese spectators are somehow immune to
| COViD?
| Torkel wrote:
| I entered Japan close to two weeks ago from Europe. Super
| strict and well managed border control. Passengers were
| supervised and escorted to a special quarantine hotel for the
| first three days of quarantine. After that they use an app on
| my phone to keep track of where I am. For 14 days I have to
| "check in" my location multiple times per day.
|
| The place with no border control i Europe. Not Japan.
| sirn wrote:
| The 3 days quarantine is only for people arriving from a
| list of countries with a known mutated strain. It's much
| less strict if the passenger did not arrived from the
| listed countries ([1]; the one in the parenthesis, the
| table below is countries which PCR result is required).
|
| Officially the rule is to be quarantine in the designated
| place for 14 days and to report everyday. However, the
| loophole is the designated place also includes _your home_
| , and if you happen to use LINE, the daily report becomes
| just a button press in the app. Location tracking is only
| recommended, not required. (The Japanese document on
| location tracking is just to enable location history on
| Google Maps or enable Significant Location on iPhone[2])
|
| [1]: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenko
| u_iryo... Note the English version of this document is very
| outdated (Mar 26, 2020 for the English version vs. Mar 21,
| _2021_ for the Japanese version.) See [3] for a more up-to-
| date one, although in a different format.
|
| [2]: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/000652555.pdf
|
| [3]: https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html The
| list is in Section 2, in the (Note 1), with the most
| horrendous formatting possible.
| ekianjo wrote:
| If only they did the same thing to Japanese nationals...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Which countries have this happening?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I'm from Hungary (currently the top on the official list of
| deaths/millions of people), where people were so scared, that
| the first wave was almost non-existant. Now it's the
| opposite, though at least people are getting vaccinated
| aggressively, they just don't wait enough for the vaccines to
| get into effect.
|
| Another example is my girlfriend who is from Colombia: people
| were very careful last year, but now there's a huge
| demonstration happening because of a proposed tax reform,
| which shows how desparate people are like, and how much it
| overwrites their fear of COVID. I'm sure that well see the
| results in the number of deaths in a month or two there.
| tartoran wrote:
| Are you just from or currently in Hungary? Is the situation
| there deteriorating?
| biztos wrote:
| Friends in Budapest tell me it's getting better, but they
| recently opened up outdoor drinking venues for the first
| time since November and everything was packed, no
| distancing and no masks, so I hope it doesn't backfire.
|
| Interestingly, Hungary already has vaccine passports. Not
| sure if they're used for anything but I've seen them,
| same size/shape as the national ID card, and chipped. A
| lot of my friends got Sputnik instead of AZ, they were
| offered a choice.
| pas wrote:
| There's no chip.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=v%C3%A9detts%C3%A9gi+igaz
| olv...
|
| It allows people to go to bathhouses for example. Also it
| grants exemption from quarantine and PCR testing upon
| (re)entry to the country.
| pas wrote:
| The spike is big, but not dead people hanging from the
| trees big. Hospitals are well over capacity, staff is
| over-overworked, and there was a recent new change in the
| law that regulates healthcare workers. 5-6 thousand HC
| workers declined the new forced change, so even less
| staff available.
|
| At the same time people are getting vaccinated, but the
| gross incompetence of the government doesn't help. (Just
| yesterday the website where people ought to schedule an
| appointment for getting a vaccine was offline day due to
| too much load.)
|
| While the death/capita indicator peaked our wise leader
| opened the terraces of pubs and restaurants.
|
| ... I'm aware that a well ventilated terrace on a dry
| sunny day carries a relatively very low risk of
| transmission, but still. It's complete bollocks to do
| this without any contact tracing, any testing, etc. (That
| said, it's important to note that people were already not
| social distancing, but now it's trivial to get infected
| by total strangers, plus now those can infect a lot more
| random folks. Whereas before the opening at least people
| were able to do some informal checks and tracing.)
| randomchars wrote:
| No. 40% of the population had at least 1 vaccine already.
| Death and infection rates are also declining.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I'm in Mexico, but going back to Hungary in a few weeks
| to try to get my COVID vaccine. There's a soccer match
| tomorrow (I mean Saturday) with Fradi, the favourite
| football team of the prime minister, that's why he opened
| up the country more. Many people just go with it, as they
| just want to get back to normal, even though the vaccines
| that people got are not protecting yet.
|
| His main goal is to open up even more to be able to
| organize EU soccer championship, that's why he's rushing
| ahead.
|
| Viktor Orban wanted to be a professional soccer player
| when he was a child, but he wasn't good enough, and now
| the whole country is suffering because of his childhood
| trauma.
| thweor234234 wrote:
| Lockdowns, at this point, are a plot to kill the poor, nothing
| more, nothing less.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| Also note that covid deaths are around 10-100x more than the
| official records. To be recorded as official death, the person
| should have tested positive and have died in a hospital. Home
| deaths are not recorded as covid.
|
| There are also reports from my acquaintances that deaths from
| private hospitals in grade 2/3 cities are not recorded as covid
| deaths nor are deaths even in government hospital where a test
| could not be performed before the death of the person.
|
| Two big reasons for this wave are
|
| 1) The kumbh mela with 5-12 million people gathering in a tiny
| spot. This was supposed to take place next year but was pulled
| forward to appease the religious hardcore.
|
| 2) Election rallies around the country.
| invertedreversi wrote:
| Farmer protests are widely believed to be the biggest reason
| for the spread.
| rk06 wrote:
| Who believes that?
|
| Farmer protests happened during December-feb, while COVID
| surge started in March.
|
| Govt. is just blaming farmers for everything, instead of
| kumbh mela, lowering restrictions and election rallies
| mlnj wrote:
| Not the case. The farmer protests have been going on for
| months and it won't be much of a protest if they all went
| back home and spread the virus.
|
| Yet another attempt by the BJP IT Cell to divert the
| attention onto anybody but the BJP government.
| tiuPapa wrote:
| They had a rotation policy. They clearly say it in all
| their interviews, how they are maintaining constant
| presence in the protests by rotating members every 4 - 7
| days. See interviews on channels like Youtube channels like
| ScoopWhoop Unscripted, that tried to bring the farmer's
| point of view to the forefront. Let's not kid ourselves,
| the virus doesn't discriminate based on whether the
| gathering is righteous or not. Each and every gathering is
| a super spreader, be it a protest, election rally or a
| religious gathering.
| intended wrote:
| However the cases explosion is not related to this event.
|
| Bringing this point up sacrifices a chance to save india
| from future pain just to win political talking points to
| protect the culpable.
|
| Cases lag events by 14 days. The spike was this year, the
| protests started last year. The cases didn't even begin
| in those states that sent the most protesters. The
| current strain developed in Maharashtra.
|
| The Govt and all Indians I spoke to throughout the year
| were complete unaware of how they had dodged a bullet.
|
| Instead of being grateful and figuring out how to prevent
| it from ever happening again, our govt went ahead and
| said "we are invincible.".
|
| This is a behavior we cannot ever afford again.
|
| If we didn't know why we had such a mild first wave, we
| should have done everything to understand why and to take
| preventive measures.
| tiuPapa wrote:
| Did Maharashtra had a Khumb Mela? Or an election rally?
| There is a reason they are being called super spreader,
| not super incubator. I think all of these replies are
| somehow missing my point. I am not saying that this one
| incident is responsible for our current state, it is the
| government. However, I don't think somehow excluding a
| mass gathering like the farmer's protest from the list of
| superspreader's is doing any good, it will just convince
| some people that the gathering for their cause is somehow
| invincible, as you right said the attitude has been for a
| majority of Indians.
| intended wrote:
| By that criteria the migration last year when the abrupt
| lockdown was called would count as a super spreader
| event.
|
| However the crucial need is for an event to actually
| spread the virus. Or more precisely, spread the variant
| that is currently adapted to india.
| tiuPapa wrote:
| It did though? The migration worker did result in a
| momentary spike in their states when they finally reached
| their homes, especially after those special trains. Just
| the variant wasn't as deadly. I am not sure what your
| point is.
| mlnj wrote:
| The farmers protests are almost completely represented by
| people from 2 States. Even if they did go home and spread
| the infection the rate of spread is much lower in Punjab
| and Haryana.
|
| I want them to handle the crisis well and be safe but the
| narrative that 'Farmer protests destroy India with Covid'
| needs to be debunked.
| tiuPapa wrote:
| In trying to debunk one BJP propaganda, you are spreading
| another. The protest was not only by the "rich" farmers
| of Punjab and Haryana protecting their interests, there
| were protests joining from all neighboring states like
| Rajasthan, UP, etc., with demonstrating being organized
| country wide. The rate of spread is not lower in Punjab
| or Haryana. It's the same as rest of the country, just
| not as high as the states where election rallies and
| religious gathering acted as a bigger catalyst.
| mlnj wrote:
| >It's the same as rest of the country, just not as high
| as the states where election rallies and religious
| gathering acted as a bigger catalyst.
|
| Literally what I said.
| tiuPapa wrote:
| I am not sure how "the infection the rate of spread is
| much lower in Punjab and Haryana" is the literally the
| same as "It's the same as rest of the country, just not
| as high as the states where election rallies and
| religious gathering acted as a bigger catalyst". To me
| that reads like saying the rate of infection is much
| lower than the country average.
| egghese wrote:
| I agree with you that larger mass gatherings have a clear
| responsibility. However, cherry-picking the farmers
| protest which was dissenting a government policy when
| there were multiple other events and a clearly clue-less
| government feels like government propaganda.
| tiuPapa wrote:
| My point is not that farmer protests should be blamed.
| The blame and responsibility of this surge clearly lies
| with the government and ruling party celebrating
| `victory` pre-maturely. My point is that we should not
| propagate a wrong message that somehow the protests were
| immune from being a super spreader, making people think
| it is alright to continue being part of a mass gathering,
| whatever the cause.
| op03 wrote:
| If all this was obvious and the govt couldnt do anything
| about it, why is such a govt required?
| tiuPapa wrote:
| Valid question that needs to be asked. Hopefully, this
| will wake up people from their populist fever dream.
| Torock wrote:
| Is there any source for this? I think the scientific
| consensus last year (at least in the US) was that big
| protests didn't turn out to be super spreader events
| intended wrote:
| There isn't. The protests were at their peak last year.
| If you look at the case growth, it begins in feb/March.
| Since case reporting tends to lags infection by 14 days,
| we know that they have nothing to do with the protests.
|
| Sadly though, the protests continue even today, and I
| have not heard of any response from the govt.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Widely believed, yes, but mostly by Modi dick-riders.
| dang wrote:
| Posting like this will get you banned here. We had to warn
| you about flamebait another time recently as well. Please
| review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules from now on.
| egghese wrote:
| What are the sources of this claim ? A general consensus was
| the false narrative that claimed India have conquered Covid,
| resulting in people ignoring the safety measured cause this.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01059-y
|
| If you are looking for super spreader events its more likely
| the large election gatherings caused a spike.
|
| Blaming a protest that was taking place even months before
| looks like propaganda.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Were people simply not gathering _at all_ other than for
| election events?
| egghese wrote:
| The initial lock down and panic eventually made people
| deny existence of Covid, along with a narrative that
| Indians are immune to Covid. Later the leadership started
| claiming India already conquered Covid.
| https://www.livemint.com/science/health/we-are-in-the-
| endgam...
|
| To answer your question, people were gathering for events
| other than rallies
| hesarenu wrote:
| Where does in the link he claims covid is conquered. He
| specifically says we are in endgame and to succeed
| politics should be kept out of the Covid-19 vaccination
| drive. There were too many guys questioning vaccination.
| Why twist the sentence?
| kingofpandora wrote:
| > Where does in the link he claims covid is conquered. He
| specifically says we are in endgame and to succeed
| politics should be kept out of the Covid-19 vaccination
| drive. There were too many guys questioning vaccination.
| Why twist the sentence?
|
| "Today, Covid cases are declining rapidly in India ... 18
| percent of the world's population is in India, a country
| that saved mankind from a big disaster by saving its
| citizens from the pandemic."
| hesarenu wrote:
| That sentence is not there in the link. And it even does
| not say covid has ended. Let me paste a text from the
| article to say bad badly the op changed the meaning
|
| He sad " We need to follow 3 steps: Keep politics out of
| the COVID-19 vaccination drive, Trust the science behind
| COVID-19 Vaccines, and ensure our near & dear ones get
| vaccinated on time."
| [deleted]
| intended wrote:
| Farmer protests were last year. Cases started spiking
| late/feb and march.
|
| Protests would have shown 14 day lagged incrEase in cases in
| Punjab and Harayana, where the bulk of attendees came from.
| Those cases were not seen.
|
| This idea is incongruous with information we have.
|
| On the other hand The central govt has been declaring mission
| accomplished since last year.
|
| I wouldn't blame people for thinking that their respected
| leader was telling them the truth and acting accordingly.
|
| Risk taking behavior is related to how the people on top act,
| especially in India which is today, a far more centralized
| nation.
| mandis wrote:
| Protests were in Jan/Feb. Cases rose April. Larger gatherings
| happened in March and April for elections and religion.
|
| Please take your one sided narrative elsewhere.
| svat wrote:
| > _The kumbh mela [...] was supposed to take place next year
| but was pulled forward to..._
|
| Not strictly COVID-related, but this was the first I'd heard of
| this and it sounded surprising to me, so I looked it up. I
| picked an older version of the Wikipedia article (from Nov
| 2019, just to rule out recent changes that may have been made
| because of COVID-19) and it (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.p
| hp?title=Kumbh_Mela&oldid=...) says:
|
| > The weeks over which the festival is observed cycles at each
| site approximately once every 12 years[note 1] based on the
| Hindu luni-solar calendar and the relative astrological
| positions of Jupiter, sun and moon.
|
| where [note 1] gives as reference a 2008 book that says:
|
| > About once a century the Kumbha Mela returns to a site after
| eleven years. Jupiter's orbit is actually 11.86 years, so after
| each twelve-year cycle it moves a little further into the sign,
| which the eleventh year celebration corrects.
|
| Another 2019 book cited in the article is more clear, and its
| second chapter explicitly mentions 2021 for Haridwar:
|
| > The Mela is organized when a specific astronomical
| combination (kumbha yoga) of the Moon, the Sun, and Jupiter
| occurs in specific zodiac signs. The Moon takes around one
| month (27.32 days) to orbit the earth during which it transits
| through the 12 signs. The Sun transits through the 12 signs in
| around one year (365.2425 days), the time taken by the earth to
| orbit the Sun. Finally, Jupiter transits through the 12 signs
| in nearly 12 years (11.8618 years), the time taken by it to
| orbit the Sun. The transit period of Jupiter being the longest
| --12 times that of the Sun and around 159 times that of the
| moon--the kumbha yoga for a location repeats when Jupiter
| enters the same sign again. This is why the Kumbha Mela is held
| once every 12 years at a given venue, as a general rule.
|
| > The seventh Mela after six melas held in 72 years (each held
| 12 years after the previous one) is held 11 years after the
| sixth Mela, giving us seven melas in 83 years. The reason is
| that Jupiter completes seven transits of the zodiac in nearly
| 83 years (11.8618 x 7 = 83.0326), and moves to the next sign in
| the 84th year. This is why the Haridwar Kumbha was held in 1938
| after 1927 and the Prayaga Kumbha was held in 1977 after 1966.
| The last Kumbha in Haridwar was in 2010 (1938 + 72), but the
| next one will be in 2021 (1938 + 83 = 2010 + 11).
|
| I wonder where the idea of "was supposed to take place next
| year" comes from: my guess is that someone extrapolated the
| approximate "takes place every 12 years" and just naively added
| 12 to the previous year (2010) at the same location. These
| festivals are based on the assumption that a certain
| conjunction in the sky indicates a sacred time, to be marked by
| bathing in holy rivers etc. One can of course reject this
| notion entirely (and with it the festival itself), but it
| doesn't make much sense to treat the festival like a sports
| event or conference that can be moved around. The government of
| India can no more change the date of the Kumbh Mela than, say,
| the government of Italy change the date of Easter. All a
| government can do is restrict people's movements, etc. The
| accusation that crowds were allowed to gather obviously makes
| sense; not so much the accusation that the date was changed.
| (Incidentally, Wikipedia has multiple articles on the date of
| Easter:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Easter_controvers...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Date_of_Easter&ol...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reform_of_the_dat...
| .)
| bluzeee wrote:
| I'm really surprised from where someone forms conclusion of the
| reasons like these. Please see my comment to understand better.
| hesarenu wrote:
| Its not like people were not dying before Covid. Covid just
| increased the number of deaths. If you visited hindu cremation
| before covid you would have seen 2-3 funerals on a day(just
| based on my small city).
|
| Bangalore i think now has the highest case in India. Kumbh mela
| or elections did not cause that spike or the spike all around
| India.
| AmIDev wrote:
| Per my experience(and seconded by local newspapers),
| crematoriums would allow the family to pick up the ashes on
| the next day. Assuming 8 hours for cremation(it takes less
| than that), this suggests that there was at least 2x the
| buffer available. Probably higher than that, as I've not
| seen(or heard of) all pyres being occupied at the same time.
|
| This means in places where there is shortage of pyres, deaths
| must be at least 3x the earlier one.
| pessimist wrote:
| 10x death-undercount nationwide is probably not accurate. Major
| states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala are reporting
| close to accurate numbers. 2-5x nationwide is likely, with
| places like UP, West Bengal and Gujarat undercounting by 5-10x.
| kfifi wrote:
| How are these states getting all the home death numbers or
| deaths without covid tests?
| jeswin wrote:
| Exactly. In fact, the under-reporting is closely linked to
| how well developed a state is.
|
| It's unfortunate that even in these times, propaganda (from
| both sides) has completely taken over rational analysis.
| baybal2 wrote:
| + Holi + IPL + Mahashivratri
| tiuPapa wrote:
| IPL has 0 attendance, hosted in bubbles. How are they
| spreading it?
| baybal2 wrote:
| People gathering together in public places to watch it.
| tiuPapa wrote:
| Any evidence of that? From my anecdotal experience, each
| and every place in my town where such public viewing used
| to be organized was cancelled. I would believe that to be
| the case throughout the country.
| jeswin wrote:
| > Also note that covid deaths are around 10-100x more than the
| official records.
|
| So up to 350,000 people died just yesterday. And over the last
| ten days, up to 3 million people died?
|
| While deaths are certainly underreported, it isn't helpful in a
| pandemic to throw random figures around.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| >So up to 350,000 people died just yesterday.
|
| There were 200,000 cases and 1,200 deaths yesterday as per
| official reports.
|
| Unofficially yes, more than 10,000 people died. Not sure
| where you got the 350k numbers from
| AmIDev wrote:
| While 100x is unlikely all over the country, it's surely
| happening in some places at least.
|
| In my district of Kolhapur in Maharashtra, the district
| officials report 30-40 deaths per day, while official numbers
| stay at 1-3. That means the state is under reporting by 10x
| to 40x. And this is still counting only those people who, 1.
| died in hospital after being tested +ve for covid 2. did not
| have any comorbidity, as then they'd be classified under that
| comorbidity, however ridiculous it might seem(e.g. person
| dying of diabetes when infected by covid)
|
| So actual numbers are likely to be much higher, given that
| all beds were full already last week itself.
|
| Note that this is an opposition ruled state. Situation is
| even worse in BJP ruled states, where for example, 1. Tests
| are done only for few hours a day. 2. People are being
| charged with spreading misinformation for asking for oxygen
| cylinders on social media. 3. Deaths are being under reported
| heavily. 4. crematoriums are not accessible to reporters.
| okpatil wrote:
| Hello, fellow Kolhapuri here. Maybe we can connect.
| lenkite wrote:
| There is a known lag in underreporting of infection counts
| in all Indian states except for a few. This is not being
| done maliciously - folks are struggling with uploading the
| infection and death count.
|
| About Covid not being listed as cause of death in cremation
| houses - this is a definite problem in North India.
| Southern states do not suffer from this social stigma.
| Cause of death is being properly mentioned here.
| jeswin wrote:
| > Situation is even worse in BJP ruled states
|
| I happen to live in Bangalore (BJP ruled). There's
| certainly no evidence of 10-40x underreporting of deaths
| happening here. I don't doubt at all that they're
| underreported though; but to a smaller extent.
|
| Do you have any links?
| AmIDev wrote:
| I haven't heard of data fudging in Bangalore from media,
| so far.
|
| Here are some reports about Gujarat[1][2]
|
| [1] https://scroll.in/article/992217/as-the-dead-pile-up-
| in-guja... [2] https://caravanmagazine.in/health/how-
| gujarat-is-undercounti...
| wornohaulus wrote:
| scroll, caravan, ndtv and surprisingly agenda driven..
| and are extremely biased in their reporting .. just like
| newslaundry .. especially their villainization of
| majority is atrocious .. we news better news media which
| give news, and not agenda driven politicaal biased 'news'
| .. they are basically republic for the left.. full of
| $h*t
| sateesh wrote:
| Do give credit where it is due, Karnataka state
| government has been quite transparent in reporting Covid
| data, and there isn'a a deliberate misreporting or
| suppressing. There is a even a telegram channel run by
| the government where Covid updates are provided at
| regular intervals.
| capybara_2020 wrote:
| Numbers are being significantly underreported. Although it
| might not be 10-100x everywhere. It is a mix. Some places it
| is 2x, some places it is 100x.
|
| Have a look at this article to get a sense of the scale of
| the problem.
|
| https://www.article-14.com/post/bjp-states-hiding-
| covid-19-d...
| mlnj wrote:
| Those numbers are based on the lack of crematorium facilities
| and the obvious queues of bodies lined outside for cremation.
| I know of at least 7 people dying in the last 7 days. The
| official numbers mean nothing anymore.
| soperj wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear about the people you know dying. It's a
| horrible tragedy.
| jeswin wrote:
| Can you please read my comment again? Please don't turn
| this forum into a political propaganda platform.
| mlnj wrote:
| Political propaganda is the last thing on my mind right
| now. Here's some sources for the lack of cremation
| facilities.
|
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/pushed-to-
| the...
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/indias-
| crematoriums-...
|
| https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/at-
| delhi-cr...
|
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/104th-in-
| the...
|
| This is not in line with only 3500 people dying all over
| the country. This is in line with the range the above
| comment mentions. My anecdote of people dying my inner
| circle is not political. Neither is my opinion that the
| official numbers are to be not trusted given the
| evidence.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Can you say the actual facts and/or calculations that
| lead to 10x? From what you've said, it could be that
| crematoriums were already operating just below capacity
| and are now just above capacity, causing growing backlogs
| even with only a very small increase in demand.
| mlnj wrote:
| >From what you've said, it could be that crematoriums
| were already operating just below capacity and are now
| just above capacity, causing growing backlogs even with
| only a very small increase in demand.
|
| Can't be the case throughout the country in all affected
| districts and all densely populated states.
|
| You see reports of crematoriums running 24/7 and still
| not able to fulfill the demand for cremations and find it
| reasonable to land on any other conclusion but people are
| dying. I think I've presented enough.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Even NYT estimates the real numbers might be 10x
| reported, and I would also expect that to be a reasonable
| estimate. Roughly a quarter of the people I know tested
| positive in the past month, it's not possible with such a
| high infection rate only 3000 people die in a day.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-
| coronavi...
| IanCal wrote:
| The UK peaked at ~1200/day, with a population 1/20th the
| size. That's "only" 24K scaled up, looking at India now
| it's hard to picture things as being only a bit worse
| than the UK peak.
| lordnacho wrote:
| My guess is that for a lot of processes, crematoria
| included, capacity is not some fixed number below which
| everything is fine and above which the backlog piles up.
|
| It's like my parents' restaurant, you can get busier and
| busier without there being a wall. When you "hit
| capacity" you find you're doing many things that you
| weren't normally doing, like being open a lot longer,
| asking for longer shifts from staff, rationing things
| that you wouldn't normally ration.
| jeswin wrote:
| Well, I am only objecting to unsupported numbers being
| thrown around. How do you go from "crematoriums being
| pushed to the limit" to 10-100X Covid deaths?
|
| Extraordinary claims (such as up to 3 million deaths in
| ten days) require extraordinary evidence. My response, if
| you notice, was specifically about that claim. And I also
| did not fail to mention that deaths are underreported.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Are you objecting specifically to the 100? It seems clear
| enough to me that it's not supposed to be a very tight
| estimate. Would "an order of magnitude or two" be better?
| Or "an order of magnitude or more"?
|
| And it definitely suggests that the amount of under-
| reporting varies by area, so it's even more unfair for
| you to multiply the entire country's number by 100 as
| your goalpost.
| jeswin wrote:
| I am objecting to people making up numbers, when no such
| data is available. Like the parent post for instance,
| connecting reports of crematoriums being full to order-
| of-magnitude scale (10X or more) undocumented Covid
| deaths.
|
| There are however, other reports you can quote:
|
| - The Print (not govt-leaning) "If you claim India's
| Covid death toll is 2x govt figure, it's understandable.
| But not 10x" [1]
|
| - NYTimes: Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the
| University of Michigan who has been following India
| closely. "From all the modeling we've done, we believe
| the true number of deaths is two to five times what is
| being reported." [2]
|
| In short, I strongly feel throwing numbers around without
| basis simply widens the chasm.
|
| [1]: https://theprint.in/opinion/if-you-claim-indias-
| covid-death-...
|
| [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-
| coronavi...
| Xplune13 wrote:
| Well, I would agree that the actual death count is bigger
| than what is reported but 10x is a LOT and claiming
| extraordinary 100x is ridiculous unless someone gives
| proper evidence for that. All the shortages in crematorium
| facilities are really unfortunate but they are basically
| near Delhi region. Basing your overall 10x figure for the
| ENTIRE India on 1 region (granted it is one of the biggest
| in the nation) is not right unless you provide evidence for
| that. The figure in Delhi might be 5x-10x but for entire
| India? I don't know and one should definitely stay away
| from "I guess" or "I believe" in this situation unless you
| provide resources in my opinion.
| mlnj wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-
| coronavi...
|
| The lack of cremation facilities are reported throughout
| the country. It is not just about one region or the
| other. The under-reporting is reported in most places.
| The lack of tests in places like Kolkata shows that
| people even after showing symptoms can't get tested. All
| these point to the official government numbers being a
| fraction of the actual numbers.
|
| In an environment where the government is under-reporting
| and the news reports are the only ones showing the ground
| reality we can only speculate the actual number for the
| whole country. We may never do. Until that we can only
| opine and point to the evidence we have.
| Xplune13 wrote:
| As I said earlier, I'm not saying that there isn't under
| reported death count. I said we cannot say anything about
| entire nation based on currently reported cases. Those
| report point out to that region and may not be applied to
| the whole nation. Eg. suppose 4 cities have 5x under
| reported cases, we cannot expand that to the entire
| nation until we conduct thorough research first. On top
| of that the OP stating 10-100x is mind numbingly large
| range. My earlier point was respect to that statement.
| Claiming 100x under reported deaths is too large of a
| number that if you put a number on that, it would empty
| most of the cities in matter of a month which clearly is
| not a case AFAIK. So, throwing these random numbers based
| on one's own opinion is not right especially when it is
| presented as a statement.
| intended wrote:
| 100x is not what I've heard but I've definitely heard of 10x
| the number of cases actually reported.
|
| Sources are crematorium staff describing how many additional
| bodies they have to burn and epidemiologists.
| kumarharsh wrote:
| It's like a game of Chinese whispers where the multiplier
| keeps on growing everytime the number is mentioned.
| atat7024 wrote:
| Well that's an unfortunate phrase to choose.
| rraghur wrote:
| Multiple models predict daily new infections to be anywhere
| between 20 - 30x under reported (uni of Michigan and I think
| u of w) There are enough and more ground reports from various
| cities of data from crematoriums being >10x more than
| official counts
|
| There is large scale, govt backed effort to not report in a
| few states for ex UP which is most populous - govt was
| directing labs not to take samples. and no admission to
| hospital as corona patient until you provide RTPcr test
| id(this is from a friend who's in the state capital and
| father's in the hospital now). Death rates 10x official
| counts overall wouldn't be surprising at all.
| kushalpandya wrote:
| Yeah right, Maharashtra had massive gathering for Kumbh Mela at
| Bandra-Worli Sea Link, and Delhi had election rally for
| Assembly elections and newly appointed CM Arvind Kejriwal had
| merely days to manage mess left by LG.
| mandis wrote:
| Kolkata has a 54% positivity rate now, and nobody is able to
| get tested due to lack of testing infra. Just because it
| wasnt reported, doesnt mean it didnt affect.
| kushalpandya wrote:
| Sure now, but Maharashtra has been overflowing since early
| March when other states where there were no gatherings,
| didn't have cases. Point is, not single govt alone has
| failed. Pretty much everyone failed, including citizens
| like us who forgot precautions in January and February when
| cases dropped considerably.
|
| I still see public ignoring safety norms like nothing has
| happened.
|
| As for people running for hospitals, a primary reason (as
| per a doctor who treated my dad for Covid) is that people
| are ignoring symptoms for days (over a week at times) after
| which virus does enough damage that only option they're
| left with is getting oxygen assistance.
| mandis wrote:
| I agree with the first part, but the one with the biggest
| power center must also take the biggest responsibility.
| When the literal head of the nation gleefully boasts
| about the size of the election rally crowd during a
| killer pandemic wave, yeah, its on him.
|
| >As for people running for hospitals, a primary reason
| (as per a doctor who treated my dad for Covid) is that
| people are ignoring symptoms for days (over a week at
| times) after which virus does enough damage that only
| option they're left with is getting oxygen assistance.
|
| Hospitals will give the same protocol as people are
| following at home. In fact add the empathetic environment
| of home with proper food (compared to the sheer lack of
| care in any hospital right now), and people are
| recovering faster at home. Yes, there are many cases
| though where people had serious damage and they neglected
| to go early. Just saying this issue is complicated and I
| can understand why someone would hesitate to go to a
| hospital with 99F fever and slight bodyache.
| sinyug wrote:
| > but Maharashtra has been overflowing since early March
| when other states where there were no gatherings, didn't
| have cases.
|
| And none these vultures in the media will talk about it
| because it does not fit their agenda.
|
| I noticed a slow but steady rise in cases in Maharashtra
| since mid-February. A few reports suggested something was
| brewing in the Nagpur/Vidharbha region. No one paid any
| attention to it because of the war between the State and
| Center on the police corruption/extortion issue.
|
| Soon, cases started appearing in Kerala and Punjab. Only
| THEN did other states start reporting cases in massive
| numbers. Did religious events and election rallies have
| an impact? Of course. But that came weeks later.
| sateesh wrote:
| The inaction of the government has much more impact. The
| government got complacent once the first wave receded,
| and didn't give heed to any expert opinions. There were
| reports that the Covid expert committee meeting itself
| didn't happen in past few months . In addition there was
| no concerted focus on vaccination, either to increase its
| capacity to cover majority of the population, or steps to
| dispel vaccine scepticism. In last few months except for
| the caller tune message one gets in mobile when you call
| someone, I didn't see any efforts to publicise the
| vaccination drive. These publicity efforts have stepped
| up now, and given the rampage now most of the people are
| willing to take vaccines but alas there is a shortage.
| revendell_elf wrote:
| But Kumbh happened in Uttar Pradesh while highest cases are
| being recorded in Maharashtra way before Kumbh happened. I'm
| against any social gatherings but this seems to defy logic ,
| isn't it?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| This is speculation and no better than saying all the COVID
| deaths are overinflated because they include anyone who happens
| to have COVID when they die.
| [deleted]
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Please see
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-
| coronavi...
| bluzeee wrote:
| It is very unfortunate that some are creating a false narrative
| about an entire country and is misusing this forum to spread
| false narrative. While even scientists are puzzled on the cause
| [0], a few commenters here for sure knows the causes conclusively
|
| India unlike U.S. and other western countries needs more careful
| analysis due to its diverse nature, larger informal economy and
| lack of proper data collection practices. Any simple attribution
| like the commenter is doing is simply false narrative
|
| 1. Anyone who has been tracking India covid cases closely knows,
| the most affected and contributing (72%) states for the second
| wave have been Maharastra and Kerala [0]
|
| 2. And, as second wave picked-up just 6 states contributed to
| 86.37% of new Covid-19 cases as per the data tracking [1]
|
| 3. Why did it spike in Maharastra ? Read [3] & [4] Importantly
| note the point on variant "This surge has started from Vidarbha,
| and it is hard to believe that mutant variants didn't have a role
| to play"
|
| 4. Now, lets talk about variant found [4] "Two leading experts
| recently contended that a new coronavirus mutant strain was
| reportedly detected in Amravati, Yavatmal, and Akola, all in the
| Vidarbha region in the eastern part of the state"
|
| 5. Some comments talks about religious event which is kumbh mela
| which took happened in Haridwar, Uttarakhand state. Do you see
| the state in any of the listed states contributing to the raise ?
| No. Let's put today's status, is that state even in the top: 10
| [5]
|
| 6. And do you know you need a permit and negative covid test
| report to participate in this religious event ? [6]
|
| 7. They also talk about Narendra modi rallies. Seriously ? He
| took rallies in the states where elections being conducted by
| Indian election commission, like all all other political parties
| he has to support his party. This is saying like Biden cannot
| take election rally while Trump goes on giving daily speeches.
| Importantly, do you see the state of Westbengal where election
| allies happened in the top ?
|
| 8. As Maharastra went into curfew, poor migrant labor mainly from
| Bihar and UP and people from other states rushed back home and
| there is no data how this might have affected
|
| 9. Did BJP declare victory over virus ? Yes. But there is no
| scientific or data based attribution of spike Or the some
| commenters indirect attribution of peoples laxity and not wearing
| masks to victory declaration is misguiding
|
| [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indias-massive-
| co...
|
| [1] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-
| updates-f...
|
| [2] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/6-states-
| contribut...
|
| [3] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-
| is...
|
| [4] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maharashtra-
| hits-1...
|
| [5] https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-
| affairs/ne...
|
| [6] https://www.covid19india.org/
|
| [7] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kumbh-2021-limited-
| to-30-day...
| deadite wrote:
| >a few commenters here for sure knows the causes conclusively
|
| The hubris has been around here for as long as you have.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/jJB4A
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/jJB4A
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