India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates

I flew from India to the US in early February (2nd week).

Indian airports were doing thermal checks on passengers (using tech that had been installed during the Zika virus scare a few years back, I believe). The newspapers also had info about how anyone found with elevated temperatures were being asked to self quarantine, and the police was also following up.

The US had, absolutely nothing. Nada. Before the flight I was afraid that entering the US would be difficult, but it was clear (and it remained this way for over a month), that if anything, entering India, if not difficult, would actually involve checks, something that was non existent in US ports.

Further, and I don’t know if this is mentioned, the flight into India involved the cabin crew spraying some sort of pest control spray in the cabins before we landed. They mentioned it was due to regulations. Considering SARS-COV-2 has been found to have been easily killed (within minutes) of exposure to common disinfectants, could this spray have greatly minimized the virus entering the country, on baggage’s and clothing, etc?

> Further, there's a great amount of scrutiny into whether anyone's sick (see the reports of doctors getting beaten up even by the cops).

What? Why are doctors being beaten up? I don't understand.

About relative low death counts in some Asian countries by comparison with Europe or America, we must take in mind that Asian people could had been exposed in the past to a virus of Asian origin (or to a relatively similar virus strain), so they could have developed some immunity previously.

I would want to include in the discussion (and this is just my opinion and wild speculation by my part, not more, not less) the spring wildfires around Chernobyl area also in 2020. I wonder if ashes in the atmosphere are being also a hidden source of respiratory problems for Europe than nobody is taking in mind. Could explain the strange pattern of people that has recovered from the disease but somehow falls ill again and starts coughing again and again in waves, malaria style.

I remember similar massive coughs in all Europe in 2015 (if I'm not wrong) exactly at the same time that Russian and Ukrainian armies were burning forests in the North of Ukranie. I can be wrong, but there is not much to lose by researching that except time, and we have a lot currently. If we seen that spikes in hospital admissions match the burning periods and the wind direction plus a reasonable delay to reach the areas we could do further research.

These are confirmed cases, i.e. people who have tested positive. Actual cases, either in India or the UK, are unknown.

Print's reporting has been a mixed bag.

For eg, the last video compares deaths vs testing in a poor country like Bolivia — situated many miles away from global hotspots to that of Belgium's — one of Europe's headquarters. It seems to suggest that increase in testing and quick isolation is somewhat of a "subjective" factor and doesn't help India.

This, completely disregarding factors like geography, demographics, Bolivia's first case landing a month after Belgium's, and Belgium being one of the few countries in Europe to actually count non-hospital deaths and more.

There's some confirmation bias here.