I would like to point out that even with the existing amount of tests, that are much lower in number than those in the USA and Europe, the COVID19 test positivity rate in India is among the lowest in the world (4-5%).
India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
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Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#62I can give some ground level information. I live in a very densely populated street (total length is just two hundred meters, my guess is at least a thousand people live here). No one is dying here without others noticing. 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). As far as I know, no one has died in this street in a month.…
> 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.
Doctors have a bad reputation in Pakistan, given one's role in OBL's murder. And perhaps, more generally, among some Muslim populations.
I'm not arguing that it's justified, by the way. Or that it's a majority opinion. Just that it exists.
Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#63A better question from everyone outside the US: what the flying f is with the huuuuuge (accounting for estimated no. of infected and other factors) number of deaths in the USA??!!?! I mean, the US is (a) a developed country with modern health-care, (b) there is no common 'old parents living in same home with some of the adult children' situation you have in Italy + Eastern Europe, (c) there are no norms of common phy…
Or we had a wildly incompetent response from the federal government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/opinion/coronavirus-trump...
Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#64It's not just COVID-19 deaths, raw death numbers (as measured by death certificates, you cannot cremate/bury people without one) are down as well -- this report has some evidence, including lower business in at crematoriums[1]. This is likely due to the very stringent lockdown in India, and the somewhat underrated fact that traffic collisions and accidents kill huge numbers of people every day in India.
That said, while lower death rates (India's seem to be about half of the world's death rate) are to be celebrated, there are confounding factors.
1) The reported death count are mostly hospital deaths only. Home deaths aren't counted.
2) As the article notes, mis-diagnosing is a problem especially outside hospitals.
But if there's something that genuinely is reducing the death rate, then that's obviously a huge opportunity to study and learn from.
[1] https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-lower-death-rate...
Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#65While the reported deaths may be low, the 'they are hiding something' attitude is not helpful. India cannot do the level of testing that western countries do due to the humongous population. I can very well assure you in India you cannot hide mass deaths like China. A distant relative died of cardiac arrest and the measures were so strict that in a highly social society where paying respects to a deceased is consider…
> I can very well assure you in India you cannot hide mass deaths like China. LOL.. What happens internally in India, is not my concern. But to say this, is disingenuous. Don’t you have a little Muslim rebellion going on over there? With intense media and Internet blackouts? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8256349/Indias-Musl... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/india-restores-intern...
Apparently it’s so well hidden that you have reports on it in a UK and Middle Eastern media establishment.
It’s so well hidden that it’s been discussed on the floors of the US Congress, UK parliament, and between the Indian head of state and his UK/US counterparts.
I find it fascinating that people write comments where their own evidence disproves their comment. Neither of the articles you link to even mention hidden mass deaths, and the articles’ very existence only goes to prove the point that it’s hard to hide info in India.
That’s not to say that China has been hiding a mass of dead bodies that hasn’t been reported. However, it would certainly be a lot easier to do that in China than in pretty much anywhere else in the world, especially India.
Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#66A better question from everyone outside the US: what the flying f is with the huuuuuge (accounting for estimated no. of infected and other factors) number of deaths in the USA??!!?! I mean, the US is (a) a developed country with modern health-care, (b) there is no common 'old parents living in same home with some of the adult children' situation you have in Italy + Eastern Europe, (c) there are no norms of common phy…
> A better question from everyone outside the US: what the flying f is with the huuuuuge (accounting for estimated no. of infected and other factors) number of deaths in the USA??!!?
That's only true if you don't know what "per capita" means.
So far the US has 172 death per 1M population. That's better than other countries with supposedly better healthcare including:
- Belgium
- France
- Spain
- Italy
- UK
- Netherlands
- Sweden
- Ireland
- Switzerland
And many more.
> US stats look worrying for everyone on Earth
I'm more worried about people's inability to understand the difference between stats and absolute numbers specially on this site where we're supposed to know better.
Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#67A better question from everyone outside the US: what the flying f is with the huuuuuge (accounting for estimated no. of infected and other factors) number of deaths in the USA??!!?! I mean, the US is (a) a developed country with modern health-care, (b) there is no common 'old parents living in same home with some of the adult children' situation you have in Italy + Eastern Europe, (c) there are no norms of common phy…
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Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#68Ground Report : I live in one of the major cities. Lockdown is reasonably well ensured. Our State Chief Minister was particularly vigilant and people are very alert.
There is not much misinformation in the media.
Basically, everyone has taken it seriously and is vigilant.
I also hear that those who took TB vaccine are more immune, and that is practically most of the younger and middle aged people in the country.
Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#69I can give some ground level information. I live in a very densely populated street (total length is just two hundred meters, my guess is at least a thousand people live here). No one is dying here without others noticing. 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). As far as I know, no one has died in this street in a month.…
> 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.
It's very stupid, but a (very) few people see them as potential spreaders of the disease. Public health workers going into the community to find infected people have also been attacked. Also, until recently, suspected COVID patients had to be in hospital -- no home isolation allowed -- and some of these patients (or their relatives) thought that venting their anger on doctors would help.
Unfortunately, the law of large numbers in India means that a "very few" can mean tens of thousands of people.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-52151141
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-13/doctors-c...
Re: India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of warm areas are being hit hard, but a lot of warm countries have "reporting issues" (look at the excess deaths in Jakarta for an example). Heat might lower R0 by some amount but it's still way above 1 without measures
There's also strong correlation inside the same countries regarding the more sun = less deaths vs less sun = more deaths. The best examples that I can give are Italy, where Rome and everything South of of it has ridden the pandemic wave pretty ok (with the slight exception of the region of Puglia) and Spain, where the region of Andalusia in the South has had only a 5% or so excess in the number of deaths for this yea…
It is possible the correlation is: more outdoors -> less deaths
Where the relationship with "more outdoors" is kinda temperature dependent (not too cold nor too hot) and culturally/regionally dependent