India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by chosenbreed37 » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #37

i_have_to_speak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When New York went in to lockdown, it had ~7000 cases (20th March) [1] When UK went in to lockdown, it had 6700 cases. (23rd March) [2] When India went in to lockdown, it had 657 cases. (25th March) [2] [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/20/politics/new-york-workfor... [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Comparing cases is pretty meaningless if you don't also compare test rates.

> Comparing cases is pretty meaningless if you don't also compare test rates.

True. I'd argue that there are other factors such as demographics, time elapsed since first cases, etc. But I guess it's hard not to. Specially for media needing to fill column inches or otherwise capture our attention :-) It should be possible to simply look at numbers and draw any conclusions but it seems to be very difficult for human beings to do that. We feel the need create a narrative around and find an explanation for our observations.

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

#142

Post by JPKab » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #62

gspr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

OBL was "murdered"?

Is that your view?

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

#143

Post by gnusty_gnurc » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

misja111 wrote: post #97

i_have_to_speak wrote: post #2

Ah yet another cant-be-true-they're-hiding-something article? Surely they can't be doing better than developed countries? FWIW, India did implement a stronger lockdown much earlier on in the curve than other countries. State and federal authorities went lock-step in their actions, and with consistent messaging. Police enforced the lockdown at times even brutally, getting the point across to the general public. Indian…

This is something that has really struck me during the Corona crisis: the misplaced Western believe of superiority towards Asian countries. I am European and I feel embarrassed about how much arrogance is displayed by some people and governments. It started already in the beginning, when the virus was spreading rapidly in China. Reports about the failing Chinese authority were all over the place, but nobody seemed to…

China’s first response to doctors reporting the virus was to send police to them and shut them up. I’ll gladly believe I live in a better country.

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

#144

Post by danparsonson » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

kranner wrote: post #55

In the state of India that I live in, at least three people have died in the hospital of very Covid-19-like symptoms, but they were not counted as Covid-19 deaths. Two of double pneumonia, both with travel history, but their tests came up negative. They were both healthy until very recently. One had arrived from the US, where the chances of community-acquiring-pneumonia are low as I gather. One of cardiac arrest, but…

We shouldn't be including deaths in the Covid-19 total just because they involve similar symptoms. Lots of other problems cause pneumonia and cardiac arrest, and you said yourself that the pneumonia patients tested negative. Apparently healthy people die suddenly all the time, sadly.

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

#145

Post by JPKab » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

i_have_to_speak wrote: post #2

Ah yet another cant-be-true-they're-hiding-something article? Surely they can't be doing better than developed countries? FWIW, India did implement a stronger lockdown much earlier on in the curve than other countries. State and federal authorities went lock-step in their actions, and with consistent messaging. Police enforced the lockdown at times even brutally, getting the point across to the general public. Indian…

I agree with you. The condescending tone by Western media towards India is awful and disgusting.

The reality is probably that it's a combination of doing the lockdown well and the disease being far less deadly than initially thought due to very high asymptomatic infection rates. The latter is an emerging fact that the media here are in denial over. Therefore, they think India must be undercounting or something else. Awful and insulting.

BTW, in regards to US, the lockdowns here worked. NYC was the only place in the entire country that ended up getting hit bad. The rest of the nation has not been hit anywhere approaching what was predicted by models which took into account lockdowns. Outside of NYC, US statistics match Germany.

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

#146

Post by MandieD » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #110

Germany has suspiciously lower death rates, too... And that's down to the superior healthcare infrastructure there? I was wondering if something similar was happening in India. I was expecting to read about it more from a therapeutic treatment point of view-- Is India doing anything differently that results in higher recovery and lower death rates?

Germany tested more heavily than neighbors earlier on, so probably discovered a higher proportion of "mild" cases. Also, Germany does have a superior healthcare infrastructure in some ways compared to the other big EU countries: in 2012, it had about 2.5 times as many ICU beds per capita as Italy, France and Spain, and 4.5 times that of the UK [1], along with more hospital beds overall [2]. The US had somewhat more ICU beds per capita than Germany, but only about a third of the hospital beds in general, so ICU beds are certainly not the only explanation for why it hasn't been quite as bad here.

As important as healthcare infrastructure is, it's worthless to someone without financial access to it, either directly due to lacking insurance or indirectly due to fear of losing one's job due to absence. Extremely few people (but not zero) in Germany would be hesitant to seek treatment for Covid-19 due to either of those worries, compared with a large (and due to the unemployment situation, growing) portion of people in the US. Americans are being told that they won't get surprise bills for Covid-10 treatment, but I imagine more than a few have wondered how a visit to the emergency room would affect their finances if they turned out not to have it, and decided to tough it out a bit too long.

So, if available healthcare infrastructure and individual financial access to that infrastructure are taken together, Germany looks to be ahead of both the other large EU countries and the US, all of which have suffered more deaths per capita these past few awful weeks.

If some of the German states try to get "back to normal" too fast, though, this relatively good situation could change...

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-co...

[2] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2017-62-en...

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

#147

Post by cptskippy » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #127

craftinator wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'm only worried that the lockdown is going to significantly affect the poorer communities worse at the expense of richer folks. > Sorry, what? The lockdown isn't about rich or poor. I think you misunderstood the parent comment. They are worried that the poor will be more negatively effected by the lockdown than by the coronavirus, in contrast to the rich. This has been observed in other countries, where the poor…

> I think you misunderstood the parent comment... the poor will be more negatively effected by the lockdown than by the coronavirus, in contrast to the rich. GP said and I quote, "at the expense of the rich", which, to me, implies that somehow the rich are conspiring to persist with the lockdown. The families reliant on dialy-wages have always had massive problems in terms of education, healthcare, food, and shelter,…

It sounds like you're taking the opportunity, a grammatical error in the op's comment, to be combative and argumentative. Now you're just being dismissive of the plight of others and using your command of the language to minimize the situation.

The pandemic and quarantine haven't just aggravated an untenable situation, they're pushing it to the limits. The poor can't afford to not work, the rich can afford to remain in lock down. It's happening everywhere, not just in India.

There are those of us who can afford to be out of work for a long time, and there are those of us who can continue to work while maintaining quarantine, however there is a significant portion of the population that has run out of reserves and must work to live. These are people driving trucks, delivering packages, stocking shelves, generally putting themselves at risk while enabling the wealthy to remain quarantined.

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

#148

Post by gindely » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #38

i_have_to_speak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When New York went in to lockdown, it had ~7000 cases (20th March) [1] When UK went in to lockdown, it had 6700 cases. (23rd March) [2] When India went in to lockdown, it had 657 cases. (25th March) [2] [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/20/politics/new-york-workfor... [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

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

The difference between a confirmed case and all cases is that in a confirmed case is a case which has had a viral confirmation. But all cases still involves only those people who have presented for medical attention, because a case is effectively a file about a person. What is unknown is infections.

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

#149

Post by danparsonson » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

nromiun wrote: post #92

No news channel is unbiased these days but I don't know of any other news source that has as much criticism as BBC. They have a long history[1] of spreading misinformation and hate aginst many countries (specially India). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC

Never heard of Fox News?

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

#150

Post by arihant » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

This should not be a mystery at all. India locked down entire country (no state rights in Epidemics laws), despite federal structure. Very few things can be bought, even Amazon is only delivering "essentials."

But more importantly, India has been contact tracing like a greedy algorithm on steroids since case #1. There was a positive case in a condo nearby mine. The entire condominium building and adjacent locality is sealed. Not a lockdown, sealed. Nobody in, nobody out. The authorities spent over 9 hours interviewing all family members, neighbors, and friends of the infected for contact tracing. Every contact is being monitored, with police showing up randomly to make sure of no symptoms and adherence to home quarantine.

People are self policing mainly to avoid police, but they are self policing each other because nobody wants their buildings sealed. It really is working, I see people unwilling to hand over their credit cards in shops insisting to tap to avoid infections. In my state, there are only 85 active infections, only 2 are residents of my city, and even then I'm given gloves and sanitizer when I enter minimarts, with only 10 minute allowance to go and shop with maximum 4 shoppers allowed inside.

Edit: It becomes a big news when a positive case is found nearby. There is a distributed effort of volunteers to monitor infections (http://covid19india.org). There is no way government can lie about numbers.