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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

#161

Post by petilon »

mesaframe wrote: post #153
arihant wrote: post #150

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…

>India has been contact tracing like a greedy algorithm on steroids since case #1. Care to provide source? >People are self policing mainly to avoid police, but they are self policing each other because nobody wants their buildings sealed. I have seen videos of people violating lockdown without fear. >There are only 85 active infections 85 infections which were caught.

> Care to provide source?

There is some info here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/asia/india-coronavi...

The US is #1 in infections for a reason: we are doing it wrong.

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

#162

Post by saalweachter »

interestica wrote: post #133
patrickaljord wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole country of Spain is at 510 deaths per million. How high do you think their biggest hot spot is?

I think the point is that treating the USA as some sort of unified region for statistical purposes is in itself problematic.

The thing that worries me about NYC statistics is that they're awful, and we now have serum tests that indicate that -- at best -- we're about 1/3 of the way through. (Current serum tests indicate 20-25% of NYC has caught it, current R0 estimates indicate that 70-85% would need to catch it for it to burn itself out without any additional measures.)

This puts reasonable estimates of "how bad can it get?" at north of 5000 deaths per million, if we don't properly contain it. This, really, is the new information we're getting out of US numbers.

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

#163

Post by new2628 »

rezeroed wrote: post #123
misja111 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've not seen this - which country are you in? I've seen acknowledgement of South Korea's success, and criticism of China's failings.

How about acknowledgement of success in Vietnam, Eastern Europe, India, China, etc?

GP is right, that you hardly hear it in the news.

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

#164

Post by 1-more »

sriku wrote: post #82
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

To top it, some states announced a lockdown a couple days before the country wide annoucnement. TN went into lockdown on 23rd Mar for ex. Overall, I think the local govt of some states (esply Kerala) did well by their people. However, we aren't out of risk by any measure. There are some interesting developments in the region as well. A friend in SG mentioned the 6000 odd cases of migrant workers who tested +ve in Sin…

CPI(M) continues to tak ZERO Ls. Lal Salam!

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

#165

Post by yibg »

thaway757383884 wrote: post #32
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 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…

I flew into the US end of last week, more than a month since shelter in place started in many states. Still no checks of any sort. There were a couple of questions by the airline during check in but nothing after that. No questions at customs, no temperature checks.

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

#166

Post by saalweachter »

patrickaljord wrote: post #111
saalweachter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is currently at 1462 deaths per million.

The whole country of Spain is at 510 deaths per million. How high do you think their biggest hot spot is?

Community of Madrid looks to be at 1228, based on official statistics.

There are other place also doing poorly, some as badly as NYC, maybe a little better, maybe a little worse, but right now, until someone screws up worse, NYC is currently in the running for "worst COVID-19 death rate in a major city".

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

#167

Post by downrightmike »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #96

I’m a (foreign) American citizen staying in India and happened to arrive here a few days before lockdown started. I don’t understand how this is a mystery: India quickly locked down the entire country and going outdoors was consistently punishable by police hitting people with sticks (thankfully it seems like the brutality has eased up since the start and police are doing things like making people write sorry on the…

It only takes one person to turn it around: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/31-south-korea-sudden...

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

#168

Post by sershe »

arihant wrote: post #150

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…

What is the official end game? Are they hoping that it will be eliminated worldwide, will they continue in this mode indefinitely assuming it won't be, or do they plan to basically close the borders forever (i.e. anyone who enters has to be strictly quarantined so that the internal contact tracing regime could be relaxed)?

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

#169

Post by g00s3_caLL_x2 »

I'd be really curious to see if cuisine and temperature play into this at all?

I've read an article somewhere about how spices can have healthy benefits. I'm not sure how much of this is pseudo-science, but sounds neat.

Harvard has an article on temperature but says 'may not' so, still a curiosity on my end.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/covid-19-may-...

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

#170

Post by CivBase »

marcosdumay wrote: post #135
CivBase wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lockdown is not supposed to reduce the total number of cases; it is supposed to "flatten the curve" so those cases take a lot longer to develop. The intent is to drag the virus out for as long as possible so we can prepare our hospitals, develop more effective treatments, and get closer to a vaccine. A lockdown does not make the virus go away sooner; it prolongs it . According to the Johns Hopkins dashboard[0], Ind…

Obviously a lockdown can cause the number of cases to go down. There's no mystery here. There are many countries doing the same. Yes, it is "supposed" to flatten the curve always keeping some manageable number of people infected. So if you reduce the number of cases any further you are doing it wrong; because no, you won't extinguish the virus, you'll only prolong the lockdown.

> Obviously a lockdown can cause the number of cases to go down.

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but could you explain how a lockdown is supposed to decrease the total number of cases rather than just prolong it?

A lockdown does not make a population more resilient to a virus. It just reduces contagion vectors so it spreads more slowly. The virus still spreads, though. Eventually, enough of the population will catch the virus and build up a resistance to it so that herd immunity kicks in. At that point, enough people will have been exposed to the virus that it does not have enough people to spread to and simply dies out.

I suppose the threshold for herd immunity is lower in a lockdown situation, but I am skeptical about it working to that extent. If my skepticism is misplaced and the lockdown really is that effective, then that also means India will have to stay on lockdown for a very long time to keep that herd immunity threshold low and completely starve the virus out.

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