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

bbc.com

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

#231

Post by ignoramous »

cptskippy wrote: post #147
ignoramous wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It sounds like you're taking the opportunity... to be combative and argumentative.

I'm sorry it comes off like that. My intention was to point out that this situation isn't of advantage to anyone regardless of their social or economic standing. Sure, a lockdown is harsher on some people than the others, but life, in general, is harsher on some people more than on the others.

The pandemic is doing a great job at ringing the alarm bells. I hope it stirs the government and the policy makers into action and not use it instead for abhorrent religious and political mileage at the expense of steering away from building a support framework for all its citizens.

> ...using your command of the language to minimize the situation.

I'm not the one mentally replacing at the expense of with in contrast to.

> The pandemic and quarantine haven't just aggravated an untenable situation, they're pushing it to the limits.

You'd find that we are in agreement. I don't understand what part of my comment made you think I'm cold to their struggles.

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

#232

Post by _7fvc »

This virus seems sneaky. It's seasonal and it probably does not like heat. For countries closer to the equator, it has not done much damage. It's hard to hide deaths. I think the numbers are close to reality. But the virus may surge in these countries after summer when the heat recedes.

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

#233

Post by yalogin »

India is doing the lockdown well. Apartment buildings apparently have taken it on themselves to not allow anyone in and out of the buildings. They let one vendor each for groceries, milk, vegetables, pharmacy etc and that's it. People are not allowed to go out or even play in the yard. And this is not government mandated, the HOA equivalent for apartment buildings are doing it themselves.

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

#234

Post by thbr99 »

screye wrote: post #199
thbr99 wrote: post #136

BBC is a known for its India bashing. This article has no depth and is conjuring up some kind of conspiracy theory. HN quality is going down the drain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC

The BBC is known to write about ex-colonies with a certain level of contempt. There is a thinly veiled nostalgia about British superiority and to an extent still consider the subcontinent to be some sort of 'unfinished work' that still requires 'civilizing'. I have noticed a similar sentiment among French and Belgian people about their colonies, but I haven't read enough of their media or politics to know how pervasi…

Françafrique - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Françafrique

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

#235

Post by jschwartzi »

jcranmer wrote: post #229
castlecrasher2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US is #1 in infections for a reason: we are doing it wrong. It's more likely that we're testing far more than most countries than "we're doing it wrong."

No. Per capita, our testing is absolute crap--South Korea and Singapore are good examples of countries that actually have done thorough jobs in testing everybody. South Korea's positive test rates are somewhere in the single digits, the US is around 20-30%. That's not a sign we're "testing far more than most countries."

In fact the governor of Washington said in a speech that we are limited in the amount of testing that we could do, and that we need to be substantially increasing our test capacity and turn-around in order to lift lockdown. So it's very accurate to say the US isn't testing enough.

And in fact the limiting factors for test capacity is our ability to manufacture PPE, swabs, containers, and chemicals. All the things we've been busily outsourcing overseas to China.

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

#236

Post by klmadfejno »

kumarvvr wrote: post #186
sershe wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

What is the official end game for all the countries that have lockdown? Have control over new infections and resulting hospitalizations so as to not overwhelm healthcare infrastructure. This is especially required in India, where a large section of the population is uneducated, lack propee facilities and live on daily wages, with little to no savings or assets. As in South Korea, the idea is to ramp up testing so tha…

There's a painful cognitive dissonance that people seem to have about this disease. If your lockdown stops the spread of the disease, your population doesn't get immunity. No amount of infrastructure will allow the population to get immunity without all of the deaths that come with it.

Absent effective medicines being developed, which are very unlikely to appear for a long time, countries need to consider that they're choosing somewhere to fall along a spectrum of disease, or disease + poverty.

In Star Trek there's the famous unwinnable test, the kobayashi maru, and our hero Kirk says there's no such thing. This is the kind of naive arrogance that is going to amplify an already bad situation.

I don't know much about India or its particular situation but rising food prices are going to be a hell of a struggle.

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

#237

Post by Jac21 »

pjc50 wrote: post #219
whoisjuan wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Austin. There was a confirmed case in my building and the best we got was a vague email from the management saying that someone had it and that the person had used the mailroom the Saturday before (we got the email on a Wednesday).

Remarkably I hear that Austin is going to be un-locking soon? Is that true?

Our state is going to attempt "phases" - https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/27/texas-loosen-restri...

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

#238

Post by klmadfejno »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #213
malandrew wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main question I have too. We have a disease that is pretty much guaranteed to be endemic so there will always be the ever present threat of re-importing the disease.

- guaranteed to be endemic in countries that have not taken the necessary public health measures. Consequently there will be very tough restrictions on travellers from those countries. Maybe the world will divide into green and red zones?

It's simply not realistic to keep a highly infectious disease forever out of a country like India (unless the virus just doesn't thrive there for environmental or demographic reasons). What are they going to do, shut down entire cities every time there's a lapse in security?

If the world did somehow divide into green and red zones, you would have a worse problem on your hands. The red zones are the wealthier western countries, and are more desirable than the green zones. Good luck trying to maintain global economic relevance when you don't allow immigrants from the wealthiest countries in the world. There's a similar argument to immunity passports. If people need to be immune to the disease to re enter the workforce safely, they will infect themselves with the disease to do so.

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

#240

Post by moeffju »

klmadfejno wrote: post #236
kumarvvr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the official end game for all the countries that have lockdown? Have control over new infections and resulting hospitalizations so as to not overwhelm healthcare infrastructure. This is especially required in India, where a large section of the population is uneducated, lack propee facilities and live on daily wages, with little to no savings or assets. As in South Korea, the idea is to ramp up testing so tha…

There's a painful cognitive dissonance that people seem to have about this disease. If your lockdown stops the spread of the disease, your population doesn't get immunity. No amount of infrastructure will allow the population to get immunity without all of the deaths that come with it. Absent effective medicines being developed, which are very unlikely to appear for a long time, countries need to consider that they'r…

Aside from the fact that the jury's still out on whether infection actually confers immunity with Covid-19, the options are not just "get everyone infected" vs "eternal lockdown", you can actually suppress the disease to a level where new infections are rare and easily enough traced, or even completely absent.
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