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

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

#241

Post by flatTheCurve » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

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…

I've been saying this.

People have no clue how pandemics work.

With a 0.5% death rate, it seems like an emotional decision.

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

#242

Post by karanke » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

wasdfff wrote: post #179

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…

Clips from my friend in Goa show the street scene hasn't changed. People still loitering and buying things in the open air and forming dense crowds. From the clip maybe less than half had masks. Super disappointing and concerning. These numbers seem far to low given the flippant nature most city dwellers are appearing to have to this disease and taking necessary precautions. To me, this is the calm before the storm.

Goa doesn't have any active cases and the borders with other states are still locked: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/state-govt-want....

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

#243

Post by dirtyid » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

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…

Yeah, I don't see the point of crushing the curve in developing countries where it's not feasible to elevate substantially medical capacities. Where many people's ability to support themselves is a day by day process not paycheck to paycheck. It makes no sense to shut down hard other than political optics - all the rich countries are doing it therefore there's an expectation and pressure for leaders in these countries to as well, even though the outcomes will not be the same. Cure is worse than the disease territory. Developing countries with demographics that skew young might actually do better with herd immunity approach.

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

#244

Post by klibertp » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #191

standardUser wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Western nations are doing fine. There's really just a dozen or so countries that have been hit hard, and even then the impact has been uneven within the hardest hit countries.

Sorry, for 330 Million people, USA has had 60k deaths from C19 so far, whereas India has had about 1000 deaths in about 1300 Million people. The western Nations are doing abysmally.

I fail to follow from:

> USA has had [...]

to:

> The western Nations are doing [...]

Erasing the plural makes it better, though I have to wonder why wouldn't you just write "USA is doing" however you think it is.

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

#245

Post by makomk » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

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."

The US has actually been testing more people per capita than South Korea (or, indeed, most countries) for a while now - if I remember rightly, for about a month in terms of testing rate and a week or so in terms of total tests done. South Korea is running at about 6,000 tests per day right now with a peak capacity of about 20,000 last used a month or two ago. If scaled up to the US population that would correspond to about 40,000-125,000 tests per day. The US was stuck around 130,000 tests per day for a while but has been at around 200,000 per day for the last few days.

The US media has just carefully worked to convince people of the opposite without technically saying as much, probably for stupid partisan political reasons. South Korea's positive test rate is low because they have few detected cases, and it's not actually clear why - social distancing definitely played a major part, since they had to impose stricter social distancing rules to actually get the number of confirmed cases to drop to the point they are now, but they've dropped those now and even outright lockdowns haven't had the same level of effect elsewhere.

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

#246

Post by autokad » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

legolas2412 wrote: post #222

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."

Have you looked at deaths? Or are you suggesting india's creating mass graves that media is not aware of, or doctors who aren't speaking out. I have a lot of relatives back in India who are doctors, and our hospitals aren't overwhelmed. There are very few cases. And they test every ICU admit for coronavirus.

india doesnt have mass graves not because 'they are doing it right' or they are 'hiding the bodies', but because ITS WARM AND HUMID AND YOUNG. people are acting like idiots when it comes to this virus.

take this article: "...others talk about the possibilities of the presence of a less virulent strain of the virus in India, along with the possibility that its hot weather was diminishing the contagion. Both these claims are not backed by any evidence."

they have such a hard-lined stance, which is odd because: ""To be totally frank, I don't know and the world doesn't know the answer,""

there IS evidence warm weather makes a difference. droplet virus last longer in the air colder / dryer climates, its why we have a flu season. This has been tested. you pair that with outcomes of countries based on climate, you see a trend that matches expectation.

so "Both these claims are not backed by any evidence.", literally the opposite is true. you could argue that maybe cv19 is different than other cv, but so far that isn't true. Not to mention India is younger than most nations on the planet, you have a recipe for a low risk nation.

And for a nation that initiated its lock down 5 days after New York City and to be attributing all their low effects from the virus from their actions? thats laughable. If anything, India is probably doing worse to itself

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

#247

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

moeffju wrote: post #240

klmadfejno wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#248

Post by clairity » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #174

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…

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).

assuming that that person self-quarantined, it seems reasonable they informed the building but didn't do anything other than maybe wiping down the mailroom and door handles to mollify the paranoid. just having someone in the building doesn't pose appreciable added risk. would you rather they didn't tell you?

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

#249

Post by _bxg1 » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

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…

> Not a lockdown, sealed.

How does this work with essentials like food and medical care? Does the government bring supplies to people since they can't go to the store?

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

#250

Post by brundolf » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

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?

Texas in general and especially Austin have also had a very mild version of all of this compared to some places. At peak we used something like a quarter of our available ICU beds before things started going back down, from the numbers I've seen. There basically haven't been any shortages of anything (at worst, people would buy up all the toilet paper in the morning and it'd all be restocked the next day).

Of course, one way to reverse that situation would be to start opening things back up.