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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

#271

Post by bart_spoon »

mkl wrote: post #15
garyclarke27 wrote: post #12

Poor article, not even a single mention of the most likely reason for low death rate (apart from young population), the weather! Strong Sun (UV light) and high humidity quickly kills the virus. Warm countries like Thailand - despite millions of tourists from Wuhan - have low death rates. In Spain cold Madrid was affected much worse than sunnier south. Summer will soon rapidly kill of the virus in southern Europe.

From the article: "Yet 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."

Seems strange given the fact that I've seen numerous academic papers shared over the last few months indicating that hot weather and high humidity do indeed have some kind of effect on the virus's transmission.

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

#272

Post by standardUser »

sandworm101 wrote: post #227
sharadov wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India going all Wuhan on the virus. The difference between India and the US particularly is that it's lockdown lite in USA while it's full on there. You can't take a walk, you can't drive farther than 3 KM, cops will kick your butt and impound your vehicle. And the population by and large listens, while we have morons here who want lockdown eased to get haircuts.

I'm in Canada (west coast). No restrictions on driving. People are still taveling to their cabins on the weekend. They get yelled at by other people but are not breaking any laws. My neighourhood is full of elderly people walking their dogs. Bicylists are everywhere. Restaurants never stopped doing takeout. But we cannot get haircuts. Cops have stopped speed enforcement in my area, at least the dedicated speed traps.

The speeding has been happening all over the US too and it makes me sick. These people should be fined into oblivion, cars impounded, licenses revoked. Now is not the time to be creating extra problems for society.

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

#273

Post by systemvoltage »

standardUser wrote: post #228
trianglem wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US and the UK are seeing a massive number of deaths.

What part of "most" do you not understand? Core concept?

Please thoroughly read the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is no way to argue on HN. Be respectful to others even if they seem to not understand your point, then clarify further. Rhetorical questions like this are insulting and lead to poor discussions.

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

#274

Post by selimthegrim »

JPKab wrote: post #142
mirimir wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Forget that part, since when do doctors get abused in Pakistan (except in the brawl by lawyers recently)? What’s a basis for this speculation?

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

#275

Post by sharadov »

glofish wrote: post #252
sharadov wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India going all Wuhan on the virus. The difference between India and the US particularly is that it's lockdown lite in USA while it's full on there. You can't take a walk, you can't drive farther than 3 KM, cops will kick your butt and impound your vehicle. And the population by and large listens, while we have morons here who want lockdown eased to get haircuts.

there is no evidence for that whatsoever. You have absolutely no data on what takes place in India - it is a gigantic country with gigantic variation across. Plus the families are much larger, all confined together. When the train was shut down millions traveled back home for days on packed buses, it unlikely that any lockdown could have had such a pronounced effect so quickly. The truth probably lies elsewhere, perh…

Hospitals are not overwhelmed, people not dying in droves. There may be genetic immunity, with people already exposed to a lot more viruses, less obesity, and comorbid conditions. Also there may be different strains of the virus at work. But we are comparing the lockdown measures here and there, and the anti-science Trumpards who think it's a conspiracy, and protesting. Individual states ( CA ) are doing a great job, Southern states with their nincompoop governors and people, not so much. Btw, Sweden is paying the price for having a laissez-faire attitude to it.

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

#276

Post by dirtyid »

arel wrote: post #251
dirtyid wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countrie…

The point is avoiding mass death. They care about their families lives too and not just economics. It's not a 'political' choice or about 'optics'. It's also not just 'old' people who are dying. It affects 50+ year olds in not insignificant numbers. It depends whether you prioritise health or economics. You can balance health and economics and choose to prioritise one _before_ the other. It does however requires the…

This is all theoretically true, but my inclination is that healthcare cannot be prioritized in a meaningful way within a meaningful time frame in many countries. I would love for India to succeed, but it seems incredibly unlikely that they can delay mass deaths for the time it will take to roll out a vaccine, because it does not seem possible for India to elevate medical access to comparable levels with developing countries per capita in the same time frame. So this delay is just heaping on unnecessary economic damage which in many ways is linked to health. Either way, I wish them the best.

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

#277

Post by sharatvir »

Johnjonjoan wrote: post #57
nnq wrote: post #50

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??!!?! 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…

Whilst I agree the USA has a lower population density than most of the world it is not exactly true. This figure assumes everyone is equally spread out. However many inhabitants of the USA live in cities therefore population density is much higher. The same thing happens in Spain which goes from one of the least dense countries in Europe to one of the most dense looking at it in these different ways. The USA has a la…

Not only is the population large, a lot of people are large as well. Obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular health are huge factors in covid-19 mortality.

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

#278

Post by ikiris »

klmadfejno wrote: post #260
moeffju wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can do this in a closed system. India is not a closed system. At some point, someone is going to screw up. You can't shut down a city every time that happens.

Evidence shows otherwise. You're even complaining about it.

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

#279

Post by dirtyid »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #265
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…

And then there are city level containment zones for tiny colonies (say 3-4 km^2 Radius) when even a single case is detected, where nothing is allowed, groceries are delivered by authorities. Then there are sub - total city wide lockdowns in certain states where absolutely no travel is allowed. Lockdown limits can be increased by the states, but limits imposed by the center can't be diluted. Overall, the reason is ver…

These are interesting strategies, are there places to read more? Most of my Indian friends are the South and wealthy, they're locked down in multi generation compounds and lamenting cleaning for themselves for the first time - maids sent home. The situation doesn't sound as bad on the ground but I'm skeptical in the sense that my province in Canada has imported 16 cases from India, which is on par with Iran (19), Cuba, while it's not as high as US (393), UK (124), or other hard hit European countries (30-40), it dose seem like there as some moderate level of spread in the country for that much to be exported. For reference China only exported 5. Are there discussions about follow up strategies? Contact tracing apps etc, or is the process going to be manual.

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

#280

Post by billfruit »

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…

Really though the governments planning has been very opaque. Even now they don't seem to give any clue on what is going to happen once the declared lockdowns end.

Also government is keen on pushing a shady app for monitoring purposes, I home some one does a security audit of that app.

And the police has been acting in heavy handed manner. Instead of seeing this is a health care issue, the government seems to view this as some kind of law and order issue, and turned the whole country into a police state, putting countless people into misery, especially migrant labourers with hardly any concrete scheme put in to take care of them during this.

There has been serious lack of empathy and care towards the citizens from the government. Government seems to act to preserved face and reputation, rather than for the peoples welfare. Testing rates has been low, also testing is slow, it seems to take 2 or 3 days for people to get their test results. Projections, analyses etc has been hardly published by the government. Also many people have been testing positive more that 30 days, after they have arrived from out of country, that is still yet to be explained by the government.

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