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

bbc.com

331–340 of 381 posts

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

#332

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.

Thank you! Not sure why this is so difficult for people to understand.

This is what India is trying to achieve. Delay the spread (flatten the curve), ramp up health care facilities (doctors, beds and medicine), identify hot-spots and trace ruthlessly and finally hope that some medicine/vaccine would be quickly invented (the whole world is working on it).

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

#333

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.

People are largely forced to comply to the lockdown because police are often resorting to using of indiscriminate force, which isn't becoming in any modern country. Serious lack of empathy from the Police and Governments in India.

The level of ignorance exhibited here is breathtaking!

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

#335
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Huh. I thought that this was common knowledge.

> The Taliban began assassinating polio workers the year after the CIA used a vaccination campaign for hepatitis B, not polio, to identify Osama bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/03/150303-polio...

> There has been opposition to such immunisation drives from some powerful clerics while a fake CIA vaccination campaign, which helped to locate Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, is thought to have had a detrimental effect as well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18868267

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

#336
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had the impression, based on news articles at the time, that local officials were behind the initial coverup in Wuhan, lasting until national officials rectified the situation. CPP propaganda strategically concentrates blame for any kind of domestic problem on local officials in order make the central authorities seem trustworthy and competent by comparison. While the local Wuhan officials definitely had an indep…

>It's also arguable that the central government is responsible for the coverup activities by the Wuhan officials, because they're the ones who've created and sustained the system those local officials operate in. I like this line of thinking, I think it better reflects reality then the often heard knee-jerk reaction assuming that China is an evil monolith. I wonder sometimes why I bristle at the comments painting Chi…

The US can make mistakes and guess what - the political oppression and police abuse in China is still nothing short of evil.

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

#337
post #142
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?

Sorry. I should have put that in scare quotes.

And to be clear, I'm not arguing that he was murdered. I was just pointing out that some Muslims consider that he was murdered. I mean, the doctor who led the CIA to him is still in jail, and likely will be for the rest of his life. And the lawyer who defended him was murdered by the Taliban.

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

#338

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…

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…

Nah, a stay at home order is to flatten the curve. A lockdown is to burnout the virus. If you lockdown for about 2x the time the virus incubates and people follow the lockdown. You can snuff the virus out. At the beginning of the lockdown, assume someone just got it and lives at home with others no symptoms but they spread it to other's that live at home, assume those don't have symptoms and they stay in for the recommended quarantine period, then the virus should have subsided. In the case of sars-cov-2 2weeks+2weeks. So 4 weeks minimum, add 1 or 2 more for safety measure. If people are sick enough to go to the hospital, they get treated, contact tracing is done. It's tough, but if everyone said home for 6 weeks. Absolutely no contact, the virus will burn out since it won't have any new hosts to infect. China didn't do their lockdown to flatten the curve, they did it to snuff out the virus, that's the same strategy India is attempting.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical city dwelling urbanite bugman attitude. There's never been a time when people weren't speeding at every chance, and there's never been a safer time to do it. Pretty sure if you continue to hide in your apartment you'll be safe from the bad people who are driving faster than the 1950s norm. LICENSES REVOKED, he says, SHOULD NEVER DRIVE AGAIN. You sound like an old church lady waving an umbrella.

If a person can't restrain themself from driving over 100mph, they don't have the temperament to drive on public roads. They're just a sociopathic child with twisted priorities and no self control. What I find especially strange is how these people think they are somehow special and exempt from the law. They are not special, no matter how fast their vroom vroom machine can go.

>> If a person can't restrain themself from driving over 100mph

That isn't speed. In my neck of the woods that will be called street racing. License revoked. Car impounded. Probably criminal charges. "Speeding" is doing 60 in a 50, 60 in a 30 because the "construction zone" stopped all activity a month ago but forgot to take down the signs. Or it is doing 32 in a 30 school zone ... when no student has attended a school in months. 100 is a different league.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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), Cub…

> These are interesting strategies, are there places to read more?

Here's WEF's report on India's cluster-containment strategy[1].

>Most of my Indian friends are the South and wealthy

India of Wealthy is radically different from others, Just $77,000 is required to be at the top 1% in the country[2].

> my province in Canada has imported 16 cases from India,

That's indeed very interesting. India stopped International flights on Mar 23 and the infections as of Mar23 were Do note that, India's infection rate is among the highest in Asia as of writing [5].

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/india-covid19-coronav...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.in/slideshows/miscellaneous/here...

[3] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=India+super+spreader

[5] https://www.thehindu.com/data/indias-coronavirus-infection-r...

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