Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
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Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#2"India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing"
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/04/in...
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#3Some good news about the "double mutant", it doesn't appear to impact vaccine effectiveness (using antibody reactivity as a measure) more than either mutation alone.
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#4Some good news about the "double mutant", it doesn't appear to impact vaccine effectiveness (using antibody reactivity as a measure) more than either mutation alone. https://twitter.com/GuptaR_lab/status/1388422661018116097
But it seem to be capable of infecting previously recovered people much more vigorously.
People who got original covid strain may now be getting reinfected again.
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#5Some good news about the "double mutant", it doesn't appear to impact vaccine effectiveness (using antibody reactivity as a measure) more than either mutation alone. https://twitter.com/GuptaR_lab/status/1388422661018116097
But it seem to be capable of infecting previously recovered people much more vigorously. People who got original covid strain may now be getting reinfected again.
What's sad is we have enough evidence to show people they need a vaccine to prevent re-infection, yet it doesnt seem to move the needle for many where vaccines are plentiful
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#6The wave isn't primarily due to loosening of restrictions or slack in behaviour. It's due to, for a lack of a better term, environmental factors.
Look at the countries in the vicinity of India; they all show similar rise at around the same time.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/pakistan/#...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/bangladesh...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sri-lanka/...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/maldives/#...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/iran/#grap...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/kazakhstan...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/azerbaijan...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uzbekistan... ...
COVID is seasonal: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.28.21252625v...
Mumbai had the peak of its 'first wave' on October 7th. See mobility trends for vehicular and pedestrian traffic at https://covid19.apple.com/mobility. You'll see both monotonically increasing as the peak approaches and then recedes. If this were a simple morality tale of the level of social contact, this wouldn't be the case.
See this paper for a more thorough look at the epidemiological mysteries of an infectious respiratory disease: https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-42...
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#7Some good news about the "double mutant", it doesn't appear to impact vaccine effectiveness (using antibody reactivity as a measure) more than either mutation alone. https://twitter.com/GuptaR_lab/status/1388422661018116097
But it seem to be capable of infecting previously recovered people much more vigorously. People who got original covid strain may now be getting reinfected again.
Is this just anecdotal or ?
Basically no theory about high prevalence of previous infection has survived the test of time, so I think to say something like 'infecting previously recovered people much more vigorously' takes some solid evidence.
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#8At some point people really have to stop trying to guess what is going on in real-time and adopt a more patient, evidence based approach. India is huge, the healthcare system is said to be collapsing and most of them don't speak English. We aren't going to get coherent reporting in the English press for a few months.
On the other hand, if we're worried about variants then I hope there are some hard conversations happening about what the strategy here is. Part of what went wrong at the start of COVID around March 2020 was the reactive approach waiting for hard proof that the disease would slip through the borders before cancelling flights. This approach runs a risk that any action will be taken too late.
To be honest, I'm confused by the amount of air travel that is still going on. If locking down large swathes of most countries is on the cards, why is there any air travel happening? Why was there a high profile diplomatic visit to India being planned? Are the benefits from all these plane trips really outweighing the costs? We may as well be trying to evolve COVID to sneak past quarantines.
How is it acceptable to scuttle the economy in response to COVID, why are there still plane flights 12 months in to the pandemic? Someone fill me in on what I've missed; this seems to be not taking the situation seriously. Are these variants not going to be travelling between countries by plane and ship?
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#9I visited India in Dec 2020, so here's my personal take on this based on what I saw. The first lockdown in India was very severe and it basically made the second lockdown pretty unpopular in the business community, at least initially. The dithering contributed to even bigger second wave.
The reasons behind the lull between the first and the second waves were not entirely clear, and some people assumed that the herd immunity is being reached. Combined with the desire to return to normalcy after a harsh lockdown, it falsely assured people that the worst was behind them. This created the perfect conditions for a bigger second wave.
Finally, the state and every petty official was intoxicated by the powers they weilded during the first lockdown, and they forgot that with great power comes the great responsibility. They unnecessarily focused on tiny things such as fining people Rs. 500 at the traffic lights, while not really understanding the new information on how virus spreads, what are the best ways to tackle transmission and so on. People should have been given the liberty to be outdoors with proper face covering when there was good airflow. They shpuld have known that meeting indoors with poor airflow was the biggest threat. This wasn't communicated properly.
Some government officials did take decisions proactively to save their own district. For example, see here
But unfortunately, this was the exception rather than the norm.
Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
#10The wave isn't primarily due to loosening of restrictions or slack in behaviour. It's due to, for a lack of a better term, environmental factors. Look at the countries in the vicinity of India; they all show similar rise at around the same time. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/pakistan/#... https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/bangladesh... https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coun…
Well, if you look at a comparison graph of the countries directly adjoining India, the differences are pretty stark.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...