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Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

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Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#11

Post by ghaff »

roenxi wrote: post #8

At 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 happ…

I'm constantly reminded that I clearly live in something of a bubble. I think I know a few people who took a plane to ride out the pandemic somewhere they saw as safer and one person who took an international trip to do some business. But that's about it. And a lot of people I know, including myself, practically live in planes normally.

Yet, while air travel is down significantly, it's not that far down. Certainly not the 95% decrease it is in my circle.

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#12

Post by newsHere »

mdani wrote: post #9

I 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 i…

The Michigan governor had a similar issue. The lockdown was well intended, but when she opened casinos, bars, and restaurants but closed gyms, it was clear that safety was second priority.

In politics you don't get credit for trying to be good, you only get credit for succeeding.

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#14

Post by kshacker »

mdani wrote: post #9

I 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 i…

While the first lockdown may not have been popular, the top 3 reasons for the second wave were 1) muddled message from the top with massive election rallies and no one wearing masks, 2) the religious kumbh congregation was allowed to proceed as normal while a similar (in comparison, a smaller muslim congregation was demonized last year to the extent of jailing some folks), and 3) total lack of preparation of vaccines, drugs, and even oxygen. You only need the queuing theory to explain how systems can break down when the demand changes just a tiny bit.

The complete celebratory attitude with a mild (covid) winter made them forget all the planning that they did not even order their vaccines (at least the numbers they needed). Just in case this seems like a critique of the government, let me add both the people and the government were irresponsible, but a cautionary message from top would have helped and that did not happen in time.

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#15

Post by kshacker »

maxerickson wrote: post #3

Some 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

The only problem with this news is that the virus does not stop mutating. In my reading, I saw a BBC news discussing the double mutant virus as of March 24/25, 2021. I am sure it has existed for even longer, which means it has been mutating for multiple months, and we do not know much about those variations, and will probably hear of them by fall or winter.

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#16

Post by drumhead »

A combination of triumphalism and Stupidity. The govt there thought that they'd seen off the worst of pandemic and that they'd achieved herd immunity, so they didnt bother preparing for a second wave. Then politicans decided to hold massive election rallies, allow the largest religious festival in the world to go ahead and open up stadiums for sporting events.

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#17

Post by k__ »

drumhead wrote: post #16

A combination of triumphalism and Stupidity. The govt there thought that they'd seen off the worst of pandemic and that they'd achieved herd immunity, so they didnt bother preparing for a second wave. Then politicans decided to hold massive election rallies, allow the largest religious festival in the world to go ahead and open up stadiums for sporting events.

How come their second wave comes so late?

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#18

Post by mlyle »

maxerickson wrote: post #7
baybal2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was not concerned about all previous reinfection reports--- after all, anything will happen sporadically.

But I believe recent immune-escape variants are a much higher risk here. Vaccines generate a much higher antibody titer and a much broader complement of antibody responses than natural infection, and still are noticeably less effective against emerging variants.

Waning immunity also will contribute to this concern: reinfection gets more likely with time even without variants.

I believe that even if one is reinfected, one is still partially protected against severe illness by the remaining antibody complements and other means, e.g. t-cell mediated immunity.

Mind you, I don't think this is a huge absolute risk. I just think it's significant enough to be a significant confound for those of us trying to guess what Rt would be with a return to baseline behavior, and enough for people who've "had it" to be less protected than they might expect.

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#19

Post by newacct583 »

doopy1 wrote: post #13
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

"India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing" https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/04/in...

Good thing all the rich people saved us here in the US.

Not for lack of trying, to be perfectly honest. The US mitigation response kept the virus just barely under the disaster threshold, despite major figures in the federal government actively opposing most of those measures at one time or another.

But the vaccines worked, so those rich people got it done. mRNA was a gamble, but it paid off with first trials starting just weeks after the virus was sequenced and first doses entering general patients in nine months instead of the 18 we were originally expecting.

But let's not imagine that the US response wasn't otherwise a disaster, especially when compared to places like Australia and Korea who barely needed to wait for the vaccine at all.

Re: Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?

#20

Post by jimmaswell »

roenxi wrote: post #8

At 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 happ…

> most of them don't speak English

I thought this must have been wrong with how distinct of a thing Indian English is but apparently it's true, albeit India still contains the second largest English speaking population at ~10% of 1.37B.

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