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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?

#51

As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen. As the Pandemic began in India, most of the experts clearly said that all restrictions, like lockdowns, are just to slow down the spread of the disease temporarily , so that the healthcare infrastructure doesn't get overburdened. It was understood that India needed to upgrade existing hosp…

> As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen.

We have to eliminate our socialistic approach to planning. If you lock the private sector out and expect that everything will be handled by the government bureaucracy, then nothing will get done.

There are no right-wing parties in India. Even Modi and the BJP are saffron socialists. They have applied price controls to so many medical items that the demand-supply equilibrium has gone for a toss.

Even today, the vaccines are being produced by two private organizations under a price control regime and all they have to show for it is a stream of abuse from the necrophiles on the left.

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

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why this latching onto election rallies and kumbh. Cases are exploding in Karnataka. No election or Kumbh here. Same for Maharastra.

Do you really buy into the excuse that somehow election rallies and kumbh did not increase the severity of the problem at hand ? Its Standard whataboutery spewed constantly by the ruling party. They just don't even want to own up to their mistakes and the PM is staying silent as he is expecting everyone to forget and move on to the next hot topic. The Central Government allocated covid related very critical projects(…

It seems more like elections and kumbh are standard phrases of opposition party. Cases are exploding in Bangalore. Do you know how far kumbh is to Bangalore. You are just trying to find a scapegoat, like how the RW where using Jamat last Year.

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

#53

As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen. As the Pandemic began in India, most of the experts clearly said that all restrictions, like lockdowns, are just to slow down the spread of the disease temporarily , so that the healthcare infrastructure doesn't get overburdened. It was understood that India needed to upgrade existing hosp…

You have a lot of good points and they generally align with what I have heard from family in India. Your post does not deserve to be down voted but I am not surprised. Any article/post against Modi, the Modi govt, BJP, or highlighting the issues of the caste system gets down voted on HN so that it has very little time on the front page. Their IT cell has a far reach.

Someone else in this thread posted that COVID is seasonal and the reason for the current wave is environmental; that post is not getting down voted. Blame has been assigned to a non-Modi entity so I guess all is well.

Hubris was a big part of this. Modi made the statements himself about how well India handled COVID and is now about to help the world. Has egg on his face now but it wont matter. There is enough time to make his own people forget about his mismanagement and lack of empathy before the next election.

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

#54

The history of theses things in India seems to be the track that Covid followed everywhere. Is it just human psychology that is the problem? 1st wave: everybody clamps down. R goes to 2nd wave: people think it's over R goes >1, then clamp down again. 3rd wave: more of no. 2 but with a broader base of carriers across the nation. 3rd wave in India therefore will be really nasty based on other nations 3rd wave, unless t…

I think there's some things that are pretty common.

The exponential nature of the spread makes it so that things are getting very risky well before the risk is obvious or apparent.

The payoff for avoiding a surge is pretty abstract. For a lot of people it ends up being that people they don't know don't get sick, and things like that.

And then a year is a long time to deal with reduced socialization, we are social animals, "quarantine fatigue" isn't surprising in relation to that.

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

#55
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conc…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

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

#56

As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen. As the Pandemic began in India, most of the experts clearly said that all restrictions, like lockdowns, are just to slow down the spread of the disease temporarily , so that the healthcare infrastructure doesn't get overburdened. It was understood that India needed to upgrade existing hosp…

You have a lot of good points and they generally align with what I have heard from family in India. Your post does not deserve to be down voted but I am not surprised. Any article/post against Modi, the Modi govt, BJP, or highlighting the issues of the caste system gets down voted on HN so that it has very little time on the front page. Their IT cell has a far reach. Someone else in this thread posted that COVID is s…

> caste system

How is the caste system related to the COVID pandemic? Does the hatred between the Deobandi and Barelvi sects of Islam play a similar role?

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

#57
post #49
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I see people always pointing out SK and NZ and Australia as great examples of handling the virus but it seems to me that naturally controlling travel through an island* would be much easier to do anyway, also an island is unlikely to end up as a major throughfare? Could this factor into the difference at all? *I know SK isn't technically an island but for all practical purposes it is.

Ok and where is the evidence the spread is significantly due to land border crossings? You really think the U.S. was being infected by Mexicans and Canadians? Refugees? That India is being infected by some or all the countries surrounding them? You must necessarily think these are illegal crossings because legal ones require COVID testing. All it takes is a critical mass of your own population getting it, followed by…

As I understand it, the current refugee crisis at the American southern border has a large Covid-19 component.

This report says that at least one facility has a 10% infection rate.

At the current time, in my opinion, The American border can't keep out any pandemic if our neighbors have it. And vise versa.

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

#58

As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen. As the Pandemic began in India, most of the experts clearly said that all restrictions, like lockdowns, are just to slow down the spread of the disease temporarily , so that the healthcare infrastructure doesn't get overburdened. It was understood that India needed to upgrade existing hosp…

You said India is the worlds largest producers of oxygen and vaccines, but has a lack of trucks to transport them. Is this the same old pattern of infrastructure in colonial economies where all the transportation links are designed to move goods to seaports for export—and not for moving goods inside the country? That would be a terrible tragedy.

To be clear, I meant lack of trucks to transport Oxygen, not vaccines. And this logistics problem should be seen in the context of the Pandemic - India has never needed so much Oxygen at hospitals before and so we never needed so many trucks as we do now.

We actually have a very extensive railway network (colonial era yes, but upgraded and expanded to cover the country in the last 70 years) that provides connectivity to most parts of India. And we are now using that to transport the Oxygen and Trucks faster to different states - https://www.livemint.com/news/india/how-indian-railways-plan... .

With vaccine, we are facing issues in keeping up with demand - again a policy failure, because the vaccine makers have been requesting government aid to upgrade and expand their manufacturing facilities since last year. It is only last month that the government has released some funds (as "advance payment") so that the vaccine makers can upgrade their facilities and produce more vaccine faster.

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

#59
post #51

As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen. As the Pandemic began in India, most of the experts clearly said that all restrictions, like lockdowns, are just to slow down the spread of the disease temporarily , so that the healthcare infrastructure doesn't get overburdened. It was understood that India needed to upgrade existing hosp…

> As an indian, this Pandemic is an eye opener to me on the devastating impact that flawed government policies have on its citizen. We have to eliminate our socialistic approach to planning. If you lock the private sector out and expect that everything will be handled by the government bureaucracy, then nothing will get done. There are no right-wing parties in India. Even Modi and the BJP are saffron socialists. They…

    If you lock the private sector out and expect that everything will be handled by the government bureaucracy, then nothing will get done.
Agree to a certain extent - that is why it is appalling that the government didn't listen to appeals of the vaccine manufacturers to give them funds to upgrade and expand their facilities to manufacture more vaccines. Nobody in India would have grudged if the government gave them some public money to do so!

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

#60
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok and where is the evidence the spread is significantly due to land border crossings? You really think the U.S. was being infected by Mexicans and Canadians? Refugees? That India is being infected by some or all the countries surrounding them? You must necessarily think these are illegal crossings because legal ones require COVID testing. All it takes is a critical mass of your own population getting it, followed by…

As I understand it, the current refugee crisis at the American southern border has a large Covid-19 component. This report says that at least one facility has a 10% infection rate. At the current time, in my opinion, The American border can't keep out any pandemic if our neighbors have it. And vise versa.

How does that square with both Mexico and Canada having significantly milder outbreaks on average? Objectively, aren't we giving it to them and not the reverse?
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