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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?

#71

Post by throw0101a »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #35
ghaff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

My guess is: Many people just can't get a grip on themselves and their urges. Among friends I know, that I am the most strictly adhering to lockdown rules, even going beyond what the rules are. I don't visit people, I avoid being visited (even whatever number of people is allowed visiting each other. Just because one can, does not mean it is a great idea.) I try to tell close ones to avoid visits. Many days I don't l…

> My guess is: Many people just can't get a grip on themselves and their urges.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées:

> All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

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

#72

Post by throw0101a »

hesarenu wrote: post #52
bhanu423 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do you know how far kumbh is to Bangalore.

Do you know how far the province of Quebec is from Europe, Caribbean and Latin America, and US/Florida? Because that's where a few people went and caused an explosion of cases in March 2020:

> The researchers found that as few as 247 spring break travellers were at the root of Quebec’s nearly 70,000 cases. The week off ended March 9th, and those who came back from abroad circulated freely in the community for days.

* https://globalnews.ca/news/7354322/new-study-coronavirus-que...

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

#73

Post by detaro »

stefan_ wrote: post #66
lambdaba wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't people changed their behavior though? Avoiding going outside, having fewer diversity in social interactions but longer durations, and indoors. There is definitely evidence for vitamin D, it's odd this is still not yet widely acknowledged, I can't say I reviewed the research myself but credible people have and have been spreading the information. I've definitely heard of some governments having taken measures…

There are working vaccines but we still have Vitamin D clowns on HN. Can we just ban this already?

"There are working vaccines" isn't particularly immediately useful for the billions of us that don't have them yet, so it's not surprising people find preventative things relevant. (+ the Vitamin D thing has at least the fact going for it that even if it doesn't do anything it's still a sensible overall health consideration)

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

#74

Post by roenxi »

jessriedel wrote: post #22
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…

> 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? I think essentially all the data we have indicates that there is a surprisingly low rate covid transmission on airplanes and airports. (You can be worried that the data is being provided by airline companies who are biased, but at this…

Absolutely. But the article (via footnote 12) is talking about how there are variants of Indian origin being detected in the UK. There is the paragraph:

> Two more cases of the Variant of Concern VOC-21JAN-02 (P.1) have been identified in England – one in the West Midlands and one in Haringey, London.

When the varient crosses a border, it is highly likely it will cross by plane or boat. The worst case outcome is mass lockdowns. I have some faith that it is easier to detect COVID on sea voyages because it is slower and I assume less volume of people, but air travel is a different story. What are the risk-rewards of this air travel?

In 2020 I faced things like being forbidden from leaving my home & my parents potentially dying (they didn't). These were issues faced on a mass scale. I'd like to know how important all this globetrotting is relative to those pain points.

I suppose I'm open to shutting down passenger travel by boat if the numbers are there.

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

#75

Post by hasmanean »

ciguy wrote: post #44
hasmanean wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Most of them don’t speak English?” That is so not true. English is compulsory in Indian schools and has been since partition. There are 125 million English speakers in India, second only to America. You will never find a shortage of people who speak English there, even in remote villages.

125 million english speakers is still around ~10% of the population right? So if ~90% don't speak English then saying "most" seems accurate.

True…I should in most communities you can find people who speak English.

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

#76

Post by YawningAngel »

hpoe wrote: post #26
newacct583 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dos…

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.

Taken as a unit with Candada and Mexico, the US is practically an island, it just chooses not to cooperate with its neighbours. There are also islands, which as my own dear sceptred isle, which could have done this and chose not to

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

#77

Post by mlyle »

maxerickson wrote: post #32
mlyle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which emerging variants are you talking about? The Twitter thread I link above talks about the variants that are spreading a lot and from what I see, experts are calm about the level of effectiveness of the vaccines against them.

E.g. in Israel, B.1.351 represented ~5% of dual dose vaccine breakthrough events when it was at a prevalence of less than 1% in the population. This means that B.1.351 is better at causing infection of people with the vaccine than the previously prevalent variants.

This is despite people with the vaccine having higher neutralizing antibody titers against B.1.351 than people naturally infected with previous strains.

Therefore it seems very likely to expect that B.1.351 will also cause reinfection at higher rates than we've been used to, since it appears that people with the vaccine are more protected than people naturally infected. This is especially true if people who were infected earliest have their immune responses start to wane.

Again: 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?

#78

Post by hesarenu »

webmobdev wrote: post #70
hesarenu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mahakumbh impact? Uttarakhand active Covid caseload jumped 1,800% in 25 days - https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/apr/27/mahakumb...

Uttarakhand maybe. But Bangalore has as many cases as UP.

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

#79

Post by hesarenu »

tzs wrote: post #67
hesarenu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kumbh Mela is attended by far more than just people who live near where it occurs. People from all across India travel to it, participate, and then go back home.

So i assume jamat guys spread covid across India last time?

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

#80

Post by hesarenu »

throw0101a wrote: post #72
hesarenu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do you know how far kumbh is to Bangalore. Do you know how far the province of Quebec is from Europe, Caribbean and Latin America, and US/Florida? Because that's where a few people went and caused an explosion of cases in March 2020: > The researchers found that as few as 247 spring break travellers were at the root of Quebec’s nearly 70,000 cases. The week off ended March 9th, and those who came back from abroad c…

There are more cases in city in Bangalore alone when compared to whole to UP(80Lakh pop vs 22cr). It seems double mutation strains in present in most cases in India. Which initially was seen in Mah. So i do assume it spread from human contact to eveywhere.
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