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Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

bbc.com

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Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#11

Post by bongoman37 »

tim333 wrote: post #9

It's surprising how much worse the covid situation has recently got in India. If you look at the cases graph https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ I'm not sure how it's gone from declining in Jan to super exponential in Mar/April?

2 major festivals, Holi and Kumbh Mela (attended by over 2m people with no social distancing or anything), massive election rallies in multiple states. Poor vaccination drive. A double mutant variant of the virus that seems to be faster spreading. Medical system collapsing, almost everything that could go wrong is going wrong.

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#12

Post by ben_w »

cblconfederate wrote: post #7
axiosgunnar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think they don‘t? Actual physical visits are to eg finalze deals, when high-bandwidth communication is necessary. And by high-bandwidth I mean body language, spontaneous n-to-n conversations between all participants, etc.

i don't think decisions that affect millions should be based on body language

Given the man’s well documented history of pathological dishonesty [0], I suspect that body language is how he was elected.

[0] e.g. https://youtu.be/ZVOV3sU8Ays

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#14

Post by jen20 »

ben_w wrote: post #12
cblconfederate wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't think decisions that affect millions should be based on body language

Given the man’s well documented history of pathological dishonesty [0], I suspect that body language is how he was elected. [0] e.g. https://youtu.be/ZVOV3sU8Ays

It’s somewhat crazy that I can’t tell without clicking whether this is about Modi or Johnson.

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#15

Post by drdeadringer »

bongoman37 wrote: post #10
cblconfederate wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't think decisions that affect millions should be based on body language

What should they be based on? Its kind of stupid to ask people to behave like Spock like value maximizing machines.

While I see your point, I find commuting umpteen hours for a 5 minute conversation that could have been over the phone, over email, or over zoom-skype-jitsi rather soul-sucking.

And Spock did have emotions.

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#16

Post by overcast »

tim333 wrote: post #9

It's surprising how much worse the covid situation has recently got in India. If you look at the cases graph https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ I'm not sure how it's gone from declining in Jan to super exponential in Mar/April?

I don't think it's surprising to anyone that a country with a massive population, poor infrastructure, and greatly divided haves and have nots, are having a bad time. I'd be amazed if this is even 25% of the actual cases reported.

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#17

Post by nanna »

When Theresa May visited India in 2016 the conclusion was that Britain was becoming even less relevant to India given that Brexit meant the UK no longer gave India access to EU markets, and because May refused to increase the amount of Indian student visas.* So I'm struggling to see why Johnson would fair any better.

* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37950198

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#18

Post by BurningFrog »

overcast wrote: post #16
tim333 wrote: post #9

It's surprising how much worse the covid situation has recently got in India. If you look at the cases graph https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ I'm not sure how it's gone from declining in Jan to super exponential in Mar/April?

I don't think it's surprising to anyone that a country with a massive population, poor infrastructure, and greatly divided haves and have nots, are having a bad time. I'd be amazed if this is even 25% of the actual cases reported.

The change from January to March is what's surprising.

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#19

Post by teoru23434 »

jimmyed wrote: post #2

The relationship between these two countries must be pretty awkward. The former colonizer is now a failing nation, while the colonized has the future.

India and UK have essentially the same nominal GDP, while UK probably has ~ 1/20 the population. This despite not seeing none of the violent conflicts of East/SE Asia, either during the great war or after that.

India consciously inherited the draconian colonial system of the past century, with all its inherent builtin cruelties, and has shown neither intent, nor any inclinations of changing this. It clearly serves the elite well to have this setup with a meek and famished population.

Take one simple metric: the literacy remains actually understand) and now plans to 'leap-frog' China by teaching people everything in English.

India is set to create an entire generation of people who are skilled neither in their mother tongues, nor in the "progressive foreign language"; neither are they civilized in Indian traditions, nor in Western ones. A country with such mental handicap will go more in the way of sub-saharan Africa with all its meaningless violence.

Once the candles of the old civilization are finally extinguished, I expect a lot more violence. If anything India will end up as another basket case, and require a lot more humanitarian aid.

Re: Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

#20

Post by cblconfederate »

bongoman37 wrote: post #10
cblconfederate wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't think decisions that affect millions should be based on body language

What should they be based on? Its kind of stupid to ask people to behave like Spock like value maximizing machines.

> like value maximizing machines.

thats the job of a head of state

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