India’s second wave • Hacker News Board

Re: India’s second wave

#131

Post by blake1 » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #122

dataflow wrote: post #11

The situation is also horrible in Brazil (14M cases, 378k deaths, ICUs near full): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/brazil-alarming-high-num... One can only wonder if it's simply a matter of time before variants break through vaccines in the US too.

Eventually there will be a variant which spreads epidemically in even a fully vaccinated population. But such an complete escape mutation is likely to come at a cost to fitness for the virus so it will be less transmissible and virulent. And in vaccinated individuals they will still have cross-reactive immune responses. The 1918 H1N1 pandemic just evolved into seasonal influenza (or co-evolved with the human immune s…

And vaccine escape is non-binary as well. Variants able to do that may displace other variants, but be unable to push R0 over 1 in a largely vaccinated population. The "South African" variant B1351 can break through Pfizer, but it does seem to be controllable.[1]

A booster shot has already been developed, and I expect we'll be able to win the arms race against this virus.

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v...

Re: India’s second wave

#132

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

hesarenu wrote: post #120

Wearing mask might just delay getting the infection. I wore mask all the time, wfh and go out only for groceries, still got infected. And when the CM gets Covid a second time after vaccination anyone can get it even with mask or vaccination.

[deleted]

Re: India’s second wave

#133

Post by tim333 » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #111

wolfretcrap wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While they deserve their share of blame, the ordinary people have only made matters worse. Chin-mask, no-mask, herbal "remedies", religious gatherings, weddings, engagements, naming ceremonies... the list goes on. Culture does not change in a day even at desperate times. Government should ban gathering and events. Even my extended family is planning to attend a wedding despite huge risk in doing so, why? In India at…

The UK changed culture around weddings and funerals see teh Late Prince Phillips funeral.

"Only strict government rule can fix this" kind of applies to the UK. We had quite a lot of rules and fines threatened.

Re: India’s second wave

#134

Post by tedunangst » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #111

wolfretcrap wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While they deserve their share of blame, the ordinary people have only made matters worse. Chin-mask, no-mask, herbal "remedies", religious gatherings, weddings, engagements, naming ceremonies... the list goes on. Culture does not change in a day even at desperate times. Government should ban gathering and events. Even my extended family is planning to attend a wedding despite huge risk in doing so, why? In India at…

The UK changed culture around weddings and funerals see teh Late Prince Phillips funeral.

Seems pretty unlikely the commoners banned from attending the funeral procession are worried the queen will fail to attend their own funeral now.

Re: India’s second wave

#135

Post by not2b » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #60

Clewza313 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIV, malaria, and many other diseases endemic to the third world target people in the prime of life, wreaking havoc on families. By contrast, most (not all, but most) deaths from COVID are the elderly. Any mention of this tends to bring on "how dare you say one life is more valuable than another" downvotes, but since this thread is considering economic impact, it's a relevant factor.

Personally I see a teenage suicide as a result of lockdown far more tragic than an 83 year old death from covid (that's the average age of Covid death in the UK. The average age of death in the UK is 82). 60+ years of life lost versus a maybe 2 or 3.

Stop with the suicide myth. The suicide rate actually decreased during the Covid pandemic. People are not killing themselves at greater rates because of lockdown.

Re: India’s second wave

#136

Post by hesarenu » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #129

hesarenu wrote: post #120

Wearing mask might just delay getting the infection. I wore mask all the time, wfh and go out only for groceries, still got infected. And when the CM gets Covid a second time after vaccination anyone can get it even with mask or vaccination.

The point of wearing masks is mostly to prevent you from infecting others if you're already infected. They're somewhat effective at preventing infection but that's not what they're best at - if you're wearing a mask in a room with an unmasked, contagious case, you're still in danger.

Maybe they should advertise it like that. I and most i know are wearing thinking it would reduce our risk to exposure.

Re: India’s second wave

#137

Post by navait » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

FlyingSnake wrote: post #123

dtech wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are serious indications that India is under-reporting death count by a factor of 5-50x. Despite showing 5-10x lower death rate in your source, it was rare for European crematoriums have backlogs like in India [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/india/non-stop-cremations-cast...

Wouldn’t the opposition parties, independent media, foreign watchdogs raise the alarm if that was the case (prior to the current strain)? This would’ve been a golden opportunity to discredit the ruling government.

My (Indian) wife says that the media just print the good things their party does because if they printed dirt about their opponents, those people would print dirt about them.

Re: India’s second wave

#138

Post by pagerdutyalert » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

qart wrote: post #25

Lockdowns hurt poor people very badly; they need to earn to survive. All the more reason everyone should mask up. And yet, most people stopped masking months ago. Crowds are as bad as they were in 2019. On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it. The central and state governments have mismanaged plenty of things. While they deserve their share of blame, the ord…

In addition to the financial, the environmental strain is intense too. City living with the kind of strict lockdowns imposed was to say the least claustrophobic.

What is surprising is misinformation around the variant when there isn't definitive evidence on its morbidity or contagion. The obvious cause is a population letting its guard down!

Re: India’s second wave

#139

Post by nmridul » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

hesarenu wrote: post #136

mullingitover wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of wearing masks is mostly to prevent you from infecting others if you're already infected. They're somewhat effective at preventing infection but that's not what they're best at - if you're wearing a mask in a room with an unmasked, contagious case, you're still in danger.

Maybe they should advertise it like that. I and most i know are wearing thinking it would reduce our risk to exposure.

I thought masks will reduce the viral load and lessens the severity of infection

Re: India’s second wave

#140

Post by hesarenu » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #52

This is what I feared the first time would be, but somehow the virus spared India. The first time around majority of the population was careful, masked up and stayed indoors. The death was super low. That caused people to get over confident, people believed that covid is not harmful in the country and they fully ignored it. Now there is an Indian variant of the virus which apparently and the infection rates and death…

Last peak was around october. It was expected to go higher due to reduced restrictions and coming up festivals. But instead it came down drastically. There were many articles on what caused it to go down(weather, sanitation, food etc). Now in peak summer April suddenly its going up. Its a sharp rise. Would be interested to know the cause of the sudden rise in coming months.