India’s second wave • Hacker News Board

Re: India’s second wave

#211

Post by jandrewrogers » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #180

maxerickson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US paid a lot more than the $1200, in the form of unemployment supplements. $600 a week at the beginning of the pandemic through July and then $300 a week this year, in addition to a second $2000 payment that went out to more than furloughed or unemployed people.

These numbers don't mean much on their own. Sure, if you live with mom and pop and you got laid off from a job and had a place to fall back onto, yippee If you live in pretty much any major city and you're the breadwinner then it doesn't cover rent/mortgage. We froze foreclosures, so there are estimated millions pending. Unemployment is still in pre-pandemic numbers - all though improving. I think our reliance on "jo…

In Seattle, I know people who received the equivalent of $75k/year on unemployment from various government sources. That exceeds the median household income in the State, never mind individual income. This is on top of, in some cases, a generous severance.

That easily covered their mortgage and their lifestyle, even in this expensive city, and was in no way sustainable. They had no interest in looking for work while they were receiving those benefits, but now that the benefits are disappearing they've started looking for work again.

Re: India’s second wave

#212

Post by christophilus » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

mrow84 wrote: post #74

rataata_jr wrote: post #5

Not leading to deaths, but just increasing case numbers, that is good news.

Deaths are clearly exponentially increasing: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Am I reading that correctly? The exponential spike represents approximately 1.5 deaths in a million?

Re: India’s second wave

#213

Post by bobthechef » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #157

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…

What I don't get is why we call ourselves democracies and speak as "lockdowns hurt poor people very badly" In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status. locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does. It's like this pand…

That's extremely vague and untenable.

Besides, the lockdowns were completely unwarranted. Sure, at the beginning, no one seemed to know how dangerous this thing is, but we have learned quite a bit about it since and it does not merit the sweeping lockdowns in place. Locking down and protecting the vulnerable like those with comorbidities, absolutely, but not everyone. It is not that dangerous of a virus!

Sadly, this has proven to be a successful experiment in how media-driven FUD, sloppy reporting, and blatant misinformation can make people behave irrationally. We know the tallies are bogus because of the bad monetary incentives and methods used to determine whether someone's death counts as a COVID death, we know that something like a half a percent of the population is really affected, we know that the side effects of the lockdown are very concerning (rising suicide, undiagnosed cancers and other illnesses because people fear medical facilities). This is all pure political opportunism at this point.

You want to help the poor? Get rid of the lockdown. The longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to admit that there's nothing to fear (frankly, that ship has kind of sailed; people will ask "well, if it isn't that dangerous, why have we been under lockdown?"). You need a believable exit. (Enter the vaccine.)

Re: India’s second wave

#214

Post by gopalv » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:51 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…

> On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it.

So this was shared by someone who claims to be an ICU doctor in Delhi - the prescriptions are not being written because they are medically necessary.

My family member with the lowest SpO2 is in the DRDO hospital is on Ivermectin + prednisone & a Dexa IV (& not remdesivir).

The rumour is that some doctor had his arm broken by a family member for not prescribing the remdesivir after the patient died.

So the doctors are writing prescriptions and asking the patients to source them, even if the hospital dispensary has the drug in storage, to avoid getting beaten up by the patients family.

This has created a complete black market for the drug, which vastly outstrips the demand and hopefully the doctors are probably just chucking whatever shady vial the family brings over instead of putting in a sick person.

Re: India’s second wave

#215

Post by jgeada » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

MiSeRyDeee wrote: post #170

grecy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada, Australia & New Zealand (and I'm sure many other countries) have done an excellent job providing money to people who are stuck at home because they can't go to work. Here in Canada it was $500/week for 28 weeks, then you moved onto a different scheme if you still needed support. Everyone who needed it go it. We have not been desperately waiting for a pittance of $1200. Be careful not to generalize that all de…

You realize that the stimulus check comes with a cost right? You almost sound like government can just give arbitrary money to citizens but isn't willing to do so.

Less than 6% of the stimulus funds went to pay people, most of the money went into tax savings for banks and big companies (that clearly hadn't stopped eating avocado toast and starbucks coffee and hadn't salted away money for emergencies /s)

We could have done a blanket shutdown for 1 month, paid everybody to stay home and it would have cost multiple order magnitudes less than the current nightmare approach, that not only still impacted the economy, also caused 100's of thousands of dead people. This was a preventable catastrophe, caused because corporations are better represented and more important to our politicians than actual citizens. Thanks Citizen's United for legalizing blatant corruptions /s

Re: India’s second wave

#216

Post by fareesh » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #157

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…

What I don't get is why we call ourselves democracies and speak as "lockdowns hurt poor people very badly" In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status. locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does. It's like this pand…

Democracy is the system of elected representatives. You can elect a government that is completely opposed to welfare programs.

India has some of the hardest working people in the world, and it's a shame the way many have been treated by government programs. Government handouts have created a culture in which many of the poor are at the mercy of corrupt bureaucrats just to get by.

"What's that you say? Your rice allotment was 100 grams less than you're entitled to? Fuck you. Store is closed today. Hey everyone, thank smartass over here, nobody gets rice today."

This is government welfare here in India.

Re: India’s second wave

#217

Post by KorematsuFred » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

This might sound like a dark humor but yesterday the issue of Oxygen shortage came up in Supreme Court of India. (For the uninitiated Indian Supreme Court acts a bit like village elder where they can give any random order to government for any reason even if there is no actual lawsuits under consideration.)

Supreme court asked Government what their plan to increase Oxygen supply is and if they are planning to import it. The government's response is that they have floated a "tender" and have received 3-4 quotes. (Note that, many hospitals in India right now have Supreme court then asked government to force steel and petrolium factories to divert their oxygen to hospitals because steel and petrolium is not important. :)

Re: India’s second wave

#218

Post by krzyk » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

fspeech wrote: post #121

brnt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one seizure, of a small number according to the source. The claim was 'keeps seizing'...

Why isn't a small number enough? The law abiding distributors would follow the ban, thus making further seizures unnecessary. Though to be honest the EU ban only targeted export to countries with better conditions (lower case rate or higher vaccination rate than Europe) and was only to last a few weeks, at least initially.

It was a ban to export mainly to UK which already had plenty of vaccines. And AZ wasn't delivering to EU what was promised.

If you promise to deliver you better do, or don't produce the product in there and ship it elsewhere.

Re: India’s second wave

#219

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #180

maxerickson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US paid a lot more than the $1200, in the form of unemployment supplements. $600 a week at the beginning of the pandemic through July and then $300 a week this year, in addition to a second $2000 payment that went out to more than furloughed or unemployed people.

These numbers don't mean much on their own. Sure, if you live with mom and pop and you got laid off from a job and had a place to fall back onto, yippee If you live in pretty much any major city and you're the breadwinner then it doesn't cover rent/mortgage. We froze foreclosures, so there are estimated millions pending. Unemployment is still in pre-pandemic numbers - all though improving. I think our reliance on "jo…

[deleted]

Re: India’s second wave

#220

Post by vishnugupta » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #107

kanche wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places by 20x! https://i.imgur.com/VJHL2VT.jpg

how do they know a cremation was for a covid-19 victim?

By process of elimination. Some of the places are about a thousand mile apart. There aren't too many causes that could explain a simultaneous spike in cremations at all those places coinciding with the nation wide second wave of COVID-19.