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India’s second wave

ft.com

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Re: India’s second wave

#251

Post by InitialLastName »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #88
corty wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, preliminary numbers where available seem to show the suicide rate to be falling. So in the loss-of-years calculation, all is quite fine actually...

https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2020/08/13/...

New rule for news consumption: stories that present poll results for a period without a baseline for comparison are trying to mislead you. What portion of people between 18-24 contemplate suicide in a given year? Turn to substance use to cope with stress?

I know that I lived my life from 18-24 without any global pandemic lockdowns and both "contemplated" suicide at different points and used substances to cope with stress. I'd assume many others did as well.

Given that we know suicides didn't go up in 2020 the way the fearmongers said they would (they went down), what are you arguing for?

Re: India’s second wave

#252

Post by sgt101 »

shas3 wrote: post #238
hunter-2 wrote: post #44

The fact that the official numbers are through the roof tell you how bad the unofficial (and real) numbers are. In the past week, there have been reports from several cities where the number of Covid deaths are measured in single digits - yet crematoriums are so full that people have started cremating their dead ones on sidewalks.

I am surprised that there is no skepticism here about the cremation numbers. 1. Crematoriums usually have enough capacity to deal with average death rates. Anything above that and it starts to look horrific. 2. What is the definition of "covid protocol" for cremation? Does it mean the patient had covid? I don't see this clearly stated any where. 3. There might be a delay between the two numbers with crematorium numbe…

Well, science is all about observations, the idea of people being forced into adhoc cremations on the street is quite an observation.

Re: India’s second wave

#253

Post by nradov »

devonbleak wrote: post #235
nostromo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a certain point you run out of money. The US can print trillions of dollars in an emergency as a world reserve currency. Most countries cannot do this. The idea that India could just pay 1.4 billion people not to work for a year doesn't seem like a realistic proposal.

Not with that attitude it's not. It's not that they can't afford it - it's that they're unwilling to actually leverage the wealth of their country to do it. I seriously don't understand the thinking that resources are still so scarce that an entire country like India somehow can't afford to meet the basic needs of its people (let alone the US). If the resources exist you figure out how to get them to the people that…

Redistributing wealth won't help if the store shelves are empty. People have to be out there working and making stuff or else we won't have any stuff.

Re: India’s second wave

#254

Post by roywiggins »

zamalek wrote: post #222
Exmoor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't, but if the death rates are generally stable and predictable a huge increase during a COVID wave seems highly likely to be related. There have been plenty of analysis of various countries mortality rates compared to normal years. In general, the trend seems to be that poorer countries have probably missed a lot of COVID deaths due to lack of testing infrastructure and heavily rural populations. https://www.…

> You don't, but if the death rates are generally stable [...] For example: if a crematorium has historically dealt with 20 cremations a week and is now doing 100 a week, you can estimate that 80 people are dying from COVID per week. The estimate is likely to be pretty inaccurate, but it's the best source of information that there is.

Certainly in NYC, I recall that at the worst of the first wave, excess deaths were very correlated with registered COVID deaths and they spiked simultaneously. There were fewer registered COVID deaths than excess deaths, but during the first spike testing wasn't always done, and people who died at home didn't always get a test postmortem.

When there's a COVID spike, most of the excess deaths are people dying of COVID (some might be people dying due to fear of COVID, or hospitals collapsing- arguably still "COVID fatalities" even if they don't test positive).

Re: India’s second wave

#255

Post by [deleted] »

raincom wrote: post #234
loonster wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't print a chicken. Money is only the intermediary.

There are tons of chicken farmers in the world who love to exchange their chickens for the US dollars. However, the same farmers don't want to sell their chickens for Zimbabwian dollars. USD has the world reserve currency status, that's why MMT folks want to print money to spend on fiscal policy. Third world countries don't have this luxury.

[deleted]

Re: India’s second wave

#256

Post by grecy »

chrismat wrote: post #225
grecy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile Texas, the poster-child for bad behaviour, is headed back to normal. Fifty THOUSAND people died in Texas. I'm not sure how anyone can hold it up as a *good" comparison.

The population of Texas is 29,000,000 - so even (incorrectly) assuming that these 50,000 people died exclusively from Covid and not compounded by several co-morbities... that's 0.17% of the state's population. And even as a factor of the number of cases in TX (2.84mil, last check), that comes to 1.7%.

At 1,721 deaths per million of population, if Texas were a country it would be the 16th worst on the planet.

Ranking 16th worst out of 198 is not an enviable or "good" place to be.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?new

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/

Re: India’s second wave

#257

Post by sg47 »

sgt101 wrote: post #252
shas3 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised that there is no skepticism here about the cremation numbers. 1. Crematoriums usually have enough capacity to deal with average death rates. Anything above that and it starts to look horrific. 2. What is the definition of "covid protocol" for cremation? Does it mean the patient had covid? I don't see this clearly stated any where. 3. There might be a delay between the two numbers with crematorium numbe…

Well, science is all about observations, the idea of people being forced into adhoc cremations on the street is quite an observation.

Is it due to space capacity or labor capacity?

Re: India’s second wave

#258

Post by sgt101 »

zamalek wrote: post #222
Exmoor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't, but if the death rates are generally stable and predictable a huge increase during a COVID wave seems highly likely to be related. There have been plenty of analysis of various countries mortality rates compared to normal years. In general, the trend seems to be that poorer countries have probably missed a lot of COVID deaths due to lack of testing infrastructure and heavily rural populations. https://www.…

> You don't, but if the death rates are generally stable [...] For example: if a crematorium has historically dealt with 20 cremations a week and is now doing 100 a week, you can estimate that 80 people are dying from COVID per week. The estimate is likely to be pretty inaccurate, but it's the best source of information that there is.

>>The estimate is likely to be pretty inaccurate

But let's be clear, inaccurate has different meanings - in this context if the official figure is 20 and it turns out that only 40 have died then that's 100% out on the official side and 50% out on the estimated side. In this context the high figure may have far more utility as well - by producing a more appropriate response from the authorities and society.

Re: India’s second wave

#259

Post by jgeada »

CivBase wrote: post #197
supernovae wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely give money to citizens. The government is FOR and BY the citizens. If the citizens agree to shutdown, they can agree to provide a means to continue society through the shutdown. The notion that we can't do this, is the one i have problems with because its absurd.

You can do this, but it has consequences. Money is not inherently valuable. It's a medium we use to store and exchange value inherent to scarce goods and services which people demand. To be a stable representation of value, money must also be scarce. This is a fundamental concept of economy, not something decided on and enforced by government. The money a government gives to citizens must come from somewhere. They co…

Funny how none of that ever comes up when we're discussing bailing out corporations. Quantitative easing by itself was several trillions of dollars arbitrarily invented, let alone the various bank and corporate bailouts over the past decade. And don't forget that we literally allow banks and such to print money and stocks on demand (aka leverage) to allow them to make money.

In any case, value fiat money is not a product of rarity, it is a statement of the value of future tax receipts. Money encodes/is an exchange marker for work done or promises of work to be done.

Re: India’s second wave

#260

Post by systemvoltage »

nostromo wrote: post #188
supernovae wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At a certain point you run out of money. The US can print trillions of dollars in an emergency as a world reserve currency. Most countries cannot do this. The idea that India could just pay 1.4 billion people not to work for a year doesn't seem like a realistic proposal.

Every sovereign nation with resources should be able to handle emergencies. India is not a small nation without resources. At this point, it seems that people are shifting blame from an ineffective government as well as people's will to cooperate on some externality such as world reserve currency.

Did people read the FT article at all?

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