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India’s second wave

ft.com

261–270 of 477 posts

Re: India’s second wave

#261
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every country has the privilege of having the world's reserve currency. Money printing never ends well for poor countries.

In a democracy, This isn't a privilege, its the will of the people. Why frame it as money printing? Does everything that can help people have to be pejorative?

I think that the OP is pointing out that some democracies are freer to act than others. The USA has absolute latitude, especially after demonstrating that countries that might threaten that latitude (ie. anyone who cut the oil off up to 10 years ago - now irrelevant) will be destroyed. India does not have all that much latitude.

Re: India’s second wave

#262

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…

When hospitals run out of oxygen you end up with ICUs full of corpses:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/world/middleeast/egypt-ho...

Seems like a rational thing to want to avoid, even if you have to screw steel mills for a little while.

Re: India’s second wave

#263
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about ? A random sample with positivity rate of 20percent would indicate one in 5 has covid. Why are you posting such conspiratorial comments with a throwaway account ?

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly and we ban such accounts. Please don't attack fellow users and please omit swipes like "What are you talking about" from your comments here. If another comment is wrong, it suffices to reply with accurate information. Actually it's much more credible that way. If you toss in gratuitous swipes, you discredit the accurate informa…

Sure. Apologies.

Re: India’s second wave

#264
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.

I'd expect in aggregate at the country level, its fairly accurate.

E.g. its unlikely deaths increased 100%+ across all of india due to existing death-causes.

Re: India’s second wave

#265

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…

Precisely. What you described is exactly what happened in China and Vietnam: one short strict lockdown while taking care of people's material necessities. Unsurprisingly, both countries have eliminated community transmission.

This is a naive reading of what has happened.

There may well be some cross immunity in some communities due to previous coronavirus circulations. And the numbers in China are not all that credible - one guy at my work had three of four grandparents die of "some winter cold" in March last year. It will be quite some time before the numbers in China become clear I think.

Re: India’s second wave

#267
post #257
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That is an really interesting question - if it's labour capacity then maybe there's a conflation due to cross infection.

Re: India’s second wave

#268

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.

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?

Shutting down an economy is well past any fathomable emergency.

Re: India’s second wave

#269

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.

They did stick to the 30 max attendees rules

Re: India’s second wave

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the UK it was the funeral of a single dead rich guy and a singular instance. OP just said that weddings are the basis for societal wealth. Without an alternative in an already poor nation, how do you expect them just to change, shrug their shoulders and say oh well, guess we are poor forever now.

Or stop treating women as cash cows maybe
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