Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India’s second wave

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 477 posts

Re: India’s second wave

#301

Post by zhdc1 »

saas_sam wrote: post #275
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 remember the same exact thing being said about Wuhan. That urns were completely sold out, that the gov't was covering it up, just terrible. To date China insists less than 5,000 people died of Covid, though and all of that was conspiracy talk.

A lot of this also had to do with the Chinese going all in with their lockdown effort, which made it look like the situation was significantly worse than it actually was (it was bad, but some of the rumors going around at the time made it sound apocalyptic).

Re: India’s second wave

#302

Post by bongoman37 »

puranjay wrote: post #272
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'm in Delhi right now and its truly bad over here. My neighbor was sick and we literally couldn't find a hospital bed for him that had sufficient oxygen. The system is breaking down. This is what they originally warned us about.

I know well connected people in Delhi who are advisors to the Health ministry and they are unable to find beds for their relatives. Things are truly fucked.

Re: India’s second wave

#303

Post by mrow84 »

collyw wrote: post #95
mrow84 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's following a gompertz curve like every other country.

The progression of deaths [0] is patently nothing like a Gompertz curve. It is bounded, of course, which is probably your point, but we are currently in a growth phase that is well modelled by an exponential curve. The Gompertz adds nothing at this stage, and does not accurately represent the periods of slowing that have already been experienced, nor the subsequent accelerations.

That the population is finite is, I think we can all agree, well understood. It is, however, important to be clear about the dangers of exponential disease growth when only ~1% of a population currently has that disease and the CFR is ~1%. For any sizeable fraction of 1.3 billion that translates to a large number of people.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Re: India’s second wave

#304

Post by InvertedRhodium »

majoram wrote: post #242
ryandrake wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were some way to punish people who violate government mandated measures. Like, I don't know, maybe we could dress some people up with a uniform and badge, and give them the authority to stop violators and "fine" or "incarcerate" them. Some kind of "justice system" or something. I don't know, this is a new invention I'm coming up with on the fly. We had this problem in the USA, too. All these "mandates"…

That's a horrible idea in today's social/political climate. Just try visualizing a police officer trying to arrest a black person for not wearing a mask. Or police being sent to gatherings in black neighborhoods. Sorry but I'd rather have more covid deaths than more riots and possibly a race war in my country.

Why would the color of their skin have anything to do with it?

Re: India’s second wave

#305

Post by johnohara »

Based on over a year's worth of global data, it is reasonable to highly correlate confirmed positive infections with death counts, with only the degree varying from 2% to 6%.

Using "official" numbers alone, and the exponential growth they have exhibited in the past week, it is impossible to deny that an unmitigated disaster is unfolding before our eyes in India.

Speculate and blame all you want, the situation is deadlier and more real than we have seen globally thus far.

It seems to me the most appropriate reaction is to be aghast, and ask "How can I help?"

Re: India’s second wave

#306

Post by Tepix »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #31
kjakm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly under control in the west yet either. Mainland Europe seems to be going through a pretty serious third wave.

Third wave? The Netherlands never really left the second one.

Looking at https://coronadashboard.government.nl/landelijk/positief-get... i'd say the first wave didn't really happen in the Netherlands, there was a wave peaking on Oct 30th, next one Dec 19th and the current one is still growing after going through a low on Feb 9th 2021.

Re: India’s second wave

#307

Post by zhdc1 »

Tarsul wrote: post #286
saas_sam wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the same exact thing being said about Wuhan. That urns were completely sold out, that the gov't was covering it up, just terrible. To date China insists less than 5,000 people died of Covid, though and all of that was conspiracy talk.

If China hadn't tried to put it under the rug, Italy/Europe wouldn't have been so underprepaired (well it also would've helped if the US would have played its usual part as a world leader). But I'm digressing... all the talk about our bad past doesn't alleviate the mistakes we still do today. Those are the most shameful even, where we have so much knowledge about the virus and still take the wrong turns all the time.

Also keep in mind that most East/South East Asian countries had been preparing for a COVID-like event since SARS in 2003.

Sixteen years of preparation, and everything that goes into it, paid off.

Re: India’s second wave

#308

Post by zo1 »

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.

If the any of the "independent media" does this, they get censored for spreading "false covid information". It's painted as a conspiracy theory almost immediately.

Re: India’s second wave

#309

Post by makomk »

dragontamer wrote: post #167
qndreoi wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IIRC, all vaccines were 100% effective against "hospitalizations" and "death" (severe)." Very close to 100%, but not quite. In US state of Ohio, 2.8 million vaccinated, 14 hospitalizations from breakthrough cases, all folks with multiple co-morbidities that would have killed them. So, 14/2.8 million = about 99.9995 % over about two months.

The 100% figure was specific to the "in the Phase 3 trials" tidbit I left in my post. Apologies if that was unclear. With only 30,000 people or 40,000 people in the phase 3 trial, its impossible to differentiate between 99.99% and 100%. We can only see how far above 99.99% we've gotten by deploying to the public.

Pretty sure it's worse than that. The number that dictates how accurate the "100% effective against hospitalizations and death" stat from the trials can be isn't the total number of people in the trial, it's the much smaller number of people in it who were hospitalized and died. In reality, I don't think that's enough to differentiate between 90% and 100%, and honestly it'd probably be pretty hard to rule out 80% either.

Re: India’s second wave

#310

Post by bongoman37 »

puranjay wrote: post #273
FlyingSnake wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The doctors in my family all openly say that the real numbers are at least bigger by a factor of 10.

This is varying a lot by state according to doctors I am connected to. UP and Gujarat are definitely fudging deaths by 5-10x, Karnataka seems to be more or less in line with reported deaths.
Post reply on HN