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India’s second wave

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Re: India’s second wave

#361

Post by flukus »

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.

I don't believe the CCPs exact figures, but they locked down hard and fast to eliminate the virus and had very extreme contact tracing and wore masks. The results are in line with liberal democracies have achieved with the same mitigations.

Re: India’s second wave

#362

Post by esperent »

tim333 wrote: post #189
esperent wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a less developed part of the world - Vietnam - and the government and people have been incredibly successful in controlling the virus here. Aside from two short lockdowns of a couple of weeks, my life has barely been affected (except for the lack of tourists and the fact I can't travel outside the country). Local tourism and business seems to be booming. Meanwhile I hear all the stories from back home in Eu…

>we'll only get them here once everyone in the west has been vaccinated three times over. Shipment of AstraZenca to Vietnam has started already. Wikipedia says 60m doses ordered "Including 30 million donated by COVAX Facility. Produced by SK Bioscience (South Korea)"

Ordered and promised is not the same as delivered. So far I think it's about 800k doses delivered - enough for 0.5% of the population - and the EU has announced they are halting Covax for now.

Re: India’s second wave

#363

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

Exactly it an order of magnitude number that helps you assess the official numbers.

Re: India’s second wave

#364

Post by esperent »

dredmorbius wrote: post #171
petre wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, mostly islands or places with low population density. The outlier is Vietnam.

Mainland countries of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand (though that's now changing). Much of Africa, nominally, though I suspect that's seriously underreported. Sevaral of these are densely populated. Island territories are clearly easier to control movement to and from, but that is not the ony factor. And, of course, China. Again, if reports are to be believed.

I think you should (mostly} believe reports from China - their lockdowns were unbelievably strict, much more even than here in Vietnam.

As for Africa, yeah, there's probably major undereporting.

Re: India’s second wave

#365

Post by spdionis »

sombremesa wrote: post #292
KorematsuFred wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born poor. One american idea that does resonate with me after coming to USA is that a lot of poor people do not see themselves as poor. While their struggles are real they do not see themselves as losers but rather see themselves as strugglers who will eventually make it some day. They make life better for themselves and others. That was the case with my family. We lived in a house whose floor was basically pai…

> I was born poor. You can get out of being poor. You cannot get out of being dalit[0]. > While their struggles are real they do not see themselves as losers but rather see themselves as strugglers who will eventually make it some day. Only about 20% of Indians can afford to have even aspirations. About 66% cannot. 18% struggle to even survive. Newspaper? They would eat it. [1] (data from 2016) > They then propose th…

Now consider what you and the sibling comment say in the context of a representative democracy.

How many of the people that truly have no food to eat will go to vote?

Or, how easy are they to corrupt?

Re: India’s second wave

#366

Post by johnohara »

Spooky23 wrote: post #350
ummonk wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population pyramid there skews heavily young, so it won’t take nearly as many vaccines to protect the most vulnerable.

You’re missing the issue. Once hospital access is unavailable, the death rate spikes. Young people are absolutely at risk. I can probably name a dozen <45 who required hospitalization, most briefly. Most of those folks had some impact for weeks or months.

The India variant, B.1.617, is a double mutation that seems to effect younger populations. The new explosion in cases is purported to be related to this variant and is said to be more transmissible than the South African variant.

Re: India’s second wave

#367

Post by baybal2 »

bamboozled wrote: post #354
bongoman37 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A colleague at my work from Hyderabad's cousin has it, I don't know how wealthy he is, but he got a bed yesterday in a "good" hospital, I guess there are some areas which are way more affected then others?

A potential future head of our satellite office in Hyderabad has just lost his father. Just 57

Re: India’s second wave

#368

Post by Marsymars »

loonster wrote: post #204
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.

People don't understand that the area under the curve will remain the same. Mask or no mask, the same percentage of people will be needed to reach herd immunity. The only exception to this is vaccinations. They may give you immunity without being infected. (They are not without risk though.)

Not quite - the faster the rise in cases is, the more you overshoot the herd immunity threshold by.

Re: India’s second wave

#369

Post by more_corn »

supernovae wrote: post #241
KorematsuFred wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born poor. One american idea that does resonate with me after coming to USA is that a lot of poor people do not see themselves as poor. While their struggles are real they do not see themselves as losers but rather see themselves as strugglers who will eventually make it some day. They make life better for themselves and others. That was the case with my family. We lived in a house whose floor was basically pai…

There is a HUGE difference in accepting a dole because you're shut down for the survival of your species and can't work vs how you see yourself functioning in a society where you can work.

"Survival of our species" is a bit extreme. Not to diminish the severity of our pandemic but it kills 1%. If we did nothing and just let everyone get it, 1% of us would die (not in any way advocating for that) our species would survive just fine. Perhaps you could just say "responding to a public health emergency"

Re: India’s second wave

#370

Post by dredmorbius »

esperent wrote: post #364
dredmorbius wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainland countries of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand (though that's now changing). Much of Africa, nominally, though I suspect that's seriously underreported. Sevaral of these are densely populated. Island territories are clearly easier to control movement to and from, but that is not the ony factor. And, of course, China. Again, if reports are to be believed.

I think you should (mostly} believe reports from China - their lockdowns were unbelievably strict, much more even than here in Vietnam. As for Africa, yeah, there's probably major undereporting.

The China numbers seem ... mostly consistent. There doesn't seem to be unexplained excess mortality, after the initial Wuhan lockdown, there are few reports of additional restrictions on mobility (outside the separate set of issues in Xinjiang associated with the Uyghur genocide). The case numbers remain remarkably low, given global experience and as the origin point of the pandemic. I'm keeping an open mind to the prospect that a more severe story may still emerge, though as of yet, that's not something I can point to specific evidence of.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a several-multiples underreporting, largely based on limitations of available diagnostic testing as of a year ago, but I'd doubt it's the 10x -- 20x (or far worse) underreporting seen elsewhere.

East and Southeast Asia generally (you report in another comment you're in Vietnam), along with Australia/New Zealand, have been the standout success stories in the Covid story so far. This runs strongly against early expectations and narratives, and has been pretty fascinating to watch.

I've seen and called out underreporting in Iran (last March--April) and Turkey (last October--November), previously, each of which saw case counts revised sharply upwards within days or weeks. In both cases based on deaths vs. cases, which is one of the more reliable indications of underreporting. I've also noted Sweden's very long lags (up to 2--3 weeks) in simply compiling case and deaths data, which tended to understate the severity of the runaway growth in the October--November period last year.

(Discussions of all of this in my Joindiaspora posts, these are hard to search.)

Deaths lagging cases by 14--21 days means that strong demonstration of underreporting via deaths data often only comes after the situation's gotten sharply out of hand. We're seeing cases of thirtyfold growth of cases in Thailand (over the course of three weeks) and India (since mid-Feburary). The problem with pandemics is that given increased transmission rates, cases can take off tremendously in a very short time period, something various denialists and critics seem to pointedly fail to grasp. (No, I'm not accusing you of that here, though there are clearly some matching that description posting in this thread.)

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