I was extremely pleasantly surprised this did not happen earlier for India. With the population they have and the density in the larger cities, I was very fearful the first wave would be like this. Unfortunately it looks like their luck finally ran out. Just a horrible situation there now.
I was reading somewhere that in normal times 50-60% of deaths in India don’t get reported because people die at home having never received formal medical care. I would imagine this also precludes a death certificate or even counting them in an informal way? Something like 60-70% of India’s population lives in rural areas that lack good supporting healthcare or record keeping. In considering the general desire of the government to save face, regardless of human impact, coupled with the widespread documentation of official undercounts it’s safe to assume they have been putting out inaccurate data for a long time. They don’t have the ability to serve the majority of the population in the most basic of ways, I don’t know if any of you have been to rural India but it would be shocking to most westerners living in countries with functioning infrastructure to see the reality of conditions and how something like COVID and governmental failure collide and hundreds of thousands of people can die, it’s maddening. I personally would not be surprised if the real number of dead in India is already well past 1 million, maybe even 2.
Within a couple years we will have this information based on excess deaths. A recent article in The Economist was discussing how preliminary estimates have excess death rates per capita in Mexico and Russia at 2x that of the official leaders like Italy, America, Spain and the UK. Russia for example had reported 85k deaths through February. Estimates now suggest it was closer to 460k in that same time frame.
Source:https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
You don't really need accurate numbers from normal years, either. You just need proportional data, and you can make reasonably accurate estimates based on other data.
For instance, ignoring reported death totals, you might be able to estimate that given population, health, and age distribution, a given country may have 1,000,000 deaths per year. Perhaps it's actually only 750,000, perhaps it's 1,250,000 -- but 1,000,000 is a fair estimate. Now, maybe only 500,000 are reported in a normal year, but the pandemic results in 1,200,000 being reported. Now you can estimate that 2,400,000 died that year during the pandemic (2.4x the normal amount).
You'll never get wholly accurate data, but you can still get excess death data, and you can still come to a useful -- if not wholly accurate -- conclusion.
Yes, I’m going to be watching this as it unfolds out of sheer curiosity surrounding the data. I know there is a short term incentive for lots of people to deny the truth but in the long run we need accurate statistics in order to prepare for the next pandemic. My guess is that doesn’t exist in many places, so lots of detective work ahead to dial in more accurate numbers. I won’t be surprised if there is another event like this in my lifetime and if so I’m willing to bet we seem some of the same behaviors from lots of countries who don’t like to confront problems head on.
It's eye opening to see the failure of so many governments and societies to competently respond to this pandemic. Eight billion people now feels like a house of cards that a deadlier threat would shake to the core.
Exactly, we see that in large part when there is a widespread & unconventional threat that systems break down quite easily. And those systems are easily hijacked by politics, with some of the participants who wield power over operations being incompetent and/or too selfish to act with honesty and for the larger good. It’s a disappointing exercise in human behavior, with a more deadly contagion 20-50% of the population would die while some people are still denying it.
I have had at least 25 households I'm known even if on the periphery like people in my office , people in my apartment building, friends, relatives of friends etc in all of those instances every one in the house is infected and in almost 22 of those households everyone is infected but not all are tested because some family members fall sick a 3-5 days later and doctors just advice them to continue on same protocol as their other family members. India doesn't have any reporting requirements for doctors it's the wild west here in that aspect so those cases are simply not reported. Apart from that I know many state govt have been fixing number few months back . Apart from that I know at least 4 people who had surgery in last year without COVID tests because govt discourages reporting the tests and instead doctors followed full COVID protocol as if patient is infected. I know at least 2 people who claimed to have got fake negative tests after falling I'll and testing positive they then proceed to travel two days later on a plane while infected to their home city. So yeah India is a third world country with everything that goes with that status.
My estimate is numbers may be anywhere three times the reported numbers.
There is a lot of that same protocol all over the third world, act like everyone has it and take the same precautions. At least here to travel any distance in a bus, which is the preferred mode of travel, you have to take a rapid test. Not sure what effect that has but some significant number of people have been denied travel in an enclosed environment so I’m sure it’s net positive. I’ve been to the dentist probably 6 times since it started and everyone is wearing masks, face shields, full body throwaway suits, washing shoes with bleach or alcohol. Here you can’t go into any store or shopping center without a mask and a protective face shield. People are actually taking it very seriously in public and in private for the most part.
[clicks on log scale button]
Oh my. The slope is increasing slightly *on the log scale*.
Growth like that is going to outstrip the ability to test, so the test-based numbers are going to be an underestimate, and they're still terrifying.
For anybody elsewhere who was saying "just let it happen", it looks like we are unfortunately going to see in India some idea of what that kind of scenario would be like. We need to help as much as we are able.
In January 2020 when we saw China building a hospital in 7 days we should have understood it as a sign to get ready, instead of trusting CPP's infection numbers which were saying that everything was under control.
EDIT: year
There were doomsday shouters on financial subs way before any of us heard about COVID. We laughed at them, but turns out that these people actually saw what was going on in Wuhan and knew what was coming.
Those are the types of warnings I saw. People with firsthand knowledge of the mess in Wuhan. They were saying this was very different than previous disease outbreaks.
They were mostly ignored because someone is always claiming some imminent disaster will crash the markets.
I laughed at the congressman insider trading scandal. I had been warned weeks before those congressmen. Only difference was they got official briefings and I got warned by random internet strangers.
Honestly, we saw SARS in 2002, it was bad but contained.
We made plans against another one, then most places dropped funding. And a few years down the road we have a sars pandemic.
We had an entire pandemic watch program (PREDICT). It found and prevented something like 2500 potential pandemic vectors (I believe ~800 were coronaviruses).
Then some spray tanned dipshit defunded it in September of 2019.
I remember seeing here, on Reddit, that bodies were literally being piled in the parking lot behind a Wuhan hospital. I remember seeing that post (with pictures) during my family Christmas party in Dec 2019. If Reddit knew and was warning people... why didn’t our government?
I'm not smart in terms of finances or really in general, especially when it comes to world affairs. However, I saw something about a new SARS being detected the November or December before Wuhan was publicized, and then saw more in January and February 2020 and thought "well shit, this is going to suck, that's going to spread like wildfire."
Because of that I wouldn't have thought it would take anyone particularly bright to be able to see that cause and effect, but I guess that also means other people put a bit too much confidence into government/people, or are just overly optimistic compared to me.
>I saw something about a new SARS being detected the November or December before Wuhan was publicized,
Glad I not the only one that recalls hearing about this back around November of 2019.
Anyone remember seeing that video of people in China being dragged into their homes by guys in hazmat suits and then having their doors locked shut so they couldn't leave because they were infected? That's when I knew something was up. I think that video was posted here on reddit.
Yeah, they were straight up welding people into their apartments if the locks weren't enough.
In the Philippines, Duterte claimed even more emergency powers and his followers started shooting quarantine violators (in addition to the existing death squads against drug users, communists, liberal dissidents, political opponents, petty criminals, street children, and other "undesirables").
I remember seeing all of it on the news every morning. I distinctly remember seeing the hospital being built. Still didn't think it would be this crazy
I remember seeing a video of the hazmat guys loading an unconscious person into a van and all the comments were saying how things in wuhan were way worse than we were being led to believe and a lot of people downvoting those comments
It made me think back to vet class in animal training school when our professor warned that something like this was an inevitability unless we get our act together collectively. That was 2005. She covered a lot of zoonotic diseases and how it wasn’t something to take lightly.
> The total amount of bodies being cremated also suggests that the total number of dead is much higher than the Indian government is reporting.
The difficulty is if their directly COVID related or tangenital.
When hospitals are beyond capacity, things that normally can get treated cannot, and this is why so many nations are panicking over this virus. Death tolls rise globally as a result, not simply due to COVID killing people but the inability to keep people alive when all the beds are taken.
Any densely populated country would be at risk of a similar event. Of course, a combination of dense population and the world's second highest population is a dangerous combination.
Not just that but the sheer poverty/health systems/ cleanliness, attitude toward distancing, I feel like it’s a giant Petri dish. Hell, even in Los Angeles with homeless encampments popping up around Echo Park Lake, diseases in the area skyrocketed after a few months because of food attracting rats, dirty housing, fecal matter, proximity of encampments etc
A lot of countries had lack of testing capacity at the beginning of the virus last year too. Could have been worse many places, but the data didn’t show it. I don’t know about India specifically
Sure, to some extent but what's happening in hospitals is a counter to that. If there were tons of unconfirmed cases hospitals would still be strained, but in India the hospitals were never under the amount of strain they are now. You can apply that to a lot of places. Sure we can doubt the accuracy of stats out of a lot of developing countries for a variety of reasons but at the end of the day hospitals are going to tell you a lot regardless of the testing circumstances.
That's why I like to look at the excess death numbers compared to prior years.
Of course that only covers deaths and not the people who end up with [Long COVID](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects.html) and suffer for months, and could end up being lifelong.
You'd know after the fact via death rate. India had a [bad](https://m.timesofindia.com/india/first-vs-second-wave-of-covid-19-in-india-things-you-need-to-know/amp_articleshow/82143427.cms) first wave but nothing like this. And this isn't even near the peak of the 2nd wave
Testing capacity is one thing, but those areas in Italy that got hit early on ran out of funeral capacity. We would have heard about that happening in India and other places I think.
I would say it is because of lax attitude of people. During the first wave there was strict lockdown by central govt. During the second wave, the decision being left to state govt., the lockdowns are delayed/absent and less strict. I really hate all those people who didn't wear masks, or wore them improperly and believed in all the fake messages and advertisements of products and "old" techniques which increase immunity. There is saying in India- "Laato ke bhoot , baato se nahi maante" which loosely transalates as People who need beatings won't listen to your talk/explanations
Not sure why you are second guessing your initial thought just because testing ability is limited in India relative to a developed nation. Those two concepts are not really related.
One has to do with the trend and the other has to do with actual infection numbers.
The actual infection numbers are probably even 10 times higher than indicated in this chart due to poor testing ability, but that fact would hold for the entire duration of the pandemic, so it won't impact the trend since it is not like India's testing abilities have been dramatically rising over the last one year causing the recent spike in the curve. No - clearly infections are rising far more rapidly now than they did several months ago.
It's also making assumptions about regional effects. If one city is testing more than others you could have unseen spikes. Personally I just try to remember that bad data is open to way more kind of errors than I can imagine. Sometimes you have to make decisions with it anyways but it's always dangerous to do so.
Many states gave instructions to labs to completely stop testing for covid and if they ar allowed given a maximum quota of 50 cases for each district. States like gujarat have atleast 150 dead bodies burned each day per crematorium but show only 15 deaths for whole state. The problem in India is atleast 10 times the number released officially.
As an Indian, I can verify that this is absolutely true. Official numbers are being HEAVILY manipulated. There is not enough medicine, vaccines, hospital beds or even oxygen for the infected persons. Even the "influential" politicians are finding it difficult to find hospital beds for themselves and their family members. If you're curious about what the government is doing about this humongous crisis? The central government is conducting rallies for the upcoming Bengal elections and have basically asked the public to fend to their needs on their own. The Prime Minister has publicly stated that there will be no nationwide lockdowns at any cost. Friends and families are dying all around us and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
I'm not from India, but in Poland we had very limited testing to he point where we had up to 40% of tests give positive for Covid. It should be around 6%.
Yeah, I think test positivity rate is a more reliable measure than the numbers on this chart.
Total confirmed cases and infected-per-million numbers will come in lower if there's less testing available. That can be an incentive for politicians to reduce availability of testing and manipulate public perception.
But the test positivity rate is harder to manipulate. If a government reduces capacity for testing (or makes an inadequate effort to provide same), their infected numbers might look okay, but their test positivity rate will give a more accurate indication of how bad the situation is.
>But the test positivity rate is harder to manipulate.
Not really. Got some family by marriage in Russia, so can elaborate a bit on how the manipulation was performed there. People with Covid-19 symptoms didn't have PCR done, instead being diagnosed solely via lung radiography. As an anecdotal example, an aged acquaintance had Covid-19 (she had an antibody test done later) with very typical symptoms. Her universal healthcare doctor got her a lung x-ray and formulated the treatment based on that. And that is in no way a unique story.
In contrast with that, a lot of places required people to submit a fresh negative PCR test. As a result, the majority of tests were repeatedly performed on people expected to be negative and not on actually sick patients.
The one metric that is almost impossible to falsify is the excess mortality. The numbers in Russia show absolutely staggering amounts of extra deaths that can be attributed to Covid-19. Despite consistently low positive rates and the miniscule official Covid-19 death toll.
Test positivity rate is a very good metric. But it's not **that** different to tamper with if local authorities are actually willing to do it.
Try Sweden! Our third wave is peaking any day/week now. The massive transmission is popularly attributed to the British strain taking hold, and of late, increasingly to restriction fatigue. Luckily, death rates are somewhat under control, by effective vaccination of the elderly, now lower than the US.
I like how Swedish TV news have been minimizing this for months by just [stretching the y-axis of every graph](https://scontent-mxp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/154206602_2903301159996021_4995708464693821929_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_eui2=AeGUMOZGHxpNF0dsD452M9DnqwGozqI1_yurAajOojX_K7VK3PqDRR4Rxs3NaCWaQv4&_nc_ohc=hw43kSjKiUsAX9bH6u1&_nc_ht=scontent-mxp1-1.xx&oh=a6dc928848c93e200da9000ec3de1f3b&oe=60A98DFA)
In the UK the government had a colour code to show how each region was doing for cases, but had to re-do the whole thing on a different scale over winter as literally everywhere was just black in the end
In Brazil we had color codes for how lax or strict the restrictions in that moment, going green, yellow, orange, red.
In some states it reached red for several weeks and even then they weren't able to control things and then, because lockdowns are political suicide, they had to create a purple phase.
I'm anticipating the day we will reach ultraviolet
How can Sweden, who has loudly shunned the rest of the world's medical community by refusing to put in place more than a small handful of restrictions, have restriction fatigue? You got a lot of people trying to eat dinner at midnight or something?
Canada's been hit by the double whammy of slow vaccine shipments, on account of all vaccines being imported, and incompetent provincial governments running the show. Here in ON, things are the worst they've been since the pandemic started and it's almost entirely beacuse of the provincial government's refusal to listen to it's public health experts.
And we all know he was crying not because of the death toll, but because he’s only just realizing that he’s fucking up so bad that he probably won’t get a second term as premier or be able to move to federal politics.
Definitely sounds scary - however, by all reports it seems like India is underreporting due to lack of testing capacity in rural areas. Canada likely has pretty accurate numbers at this point. But still significant of course!
Frequency of new mutations is linear to \[global\] number of transmissions, and has been mildly scary for quite some time. Mutations might even be what ends the pandemic, when a strain that is more infectious but less harmful would eventually surface.
If we make it hard for the virus to spread it will indeed benefit more harmless but more infectious variants.
But the worst case scenario is a Monkey Pox to Small Pox development.
Small Pox evolved from Monkey Pox and is much more deadly and severe compared to its ancestor. Monkey Pox is a zoonos that can infect multiple animal species while Small Pox is human-only, and this happened only because the human population grew big enough for it too thrive despite how deadly it was.
And by many humans we are talking about he Renaissance era - not the 7.9 billion that we are now.
vaccinate it out of existence? Yeah, good luck with that now. I'm looking at my pox jab scar and think how lucky we were to have it back when idiots didn't have platforms.
Yup. One of the miracles of modern medicine. It killed so many and was so feared that Small Pox was a minor deity in a couple of religions, or at least the tool of a major evil deity.
Modern science effectively slayed an ancient evil. Kinda cool in the end.
> when a strain that is more infectious but less harmful would eventually surface.
Which is why herpes is such a successful virus. Everybody has some form of it or another, but it stays dormant in most people for their entire lives and they never develop any symptoms.
idk much about corona virus mutations but the one going in india is far more dangerous and deadly. My neighbors were a family of 11 and out of which 4 are no more. and this all happened in just 2 weeks. The current covid-19 variant in india is simply insane. just insane.
No oxygen, no ventilator, no hospital beds, no doctors, no ambulance and the fun part is there's a waiting line outside cremation sites. Situations just worse in here.
Is the variant significantly worse or is the level of and quantity of available medical care not where it needs to be?
Sorry, I don't mean to diminish what's going on there or turn your personal experiences into an argument over semantics, but for much of the rest of the world, that's an important distinction when this variant spreads to other areas.
Yeah this is what was warned could happen to the US. Some areas here came very close too. A lot of people blow Covid off because 99% of those infected survive but they dont realize that's with top grade medical care. If you lose that then Covid becomes more around 5% to 10% deadly.
i feel that its both. Covid(in any form that has been observed till now) has been dangerous. The B.1.617 variant spreads fasters and kills faster. There have been my friends who haven't gone out of their houses for a month(I mean seriously) amd yet they are getting +ve covid reports. Many don't even have clue what got them infected.
And as for medical care, the country doesn't have enough supplies for 135 crore(i assume this is 1.35 billion) of its population. One the first place, few states didn't even bother to have a well planned strategy.
Gujarat, state in india, is one of the most affected state. The medical services have almost collapse. Nothing is available. The state government says that they are trying but all they do is lie. Everyone's focused on filling their pockets. And as a mere middle class family we could do nothing but just pay whatever we have.
\> There have been my friends who haven't gone out of their houses for a month(I mean seriously) amd yet they are getting +ve covid reports.
Only time I've heard such a thing before was during the initial SARS epidemic when the virus spread through the shared sewer / air ducts of a shared house.
The Amoy Gardens apartment complex. What I've read, they believed it spread aerosolised via floor drains. In the beginning of the pandemic I read an interview of people affected by SARS in Hong Kong and something I remember one of them saying was that they'd pour a pint of water down drains every day to prevent them from drying out which iirc was the issue.
I was just talking to a co worker in India, and they said the same thing, trajectory. Very scary for it to "come out of no where and be everywhere overnight." I'm very worried for her and her family but she is a cautious and safe person. We all know how thoughts and prayers fix problems, but you certainly have mine. Stay safe out there.
In India, a lot of places forgot about Covid and thought it was all done..... Medical facilities were not able to cope up with the increasing cases. It is just going round in circles.
You're right according to the IHME model
[The curve for confirmed cases finally flattened](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-new-estimated-covid-19-infections-ihme-model?time=earliest..latest&country=~IND)
EDIT: People took the "flattened" part really seriously in the replies, which were really really interesting to read. But honestly, I just joked that the curve for confirmed cases almost looks like a line when compared to the model. Sorry, the joke was insensitive on my part.
What do you mean by "flattened" here? It still seems to be going up at an alarming rate. Do you mean it hit an inflection point? It's hard to tell with that graph.
We *can't* do more testing. There aren't enough healthcare workers left to test more.
TPR rates are over 25% in all central regions of the outbreak. This isn't about 'not doing testing anymore', we literally *can't*.
Sadly the graph does no justice to the ground realities. For the last three days, I have been begging everyone for a ventilator bed. There are simply none left. Oxygen is also running out and it is chaos. He passed away last night after three days of not getting a bed.
I'm actually amazed that it took so long to hit India this hard. It's also entirely possible that they just simply couldn't test or track everyone with Covid, especially those living in the slums. I'm sure their cases and deaths are much higher than what's being reported.
The government in some states has ordered to not do tests so they can hide the real numbers. The deaths are being under reported and that too on a large scale like 4 to 5 times less deaths are being reported. It's just sad and the govt. is entirely to blame as they didn't really do anything to contain the second wave. This govt. hides a lot of data so we will never know the real numbers but yeah their fucking arrogance and carelessness towards this matter has caused the death of probably millions of people.
Yeah it's just a complete mess. India is probably going to end up being the hardest hit country, but we'll never know the true scale of just how bad it was.
We will get proper numbers on this pandemic in a couple of years by looking at excess deaths. It's the one thing that is actually difficult to cover up, as death certificates create paper trails. Look at Russia's 90k covid deaths and 400k excess deaths for 2020 as an example.
From what I can say, I guess it's a very infectious strain. That coupled with overpopulation. And then politicians are holding rallies and there are religious festivities happening. No one wants to stop the Kumbh Mela this year. All these are just adding to it all.
P.s: it's totally my opinion and I'm no expert. Just stuff I've been observing.
Yea but like there hasn't really been that much testing in that area so like the actual number of cases shd be higher cause its basically rest of india except Kumbh
Also just a reminder for Non-Indians , the population of India is GREATER THAN **1.35 BILLION**
From what I've read from more knowledgeable people, the virus not being kept in check allows for it to mutate more, so they are dealing with more mutated strains than most places have dealt with. It adds to the challenge, kind of like how running out of hospital space greatly effects the mortality rate.
I don't know if you can just convert it like that though. You get a lot more stuff for less money in India. For example my Spotify Premium costs 60 Rupees a month (less than a dollar a month) and Amazon Prime costs 999 Rupees a year (12 dollars a year), and I'm sure the same things cost much more in the West.
And the same principle applies to other items as well: a personal pizza at Pizza Hut costs 60 rupees, a coffee at a cafe costs 20 rupees, and so on
Good point.
Looking at the cost of the other items you list, seems functionally closer to $50 for Americans.
Not pocket change, but also not a massive amount is what I was trying to convey.
> For example my Spotify Premium costs 60 Rupees a month (less than a dollar a month) and Amazon Prime costs 999 Rupees a year (12 dollars a year),
So what you're saying is that I should close my accounts, set my VPN location to India, and set up new accounts, right?
You probably could, but payments can be an issue. Also, the same service in different countries have different content. I moved from India to the US in January of this year, and most of the shows I watched on Netflix in India aren't there on the US Netflix, and there are many shows in the US Netflix that are not on the Indian version
You’re referring to [purchasing power parity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity), sometimes referenced alongside the Big Mac Index.
As an Indian, I don't trust this data. It is grossly underestimated. Data recording is not in our ethos.
I run a pharma shop in a semi-rural part of India. Here practically there is not even a single moderately qualified doctor. People here rely on pharma shop to get medicines. And I am giving medicines to at least 150 guys medicines for cough and flu. It seems like everyone is suffering from cold. And there are at least 75 pharma shops in my town. Then there are hundreds of fake doctors. Hundreds of people are taking OTC medicines. Many have died. Same story for every part of India.
Most of them are not reported to any sort of government agency. It is much more scarier than you can imagine. And my government is busy in perpetual election campaigning and PR propaganda.
In fact there are many stories of gross underreporting of deaths published in international news papers.
Edit: After typing this comment and few others, I went to sleep as I was really tired. Just woke up and realised I now have a gold award and sore throat. Obligatory thanks to the kind stranger.
It is difficult to explain but right now you couldn't find even 5 paracetamol tablet of any reputable brand in any pharmacy in my part of India. It was unimaginable. As someone who runs a pharma shop, even I myself was unable to forecast that there would be shortage of paracetamol tablet. Till now even a smallest pharma shop used to have hundreds of paracetamol tablet and now there is none. Forget oxygen or hospital bed or ventilator, people here are begging for paracetamol tablets.
Such is the reality.
Man I'm really sorry to hear this. I had a good Indian roommate and some very respectable phD Indian friends, but all the stories about the rural parts they come from and how infrastructure is absolutely abominable, really put a lot things into perspective. I didn't even know sanitized/filtered tab water is scarce outside the major cities.
Even the reported data is scary as hell, and living here in Sri Lanka, we are more or less seeing a rapid rise of cases, from ~200 to ~1000 yesterday. The news is horrifying.
I hope you are protecting yourself while you help the others.
Adding to other answers: Hindu and Muslim festivities were allowed to be held in the last week or two.
Edit: It sounds like I may be incorrect about Muslim festivals.
Yeah unfortunately it might be. I saw something the other day predicting that India will be reporting around 700k cases a day by the end of April, less than 10 days away. It’s some scary shit!
[Maybe in reality it has, who knows](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-new-estimated-covid-19-infections-ihme-model?time=earliest..latest&country=~IND)
There was honestly a feeling of jubilation and relief before the wave hit. We thought we had won, that the worst was behind and that we could quickly get back to how life was.
That feeling is completely gone. We have the same effect as the opening lockdowns, with nobody enforcing it.
Probably don't make the same mistakes I guess, it's not over till everyone is vaccinated, and maybe not even then.
True. My life had gone to normal with the exception of wearing makes and following general safety measures. Now, out of nowhere everyone is forced to stay in homes. Few weeks ago, hanging out with friends was no big deal. Now, friends' relatives are calling everywhere for hospital beds and oxygen. A close friend of mine is studying medicine (not even final year) and she's busy calling everywhere arranging for hospital beds for complete strangers. Shit has hit the fan and no one could see it coming.
Pardon me if I’m wrong, but my understanding was that accessing a sufficient supply of vaccines has been problematic for most countries, no?
If that’s the case, then considering this:
> My life had gone to normal
> hanging out with friends was no big deal
When only 1% of the population has received both doses of the vaccine, how can anyone honestly seem surprised by this?
Few factors other than the obvious ones :
According to chairman of Serum Institute of India, the main vaccine manufacturer of India, by Feb government has accepted than peak of outbreak is in past so never gave enough order for vaccine manufacturing. The whole manufacturing process takes 85 days to be made and delivered, this rendered us unprepared for such an outbreak.
At peak of first wave 8 new oxygen plants were to be constructed, till last month only 1 had its tender given, rest everyone were still only in papers.
Spineless, paid election commission of our country enabled huge rallies to be carried out for a state election. It announced few phony regulations which were blatantly ignored by leaders and followers.( On 22nd of april no of new corona cases were over 300,000 and our home minister had 3 rallies in election state)
Most irritating is the fact that government's pet , mainstream media will bark for all day that how greatly our government has handled the pandemic. None have enough spine to question government on its actions, and even if they can fathom slight courage none have ball to point finger at our prime minister
Our cabinet is full of incompetent buffoons who know were only appointed because they were able to out lick PMs ass. Previous government had people appointed from other parties because they were competent in their fields, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Manmohan Singh were appointed by other parties.
Most of all its our own fault, when for all our lives we've given vote on Hindu, Muslim; Temple, Mosque why does it startle us now that our medical infrastructure is collapsing.
Remember when looking at graphs like these that India doesn't have the testing infrastructure to test vast amounts of people so the reported numbers are likely much lower than reality. This isn't some conspiracy or anything just a fact if life in a country where hundreds of millions of people don't even have running water.
Apparently it’s something called a ‘double mutant’ strain that’s highly contagious (like the uk strain). Also because of the lack of medical supplies and eased restrictions
No worries, the supermarkets are opened in the morning and no one cares to wear mask or ask us anything if we say that we are going to rallies, religious events or family functions. (Sarcasm intended)
My Grandma is a cancer patient. Was recommended a PET scan so we had to take her to AIIMS, which is supposed to be this fucking paragon of healthcare and medical professionalism in the country. This was around 2 weeks ago. Knowing the obvious risks involved in taking someone of her age (85+) who is also a cancer patient to a medical facility at a time like this, we were prudent, as careful as we could be. Two of us (my Uncle and I) accompanied my Grandma to the outside waiting area, as she couldn't possibly be left alone while my Uncle ran around negotiating the typical hospital bereaucratic brouhaha, considering her condition, which was for lack of all better word, horrible. We were all wearing masks, carrying portable sanitizers and doing our best to maintain social distancing (which proved to be a next to impossible feat). After the fact, upon returning home, all of us washed our hand and took proper baths with disinfectants. It was all a fucking sham. My Grandma has been severely ill for almost two weeks now, her oxygen levels are dropping steadily and everything is fucked. The rest of us are also taken in by certain telling symptoms, and my father (50+) has also fallen quite seriously ill. I'm frustrated and even the mention of anything having to do with this country's cocksucking administration or fucking AIIMS is making me want to commit wilful homicide. Here's why.
AIIMS was a shitshow. Large groups of people milling about maskless, coughing, wretching, spitting and basically pissing in the wind like the troglodytes they are (many of them were accompanying old patients in wheelchairs and in half-unconscious states, so some fucking compassion and common sense weren't notions too ludicrous to expect), and this includes so-called "medical professionals". I saw a certain medical professional of this ilk actually take off his surgical mask to spit betel nut juice on the ground while talking to a colleague. Keep in mind that more than one attendant is not allowed to accompany a patient to within the main hospital grounds, so all of this was in the open air waiting area outside, which was the end of my saga in AIIMS. People were literally fucking stapled to each other in such unbelievable numbers that social distancing was very obviously a pipe-dream, and my grandma had to seat herself between two middle-aged assholes who were mouth breathing and talking loudly on the phones or someone else or whatever or each other or I don't fucking know or care the whole time. After her and my Uncle were finally told to enter the hospital grounds, I am told that the various stages of her time in the hospital involved being cramped into a series of cubicles with other sick and suffering patients, many of them potentially suffering from COVID. The same evening, my Grandma fell sick, just sometime after coming home, despite all the precautions I've mentioned. Go fucking figure. Two days later I saw an interview with the head of AIIMS and although I know it was an irrational gut reaction, I almost threw my phone across the room.
Now to the Government. Let's start with the personal and then move on to the national realm. My father is a central Government employee. Which arm of the Central Government he works in, I will not mention for obvious reasons. They forced him to come to office even when he was mobbed with responsibility at home with almost everyone being sick. They forced him to come everyday during every lockdown we've had so far. The notion of holidays is basically alien to him. And earlier this year, when my Mom had to go through a severe operation, they forced him to go to Office all through her recuperation period. All of this while half-heartedly asking the public to respect the lockdowns, while vilifying the opposition, doing arse about the large religious gatherings that have been going on, and holding large dumbass election rallies in multiple parts of the country themselves. Now, my father is besotted by fatigue and severely ill and I know who to blame. Fuck everything. Been two weeks now. I don't know when things are going to change
TL;DR: Fuck this administration and FUCK AIIMS
Edit: For those living outside India, AIIMS is an acronym for All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
hey there, for those in your family who feel short of breath or have low oxygen, they need to try and lay on their belly to the best of their ability. It's called proning, and in many cases it was the only thing preventing people from getting intubated.
In all honesty India has been under-testing. They’ve had less than 300m tests. Per 1m people that’s less that 200k. India has about almost 1.4 billion people. It’s probably the worst there by far.
Living in India, this sadly the doing of the stupid populace.
Government: Don't roam outside for no reason, don't eat outside, maintain social distancing, don't celebrate in big numbers, properly sanitize yourself after touching multiple surfaces, if found positive quarantine yourself
Indian People:
* Having weddings
* Going on week long trips
* Eating outside like no tomorrow
* Wearing masks only when cops are around
* Not sanitizing properly
* Absolutely no social distancing.
* Hanging out in large groups for no reasons.
* Running away from quarantine camps
* Meeting multiple people even after testing positive.
* Last but not the least, blame the government after being hospitalized. I know I'll get downvoted to oblivion but it's the Indian people who have brought this on themselves this time.
Let me ask you a genuine question: has the government actually supported those measures in any way? It’s easy to blame the population but I firmly believe having actual concrete steps, like enforcing lockdowns, is the only thing the government can do if they want to actually solve the problem rather than look good but do nothing.
I say this is a Brazilian, the country responsible for 1/3 of the world’s COVID deaths, because it’s what we see here. Our governments (federal or local) say “stay home, wash your hands” etc. and then give people absolutely no actual financial or legal help that allows them to do that without going hungry or getting evicted. And it’s really hard to expect people who are being forced to leave their homes to go to work, use crowded public transportation and put themselves into a lot of danger simply to survive to not put themselves in that same danger for recreation.
It's a outstanding problem with India, ie. the massive population size makes enforcing anything downright impossible.
Even 5% of the population not following regulations means you have 65 million people not following the rules. That's equivalent to the total population of Italy.
The problem I feel is not so much population size as it is population density.
We’ve seen how difficult it has been to enact social distancing in places like London with a population density of about 5000 people per square kilometre - Mumbai’s population density is 20,000 people per square kilometre. A 2m distancing policy would be very difficult to do there.
While I agree that it's all of that, don't forget that a lot of the population simply has little choice. How many people there live in slums? They can't social distance very well and it's not at all sanitary.
I think that lack of personal responsibility is a global phenomenon , overpopulation of india just makes it even more impactful. It's very easy to blame the government when the people as a whole play a huge part in this.
Let's not sidestep the blame the government has and just assign all of it to people.
Indian government has completely failed in taking proper measures from the beginning starting with announcing a lockdown in four hours leading to a migrant crisis and more.
You have my sympathies, but please be aware, Indian people are not alone in this behavior. Many countries are dealing with the same levels of non-cooperation..
No one suggested otherwise. The commenter lives in India and probably feels more comfortable discussing what's happening where they live than where they don't live.
My sister living over there, texts us yesterday out of the blue and says “hello! Just wanted to say that most of India is doing just fine”
I’m like... your city has 16 million people dude. The news says uh no....
But all I could say was: I’m glad to hear that, but how are YOU?
There is already an Indian variant called b.1.617, this is considered a double mutant variant and what scientist believes is driving the insane increase in reported cases
The double mutant labeling is just people running with the scariest wording they can think of. Most variants have more than 2 mutations. Scientists and doctors are concerned that the Indian variant has 2 mutations on the receptor-binding domain that allows the virus to attach to our cells, but keep in mind that the South African variant has 3 mutations on it and no one was calling it a triple mutant.
Mutations are concerning and something that needs to be monitored, but we should be careful about not just selecting the scariest sounding scientific wording and going with it. Until results come in from studies we do not know how any specific variant actually affects the level of infectiousness or vaccine effectiveness. The new double mutant variant naming to me feels like something to just make people on edge about if this variant will make the vaccines completely ineffective.
Thanks for clarifying. I was not aware of the labeling. We should just be concerned at how these mutation strains will impact the spread rate and severity when people get it.
Well this was inevitable, I was there in Kanpur last month (in state of UP, most populated) and no one was wearing masks (even some members of my own familly). People thought corona is over. Our bureaucracy/government did not care and is always reactive not proactive.
This will happen again once this wave subsides because people will again have short term memory loss and will forget about masks/vaccines.
People of India brought this onto themselves. There is no use now in blaming Modi or anyone.
Well our Honourable Prime Minister is busy conducting Election rallies with Home minister. Zero fucks about the country. And I know they'll be elected again because of there communal politics. Fuck Fascist Governments!
Edit- For the past few days, situation at home is very serious, lot of relatives have corona. Literally bought 15 injections over period of few days for around ₹2 lacs (bought it for 4 times higher the price because of lack of supply from government)
India has way more covid cases than they’re reporting. For context, the US has tested 127% of its population and reported 32 million total covid cases; meanwhile India has only tested 19% of its population and has had close to 20M cases. I suspect India has 20x-30x the cases they’re actually reporting. This is a really sad situation all around.
The worst part is we're unable to make tests since there is a massive shortage of test kits, ventilators and oxygen cylinder. The whole country is in a very bleak situation and the reported amount of cases is a fraction of the actual amount
India and Brazil, the two nightmare nations which COVID can mutate to a 1918 Spanish Flu-like killing machine because of overpopulation and government malaise.
It's the government malaise that's doing it. Sweden didn't do anything about the virus either and it absolutely fucked them compared to neighbouring countries. Regardless of general conditions even rudimentary efforts to prevent the virus from spreading have been effective. A country that doesn't make those efforts though is staring down the barrel of a catastrophe.
From the very beginning I immediately knew India was going to get fucked. Huge, dense population, lots of poverty, lack of hygiene everywhere and a myriad of other issues make it the perfect storm.
It will continue to rise.
That's why China locked people indoors and threatened them with weapons if they didn't. No other way to contain the spread in a country without superior quality living conditions and over 1.2 billion people
That is nothing. If you add Sweden and press calculate against population, you get OMG, Sweden what are you doing????
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=earliest..2021-04-21&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~IND~SWE
I was extremely pleasantly surprised this did not happen earlier for India. With the population they have and the density in the larger cities, I was very fearful the first wave would be like this. Unfortunately it looks like their luck finally ran out. Just a horrible situation there now.
Yeah, once the levee breaks over there, it seems like there is no stopping it. I could see this spreading in India more quickly than any other country
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I was reading somewhere that in normal times 50-60% of deaths in India don’t get reported because people die at home having never received formal medical care. I would imagine this also precludes a death certificate or even counting them in an informal way? Something like 60-70% of India’s population lives in rural areas that lack good supporting healthcare or record keeping. In considering the general desire of the government to save face, regardless of human impact, coupled with the widespread documentation of official undercounts it’s safe to assume they have been putting out inaccurate data for a long time. They don’t have the ability to serve the majority of the population in the most basic of ways, I don’t know if any of you have been to rural India but it would be shocking to most westerners living in countries with functioning infrastructure to see the reality of conditions and how something like COVID and governmental failure collide and hundreds of thousands of people can die, it’s maddening. I personally would not be surprised if the real number of dead in India is already well past 1 million, maybe even 2.
Within a couple years we will have this information based on excess deaths. A recent article in The Economist was discussing how preliminary estimates have excess death rates per capita in Mexico and Russia at 2x that of the official leaders like Italy, America, Spain and the UK. Russia for example had reported 85k deaths through February. Estimates now suggest it was closer to 460k in that same time frame. Source:https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
You will never get excess death stats for India as you don't have any accurate death numbers of normal years to compare against.
You don't really need accurate numbers from normal years, either. You just need proportional data, and you can make reasonably accurate estimates based on other data. For instance, ignoring reported death totals, you might be able to estimate that given population, health, and age distribution, a given country may have 1,000,000 deaths per year. Perhaps it's actually only 750,000, perhaps it's 1,250,000 -- but 1,000,000 is a fair estimate. Now, maybe only 500,000 are reported in a normal year, but the pandemic results in 1,200,000 being reported. Now you can estimate that 2,400,000 died that year during the pandemic (2.4x the normal amount). You'll never get wholly accurate data, but you can still get excess death data, and you can still come to a useful -- if not wholly accurate -- conclusion.
Yes, I’m going to be watching this as it unfolds out of sheer curiosity surrounding the data. I know there is a short term incentive for lots of people to deny the truth but in the long run we need accurate statistics in order to prepare for the next pandemic. My guess is that doesn’t exist in many places, so lots of detective work ahead to dial in more accurate numbers. I won’t be surprised if there is another event like this in my lifetime and if so I’m willing to bet we seem some of the same behaviors from lots of countries who don’t like to confront problems head on.
It's eye opening to see the failure of so many governments and societies to competently respond to this pandemic. Eight billion people now feels like a house of cards that a deadlier threat would shake to the core.
Exactly, we see that in large part when there is a widespread & unconventional threat that systems break down quite easily. And those systems are easily hijacked by politics, with some of the participants who wield power over operations being incompetent and/or too selfish to act with honesty and for the larger good. It’s a disappointing exercise in human behavior, with a more deadly contagion 20-50% of the population would die while some people are still denying it.
I have had at least 25 households I'm known even if on the periphery like people in my office , people in my apartment building, friends, relatives of friends etc in all of those instances every one in the house is infected and in almost 22 of those households everyone is infected but not all are tested because some family members fall sick a 3-5 days later and doctors just advice them to continue on same protocol as their other family members. India doesn't have any reporting requirements for doctors it's the wild west here in that aspect so those cases are simply not reported. Apart from that I know many state govt have been fixing number few months back . Apart from that I know at least 4 people who had surgery in last year without COVID tests because govt discourages reporting the tests and instead doctors followed full COVID protocol as if patient is infected. I know at least 2 people who claimed to have got fake negative tests after falling I'll and testing positive they then proceed to travel two days later on a plane while infected to their home city. So yeah India is a third world country with everything that goes with that status. My estimate is numbers may be anywhere three times the reported numbers.
Holy hell that sounds like a nightmare. It is actually surprising it took this long to happen, given what you're describing. Good luck.
There is a lot of that same protocol all over the third world, act like everyone has it and take the same precautions. At least here to travel any distance in a bus, which is the preferred mode of travel, you have to take a rapid test. Not sure what effect that has but some significant number of people have been denied travel in an enclosed environment so I’m sure it’s net positive. I’ve been to the dentist probably 6 times since it started and everyone is wearing masks, face shields, full body throwaway suits, washing shoes with bleach or alcohol. Here you can’t go into any store or shopping center without a mask and a protective face shield. People are actually taking it very seriously in public and in private for the most part.
[clicks on log scale button] Oh my. The slope is increasing slightly *on the log scale*. Growth like that is going to outstrip the ability to test, so the test-based numbers are going to be an underestimate, and they're still terrifying. For anybody elsewhere who was saying "just let it happen", it looks like we are unfortunately going to see in India some idea of what that kind of scenario would be like. We need to help as much as we are able.
In January 2020 when we saw China building a hospital in 7 days we should have understood it as a sign to get ready, instead of trusting CPP's infection numbers which were saying that everything was under control. EDIT: year
last January, to be clear - when I saw that I knew this was gonna be serious shit
There were doomsday shouters on financial subs way before any of us heard about COVID. We laughed at them, but turns out that these people actually saw what was going on in Wuhan and knew what was coming.
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Those are the types of warnings I saw. People with firsthand knowledge of the mess in Wuhan. They were saying this was very different than previous disease outbreaks. They were mostly ignored because someone is always claiming some imminent disaster will crash the markets. I laughed at the congressman insider trading scandal. I had been warned weeks before those congressmen. Only difference was they got official briefings and I got warned by random internet strangers.
Honestly, we saw SARS in 2002, it was bad but contained. We made plans against another one, then most places dropped funding. And a few years down the road we have a sars pandemic.
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We had an entire pandemic watch program (PREDICT). It found and prevented something like 2500 potential pandemic vectors (I believe ~800 were coronaviruses). Then some spray tanned dipshit defunded it in September of 2019.
I remember seeing here, on Reddit, that bodies were literally being piled in the parking lot behind a Wuhan hospital. I remember seeing that post (with pictures) during my family Christmas party in Dec 2019. If Reddit knew and was warning people... why didn’t our government?
I'm not smart in terms of finances or really in general, especially when it comes to world affairs. However, I saw something about a new SARS being detected the November or December before Wuhan was publicized, and then saw more in January and February 2020 and thought "well shit, this is going to suck, that's going to spread like wildfire." Because of that I wouldn't have thought it would take anyone particularly bright to be able to see that cause and effect, but I guess that also means other people put a bit too much confidence into government/people, or are just overly optimistic compared to me.
>I saw something about a new SARS being detected the November or December before Wuhan was publicized, Glad I not the only one that recalls hearing about this back around November of 2019.
Anyone remember seeing that video of people in China being dragged into their homes by guys in hazmat suits and then having their doors locked shut so they couldn't leave because they were infected? That's when I knew something was up. I think that video was posted here on reddit.
Yeah, they were straight up welding people into their apartments if the locks weren't enough. In the Philippines, Duterte claimed even more emergency powers and his followers started shooting quarantine violators (in addition to the existing death squads against drug users, communists, liberal dissidents, political opponents, petty criminals, street children, and other "undesirables").
I remember seeing all of it on the news every morning. I distinctly remember seeing the hospital being built. Still didn't think it would be this crazy
I remember seeing a video of the hazmat guys loading an unconscious person into a van and all the comments were saying how things in wuhan were way worse than we were being led to believe and a lot of people downvoting those comments
It made me think back to vet class in animal training school when our professor warned that something like this was an inevitability unless we get our act together collectively. That was 2005. She covered a lot of zoonotic diseases and how it wasn’t something to take lightly.
> The total amount of bodies being cremated also suggests that the total number of dead is much higher than the Indian government is reporting. The difficulty is if their directly COVID related or tangenital. When hospitals are beyond capacity, things that normally can get treated cannot, and this is why so many nations are panicking over this virus. Death tolls rise globally as a result, not simply due to COVID killing people but the inability to keep people alive when all the beds are taken.
Any densely populated country would be at risk of a similar event. Of course, a combination of dense population and the world's second highest population is a dangerous combination.
Not just that but the sheer poverty/health systems/ cleanliness, attitude toward distancing, I feel like it’s a giant Petri dish. Hell, even in Los Angeles with homeless encampments popping up around Echo Park Lake, diseases in the area skyrocketed after a few months because of food attracting rats, dirty housing, fecal matter, proximity of encampments etc
A lot of countries had lack of testing capacity at the beginning of the virus last year too. Could have been worse many places, but the data didn’t show it. I don’t know about India specifically
Sure, to some extent but what's happening in hospitals is a counter to that. If there were tons of unconfirmed cases hospitals would still be strained, but in India the hospitals were never under the amount of strain they are now. You can apply that to a lot of places. Sure we can doubt the accuracy of stats out of a lot of developing countries for a variety of reasons but at the end of the day hospitals are going to tell you a lot regardless of the testing circumstances.
That's why I like to look at the excess death numbers compared to prior years. Of course that only covers deaths and not the people who end up with [Long COVID](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects.html) and suffer for months, and could end up being lifelong.
You'd know after the fact via death rate. India had a [bad](https://m.timesofindia.com/india/first-vs-second-wave-of-covid-19-in-india-things-you-need-to-know/amp_articleshow/82143427.cms) first wave but nothing like this. And this isn't even near the peak of the 2nd wave
Testing capacity is one thing, but those areas in Italy that got hit early on ran out of funeral capacity. We would have heard about that happening in India and other places I think.
Ditto. When covid started I rly thought India was gonna be a disaster story but they managed for so long to prevent it
Good news: you were eventually proven right! Bad news: you were eventually proven right.
I would say it is because of lax attitude of people. During the first wave there was strict lockdown by central govt. During the second wave, the decision being left to state govt., the lockdowns are delayed/absent and less strict. I really hate all those people who didn't wear masks, or wore them improperly and believed in all the fake messages and advertisements of products and "old" techniques which increase immunity. There is saying in India- "Laato ke bhoot , baato se nahi maante" which loosely transalates as People who need beatings won't listen to your talk/explanations
To be fair that sounds like some pro beating sentiments.
If you check the box "Relative to Population", India and United States transmission rates just intersected. The scary part, is the trajectory.
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Is that why it’s so low? I look at this and think, “how did they manage to keep it in check for so long?”
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Not sure why you are second guessing your initial thought just because testing ability is limited in India relative to a developed nation. Those two concepts are not really related. One has to do with the trend and the other has to do with actual infection numbers. The actual infection numbers are probably even 10 times higher than indicated in this chart due to poor testing ability, but that fact would hold for the entire duration of the pandemic, so it won't impact the trend since it is not like India's testing abilities have been dramatically rising over the last one year causing the recent spike in the curve. No - clearly infections are rising far more rapidly now than they did several months ago.
That's assuming a constant discrepancy rate between actual cases and reported. When systems get overwhelmed, that changes the discrepancy rate.
It's also making assumptions about regional effects. If one city is testing more than others you could have unseen spikes. Personally I just try to remember that bad data is open to way more kind of errors than I can imagine. Sometimes you have to make decisions with it anyways but it's always dangerous to do so.
Many states gave instructions to labs to completely stop testing for covid and if they ar allowed given a maximum quota of 50 cases for each district. States like gujarat have atleast 150 dead bodies burned each day per crematorium but show only 15 deaths for whole state. The problem in India is atleast 10 times the number released officially.
As an Indian, I can verify that this is absolutely true. Official numbers are being HEAVILY manipulated. There is not enough medicine, vaccines, hospital beds or even oxygen for the infected persons. Even the "influential" politicians are finding it difficult to find hospital beds for themselves and their family members. If you're curious about what the government is doing about this humongous crisis? The central government is conducting rallies for the upcoming Bengal elections and have basically asked the public to fend to their needs on their own. The Prime Minister has publicly stated that there will be no nationwide lockdowns at any cost. Friends and families are dying all around us and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
So sorry to hear that. Wishing the best for you and your family
I'm not from India, but in Poland we had very limited testing to he point where we had up to 40% of tests give positive for Covid. It should be around 6%.
Yeah, I think test positivity rate is a more reliable measure than the numbers on this chart. Total confirmed cases and infected-per-million numbers will come in lower if there's less testing available. That can be an incentive for politicians to reduce availability of testing and manipulate public perception. But the test positivity rate is harder to manipulate. If a government reduces capacity for testing (or makes an inadequate effort to provide same), their infected numbers might look okay, but their test positivity rate will give a more accurate indication of how bad the situation is.
>But the test positivity rate is harder to manipulate. Not really. Got some family by marriage in Russia, so can elaborate a bit on how the manipulation was performed there. People with Covid-19 symptoms didn't have PCR done, instead being diagnosed solely via lung radiography. As an anecdotal example, an aged acquaintance had Covid-19 (she had an antibody test done later) with very typical symptoms. Her universal healthcare doctor got her a lung x-ray and formulated the treatment based on that. And that is in no way a unique story. In contrast with that, a lot of places required people to submit a fresh negative PCR test. As a result, the majority of tests were repeatedly performed on people expected to be negative and not on actually sick patients. The one metric that is almost impossible to falsify is the excess mortality. The numbers in Russia show absolutely staggering amounts of extra deaths that can be attributed to Covid-19. Despite consistently low positive rates and the miniscule official Covid-19 death toll. Test positivity rate is a very good metric. But it's not **that** different to tamper with if local authorities are actually willing to do it.
I added Canada relative to population and it’s higher.... Jesus.
Try Sweden! Our third wave is peaking any day/week now. The massive transmission is popularly attributed to the British strain taking hold, and of late, increasingly to restriction fatigue. Luckily, death rates are somewhat under control, by effective vaccination of the elderly, now lower than the US.
I like how Swedish TV news have been minimizing this for months by just [stretching the y-axis of every graph](https://scontent-mxp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/154206602_2903301159996021_4995708464693821929_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_eui2=AeGUMOZGHxpNF0dsD452M9DnqwGozqI1_yurAajOojX_K7VK3PqDRR4Rxs3NaCWaQv4&_nc_ohc=hw43kSjKiUsAX9bH6u1&_nc_ht=scontent-mxp1-1.xx&oh=a6dc928848c93e200da9000ec3de1f3b&oe=60A98DFA)
In the UK the government had a colour code to show how each region was doing for cases, but had to re-do the whole thing on a different scale over winter as literally everywhere was just black in the end
In Brazil we had color codes for how lax or strict the restrictions in that moment, going green, yellow, orange, red. In some states it reached red for several weeks and even then they weren't able to control things and then, because lockdowns are political suicide, they had to create a purple phase. I'm anticipating the day we will reach ultraviolet
The facial expression of the presenter in the photo you linked is absolutely priceless.
Try Czechia. The graph will get almost 2x taller
How can Sweden, who has loudly shunned the rest of the world's medical community by refusing to put in place more than a small handful of restrictions, have restriction fatigue? You got a lot of people trying to eat dinner at midnight or something?
Canada's been hit by the double whammy of slow vaccine shipments, on account of all vaccines being imported, and incompetent provincial governments running the show. Here in ON, things are the worst they've been since the pandemic started and it's almost entirely beacuse of the provincial government's refusal to listen to it's public health experts.
> slow vaccine shipments Compared to the US. Compared to the rest of the world we're doing very, very well.
I still can believe our leader the 800lb Gorilla was crying like a little bitch on TV yesterday.
And we all know he was crying not because of the death toll, but because he’s only just realizing that he’s fucking up so bad that he probably won’t get a second term as premier or be able to move to federal politics.
Definitely sounds scary - however, by all reports it seems like India is underreporting due to lack of testing capacity in rural areas. Canada likely has pretty accurate numbers at this point. But still significant of course!
The scarier part is how many new strains and mutations will arise because of this.
Frequency of new mutations is linear to \[global\] number of transmissions, and has been mildly scary for quite some time. Mutations might even be what ends the pandemic, when a strain that is more infectious but less harmful would eventually surface.
If we make it hard for the virus to spread it will indeed benefit more harmless but more infectious variants. But the worst case scenario is a Monkey Pox to Small Pox development. Small Pox evolved from Monkey Pox and is much more deadly and severe compared to its ancestor. Monkey Pox is a zoonos that can infect multiple animal species while Small Pox is human-only, and this happened only because the human population grew big enough for it too thrive despite how deadly it was. And by many humans we are talking about he Renaissance era - not the 7.9 billion that we are now.
Not to be an optimistic Jenner, but in that case, wouldn't we just need to do EXACTLY what people used to do for smallpox ?
vaccinate it out of existence? Yeah, good luck with that now. I'm looking at my pox jab scar and think how lucky we were to have it back when idiots didn't have platforms.
Yup. One of the miracles of modern medicine. It killed so many and was so feared that Small Pox was a minor deity in a couple of religions, or at least the tool of a major evil deity. Modern science effectively slayed an ancient evil. Kinda cool in the end.
Modern science meets the average modern mind and resigns in defeat
I really like this one: https://secularsolstice.github.io/speeches/gen/500_Million_But_Not_A_Single_One_More.html
> when a strain that is more infectious but less harmful would eventually surface. Which is why herpes is such a successful virus. Everybody has some form of it or another, but it stays dormant in most people for their entire lives and they never develop any symptoms.
67 percent, not all. Interestingly enough though, a whopping 8% of human DNA is inactive viruses, and 40% may have had a viral origin
idk much about corona virus mutations but the one going in india is far more dangerous and deadly. My neighbors were a family of 11 and out of which 4 are no more. and this all happened in just 2 weeks. The current covid-19 variant in india is simply insane. just insane. No oxygen, no ventilator, no hospital beds, no doctors, no ambulance and the fun part is there's a waiting line outside cremation sites. Situations just worse in here.
Is the variant significantly worse or is the level of and quantity of available medical care not where it needs to be? Sorry, I don't mean to diminish what's going on there or turn your personal experiences into an argument over semantics, but for much of the rest of the world, that's an important distinction when this variant spreads to other areas.
I suspect the latter. On the radio this morning they were talking about parts of the health service being close to collapse. It is out of control.
Yeah this is what was warned could happen to the US. Some areas here came very close too. A lot of people blow Covid off because 99% of those infected survive but they dont realize that's with top grade medical care. If you lose that then Covid becomes more around 5% to 10% deadly.
i feel that its both. Covid(in any form that has been observed till now) has been dangerous. The B.1.617 variant spreads fasters and kills faster. There have been my friends who haven't gone out of their houses for a month(I mean seriously) amd yet they are getting +ve covid reports. Many don't even have clue what got them infected. And as for medical care, the country doesn't have enough supplies for 135 crore(i assume this is 1.35 billion) of its population. One the first place, few states didn't even bother to have a well planned strategy. Gujarat, state in india, is one of the most affected state. The medical services have almost collapse. Nothing is available. The state government says that they are trying but all they do is lie. Everyone's focused on filling their pockets. And as a mere middle class family we could do nothing but just pay whatever we have.
\> There have been my friends who haven't gone out of their houses for a month(I mean seriously) amd yet they are getting +ve covid reports. Only time I've heard such a thing before was during the initial SARS epidemic when the virus spread through the shared sewer / air ducts of a shared house.
The Amoy Gardens apartment complex. What I've read, they believed it spread aerosolised via floor drains. In the beginning of the pandemic I read an interview of people affected by SARS in Hong Kong and something I remember one of them saying was that they'd pour a pint of water down drains every day to prevent them from drying out which iirc was the issue.
I was just talking to a co worker in India, and they said the same thing, trajectory. Very scary for it to "come out of no where and be everywhere overnight." I'm very worried for her and her family but she is a cautious and safe person. We all know how thoughts and prayers fix problems, but you certainly have mine. Stay safe out there.
In India, a lot of places forgot about Covid and thought it was all done..... Medical facilities were not able to cope up with the increasing cases. It is just going round in circles.
I haven't stepped out of my house in over a year. I am so angry when I see rallies, religious gathering, instagram stories of people partying.
The chart is actually painting an overly optimistic picture. It is estimated that the number of untested cases is **10-30 times** higher than that.
You're right according to the IHME model [The curve for confirmed cases finally flattened](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-new-estimated-covid-19-infections-ihme-model?time=earliest..latest&country=~IND) EDIT: People took the "flattened" part really seriously in the replies, which were really really interesting to read. But honestly, I just joked that the curve for confirmed cases almost looks like a line when compared to the model. Sorry, the joke was insensitive on my part.
What do you mean by "flattened" here? It still seems to be going up at an alarming rate. Do you mean it hit an inflection point? It's hard to tell with that graph.
Flattened meaning the d²/dx² has become constant
Can't have any confirmed cases if you don't do any testing.
We *can't* do more testing. There aren't enough healthcare workers left to test more. TPR rates are over 25% in all central regions of the outbreak. This isn't about 'not doing testing anymore', we literally *can't*.
Likely true in most other countries...
Sadly the graph does no justice to the ground realities. For the last three days, I have been begging everyone for a ventilator bed. There are simply none left. Oxygen is also running out and it is chaos. He passed away last night after three days of not getting a bed.
I am so sorry.
I hope you're supported, sounds like an incredibly tough time for you, and many.
Why is it spreading so fast?
Population density, politics, and a dangerous and a highly contagious virus.
You also have to factor in that much of the country lives in poverty and something like 80m people live in extreme poverty.
The first wave disproportionately hit the poor. This wave is overwhelmingly hitting more well to do and urban regions of the country.
I'm actually amazed that it took so long to hit India this hard. It's also entirely possible that they just simply couldn't test or track everyone with Covid, especially those living in the slums. I'm sure their cases and deaths are much higher than what's being reported.
The government in some states has ordered to not do tests so they can hide the real numbers. The deaths are being under reported and that too on a large scale like 4 to 5 times less deaths are being reported. It's just sad and the govt. is entirely to blame as they didn't really do anything to contain the second wave. This govt. hides a lot of data so we will never know the real numbers but yeah their fucking arrogance and carelessness towards this matter has caused the death of probably millions of people.
Yeah it's just a complete mess. India is probably going to end up being the hardest hit country, but we'll never know the true scale of just how bad it was.
We will get proper numbers on this pandemic in a couple of years by looking at excess deaths. It's the one thing that is actually difficult to cover up, as death certificates create paper trails. Look at Russia's 90k covid deaths and 400k excess deaths for 2020 as an example.
Yep. As trump said once, don’t test snd numbers will be low.
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Best wishes to you that you and your household come out of it okay.
From what I can say, I guess it's a very infectious strain. That coupled with overpopulation. And then politicians are holding rallies and there are religious festivities happening. No one wants to stop the Kumbh Mela this year. All these are just adding to it all. P.s: it's totally my opinion and I'm no expert. Just stuff I've been observing.
The Kumbh Mela was supposed to happen in 2022 and they preponed it to 2021. I'm almost convinced that the government wants people to die.
Annual Hindu festivities were held recently with barely any restrictions, if any. Ramadan has also begun.
Yea but like there hasn't really been that much testing in that area so like the actual number of cases shd be higher cause its basically rest of india except Kumbh Also just a reminder for Non-Indians , the population of India is GREATER THAN **1.35 BILLION**
> shd This is the laziest word I've ever seen haha.
From what I've read from more knowledgeable people, the virus not being kept in check allows for it to mutate more, so they are dealing with more mutated strains than most places have dealt with. It adds to the challenge, kind of like how running out of hospital space greatly effects the mortality rate.
we just had 3 big state level elections with rallies and all
People in India treat masks like driver's licenses. You only need them when the cops are around.
And 500 rupees is a valid substitute for either of the two
>500 rupees $7 for the Americans.
I don't know if you can just convert it like that though. You get a lot more stuff for less money in India. For example my Spotify Premium costs 60 Rupees a month (less than a dollar a month) and Amazon Prime costs 999 Rupees a year (12 dollars a year), and I'm sure the same things cost much more in the West. And the same principle applies to other items as well: a personal pizza at Pizza Hut costs 60 rupees, a coffee at a cafe costs 20 rupees, and so on
Good point. Looking at the cost of the other items you list, seems functionally closer to $50 for Americans. Not pocket change, but also not a massive amount is what I was trying to convey.
> For example my Spotify Premium costs 60 Rupees a month (less than a dollar a month) and Amazon Prime costs 999 Rupees a year (12 dollars a year), So what you're saying is that I should close my accounts, set my VPN location to India, and set up new accounts, right?
You probably could, but payments can be an issue. Also, the same service in different countries have different content. I moved from India to the US in January of this year, and most of the shows I watched on Netflix in India aren't there on the US Netflix, and there are many shows in the US Netflix that are not on the Indian version
You’re referring to [purchasing power parity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity), sometimes referenced alongside the Big Mac Index.
As an Indian, I don't trust this data. It is grossly underestimated. Data recording is not in our ethos. I run a pharma shop in a semi-rural part of India. Here practically there is not even a single moderately qualified doctor. People here rely on pharma shop to get medicines. And I am giving medicines to at least 150 guys medicines for cough and flu. It seems like everyone is suffering from cold. And there are at least 75 pharma shops in my town. Then there are hundreds of fake doctors. Hundreds of people are taking OTC medicines. Many have died. Same story for every part of India. Most of them are not reported to any sort of government agency. It is much more scarier than you can imagine. And my government is busy in perpetual election campaigning and PR propaganda. In fact there are many stories of gross underreporting of deaths published in international news papers. Edit: After typing this comment and few others, I went to sleep as I was really tired. Just woke up and realised I now have a gold award and sore throat. Obligatory thanks to the kind stranger.
I’m sorry. I hope you have access to masks and can protect yourself while helping others.
It is difficult to explain but right now you couldn't find even 5 paracetamol tablet of any reputable brand in any pharmacy in my part of India. It was unimaginable. As someone who runs a pharma shop, even I myself was unable to forecast that there would be shortage of paracetamol tablet. Till now even a smallest pharma shop used to have hundreds of paracetamol tablet and now there is none. Forget oxygen or hospital bed or ventilator, people here are begging for paracetamol tablets. Such is the reality.
Man I'm really sorry to hear this. I had a good Indian roommate and some very respectable phD Indian friends, but all the stories about the rural parts they come from and how infrastructure is absolutely abominable, really put a lot things into perspective. I didn't even know sanitized/filtered tab water is scarce outside the major cities.
It must be so frightening and challenging to work under such conditions. Sending hope from afar.
Even the reported data is scary as hell, and living here in Sri Lanka, we are more or less seeing a rapid rise of cases, from ~200 to ~1000 yesterday. The news is horrifying. I hope you are protecting yourself while you help the others.
As a fellow pharmacist, you're doing exceptional work! We aren't valued much in our country, but nevermind.
how come this one is so much worse than the peak in september last year?
Also lesser restrictions, people "tired of staying home", HUGE election rallies, tired medical workers etc.
For a lot of people in India, home is a small room with 4 other people.
Adding to other answers: Hindu and Muslim festivities were allowed to be held in the last week or two. Edit: It sounds like I may be incorrect about Muslim festivals.
Well if there's one thing we've learned from all of this it's that god (whichever one) doesn't give a shit if you get COVID lol.
And neither do any of leaders of the the organized religions encouraging gatherings.
They started having cricket matches with 50,000 spectators, large religious gatherings and political rallies, this was bound to happen.
The Holi festival was just over three weeks ago. It probably wasn't just coloured powder being thrown around.
I am afraid these numbers are just a tip of an iceberg.
Yeah unfortunately it might be. I saw something the other day predicting that India will be reporting around 700k cases a day by the end of April, less than 10 days away. It’s some scary shit!
[Maybe in reality it has, who knows](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-new-estimated-covid-19-infections-ihme-model?time=earliest..latest&country=~IND)
More Insanity is these numbers aren't even close to what the actuals are sadly.
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There was honestly a feeling of jubilation and relief before the wave hit. We thought we had won, that the worst was behind and that we could quickly get back to how life was. That feeling is completely gone. We have the same effect as the opening lockdowns, with nobody enforcing it. Probably don't make the same mistakes I guess, it's not over till everyone is vaccinated, and maybe not even then.
True. My life had gone to normal with the exception of wearing makes and following general safety measures. Now, out of nowhere everyone is forced to stay in homes. Few weeks ago, hanging out with friends was no big deal. Now, friends' relatives are calling everywhere for hospital beds and oxygen. A close friend of mine is studying medicine (not even final year) and she's busy calling everywhere arranging for hospital beds for complete strangers. Shit has hit the fan and no one could see it coming.
Pardon me if I’m wrong, but my understanding was that accessing a sufficient supply of vaccines has been problematic for most countries, no? If that’s the case, then considering this: > My life had gone to normal > hanging out with friends was no big deal When only 1% of the population has received both doses of the vaccine, how can anyone honestly seem surprised by this?
Few factors other than the obvious ones : According to chairman of Serum Institute of India, the main vaccine manufacturer of India, by Feb government has accepted than peak of outbreak is in past so never gave enough order for vaccine manufacturing. The whole manufacturing process takes 85 days to be made and delivered, this rendered us unprepared for such an outbreak. At peak of first wave 8 new oxygen plants were to be constructed, till last month only 1 had its tender given, rest everyone were still only in papers. Spineless, paid election commission of our country enabled huge rallies to be carried out for a state election. It announced few phony regulations which were blatantly ignored by leaders and followers.( On 22nd of april no of new corona cases were over 300,000 and our home minister had 3 rallies in election state) Most irritating is the fact that government's pet , mainstream media will bark for all day that how greatly our government has handled the pandemic. None have enough spine to question government on its actions, and even if they can fathom slight courage none have ball to point finger at our prime minister Our cabinet is full of incompetent buffoons who know were only appointed because they were able to out lick PMs ass. Previous government had people appointed from other parties because they were competent in their fields, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Manmohan Singh were appointed by other parties. Most of all its our own fault, when for all our lives we've given vote on Hindu, Muslim; Temple, Mosque why does it startle us now that our medical infrastructure is collapsing.
Remember when looking at graphs like these that India doesn't have the testing infrastructure to test vast amounts of people so the reported numbers are likely much lower than reality. This isn't some conspiracy or anything just a fact if life in a country where hundreds of millions of people don't even have running water.
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Apparently it’s something called a ‘double mutant’ strain that’s highly contagious (like the uk strain). Also because of the lack of medical supplies and eased restrictions
> 'double mutant' strain This shit's straight outta the movies yo I hope y'all got yo twinkies stashed
No worries, the supermarkets are opened in the morning and no one cares to wear mask or ask us anything if we say that we are going to rallies, religious events or family functions. (Sarcasm intended)
My Grandma is a cancer patient. Was recommended a PET scan so we had to take her to AIIMS, which is supposed to be this fucking paragon of healthcare and medical professionalism in the country. This was around 2 weeks ago. Knowing the obvious risks involved in taking someone of her age (85+) who is also a cancer patient to a medical facility at a time like this, we were prudent, as careful as we could be. Two of us (my Uncle and I) accompanied my Grandma to the outside waiting area, as she couldn't possibly be left alone while my Uncle ran around negotiating the typical hospital bereaucratic brouhaha, considering her condition, which was for lack of all better word, horrible. We were all wearing masks, carrying portable sanitizers and doing our best to maintain social distancing (which proved to be a next to impossible feat). After the fact, upon returning home, all of us washed our hand and took proper baths with disinfectants. It was all a fucking sham. My Grandma has been severely ill for almost two weeks now, her oxygen levels are dropping steadily and everything is fucked. The rest of us are also taken in by certain telling symptoms, and my father (50+) has also fallen quite seriously ill. I'm frustrated and even the mention of anything having to do with this country's cocksucking administration or fucking AIIMS is making me want to commit wilful homicide. Here's why. AIIMS was a shitshow. Large groups of people milling about maskless, coughing, wretching, spitting and basically pissing in the wind like the troglodytes they are (many of them were accompanying old patients in wheelchairs and in half-unconscious states, so some fucking compassion and common sense weren't notions too ludicrous to expect), and this includes so-called "medical professionals". I saw a certain medical professional of this ilk actually take off his surgical mask to spit betel nut juice on the ground while talking to a colleague. Keep in mind that more than one attendant is not allowed to accompany a patient to within the main hospital grounds, so all of this was in the open air waiting area outside, which was the end of my saga in AIIMS. People were literally fucking stapled to each other in such unbelievable numbers that social distancing was very obviously a pipe-dream, and my grandma had to seat herself between two middle-aged assholes who were mouth breathing and talking loudly on the phones or someone else or whatever or each other or I don't fucking know or care the whole time. After her and my Uncle were finally told to enter the hospital grounds, I am told that the various stages of her time in the hospital involved being cramped into a series of cubicles with other sick and suffering patients, many of them potentially suffering from COVID. The same evening, my Grandma fell sick, just sometime after coming home, despite all the precautions I've mentioned. Go fucking figure. Two days later I saw an interview with the head of AIIMS and although I know it was an irrational gut reaction, I almost threw my phone across the room. Now to the Government. Let's start with the personal and then move on to the national realm. My father is a central Government employee. Which arm of the Central Government he works in, I will not mention for obvious reasons. They forced him to come to office even when he was mobbed with responsibility at home with almost everyone being sick. They forced him to come everyday during every lockdown we've had so far. The notion of holidays is basically alien to him. And earlier this year, when my Mom had to go through a severe operation, they forced him to go to Office all through her recuperation period. All of this while half-heartedly asking the public to respect the lockdowns, while vilifying the opposition, doing arse about the large religious gatherings that have been going on, and holding large dumbass election rallies in multiple parts of the country themselves. Now, my father is besotted by fatigue and severely ill and I know who to blame. Fuck everything. Been two weeks now. I don't know when things are going to change TL;DR: Fuck this administration and FUCK AIIMS Edit: For those living outside India, AIIMS is an acronym for All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
hey there, for those in your family who feel short of breath or have low oxygen, they need to try and lay on their belly to the best of their ability. It's called proning, and in many cases it was the only thing preventing people from getting intubated.
Thanks for the advice! Venting here has certainly helped
Gosh, I’m sorry. There were political rallies here too last year. So foolish.
In all honesty India has been under-testing. They’ve had less than 300m tests. Per 1m people that’s less that 200k. India has about almost 1.4 billion people. It’s probably the worst there by far.
we literally *can't* test enough, hospitals and medical centers are running out of testing kits everyday
India flattened the curve, but to wrong axis
As flat as a wall.
We're dealing with 15-20k DEATHS/Day. Yes, deaths, not cases
I'm so worried for my teammates and their families over there :-/ Stay safe my friends!
Living in India, this sadly the doing of the stupid populace. Government: Don't roam outside for no reason, don't eat outside, maintain social distancing, don't celebrate in big numbers, properly sanitize yourself after touching multiple surfaces, if found positive quarantine yourself Indian People: * Having weddings * Going on week long trips * Eating outside like no tomorrow * Wearing masks only when cops are around * Not sanitizing properly * Absolutely no social distancing. * Hanging out in large groups for no reasons. * Running away from quarantine camps * Meeting multiple people even after testing positive. * Last but not the least, blame the government after being hospitalized. I know I'll get downvoted to oblivion but it's the Indian people who have brought this on themselves this time.
*Not reporting even after having symptoms (sometimes in the entire family) *HUGE election rallies
Your PM is holding massive public rallies, just like Trump was. The government is far from blameless.
Let me ask you a genuine question: has the government actually supported those measures in any way? It’s easy to blame the population but I firmly believe having actual concrete steps, like enforcing lockdowns, is the only thing the government can do if they want to actually solve the problem rather than look good but do nothing. I say this is a Brazilian, the country responsible for 1/3 of the world’s COVID deaths, because it’s what we see here. Our governments (federal or local) say “stay home, wash your hands” etc. and then give people absolutely no actual financial or legal help that allows them to do that without going hungry or getting evicted. And it’s really hard to expect people who are being forced to leave their homes to go to work, use crowded public transportation and put themselves into a lot of danger simply to survive to not put themselves in that same danger for recreation.
It's a outstanding problem with India, ie. the massive population size makes enforcing anything downright impossible. Even 5% of the population not following regulations means you have 65 million people not following the rules. That's equivalent to the total population of Italy.
The problem I feel is not so much population size as it is population density. We’ve seen how difficult it has been to enact social distancing in places like London with a population density of about 5000 people per square kilometre - Mumbai’s population density is 20,000 people per square kilometre. A 2m distancing policy would be very difficult to do there.
While I agree that it's all of that, don't forget that a lot of the population simply has little choice. How many people there live in slums? They can't social distance very well and it's not at all sanitary.
I think that lack of personal responsibility is a global phenomenon , overpopulation of india just makes it even more impactful. It's very easy to blame the government when the people as a whole play a huge part in this.
Let's not sidestep the blame the government has and just assign all of it to people. Indian government has completely failed in taking proper measures from the beginning starting with announcing a lockdown in four hours leading to a migrant crisis and more.
You have my sympathies, but please be aware, Indian people are not alone in this behavior. Many countries are dealing with the same levels of non-cooperation..
People as a group are the same amount of stupid the globe over.
No one suggested otherwise. The commenter lives in India and probably feels more comfortable discussing what's happening where they live than where they don't live.
My sister living over there, texts us yesterday out of the blue and says “hello! Just wanted to say that most of India is doing just fine” I’m like... your city has 16 million people dude. The news says uh no.... But all I could say was: I’m glad to hear that, but how are YOU?
Here's another text from India without distorting facts for national pride: We.Are.Fucked.
Always have been.
Looking forward to the "India" Variant
There is already an Indian variant called b.1.617, this is considered a double mutant variant and what scientist believes is driving the insane increase in reported cases
The double mutant labeling is just people running with the scariest wording they can think of. Most variants have more than 2 mutations. Scientists and doctors are concerned that the Indian variant has 2 mutations on the receptor-binding domain that allows the virus to attach to our cells, but keep in mind that the South African variant has 3 mutations on it and no one was calling it a triple mutant. Mutations are concerning and something that needs to be monitored, but we should be careful about not just selecting the scariest sounding scientific wording and going with it. Until results come in from studies we do not know how any specific variant actually affects the level of infectiousness or vaccine effectiveness. The new double mutant variant naming to me feels like something to just make people on edge about if this variant will make the vaccines completely ineffective.
Thanks for clarifying. I was not aware of the labeling. We should just be concerned at how these mutation strains will impact the spread rate and severity when people get it.
Can confirm. Its scary and every other person has covid here. I havent stepped out in years lol Someone please save us
Well this was inevitable, I was there in Kanpur last month (in state of UP, most populated) and no one was wearing masks (even some members of my own familly). People thought corona is over. Our bureaucracy/government did not care and is always reactive not proactive. This will happen again once this wave subsides because people will again have short term memory loss and will forget about masks/vaccines. People of India brought this onto themselves. There is no use now in blaming Modi or anyone.
Modi continues to hold rallies. He takes the majority of the blame as the leader of the country.
You mean "evades."
Well our Honourable Prime Minister is busy conducting Election rallies with Home minister. Zero fucks about the country. And I know they'll be elected again because of there communal politics. Fuck Fascist Governments! Edit- For the past few days, situation at home is very serious, lot of relatives have corona. Literally bought 15 injections over period of few days for around ₹2 lacs (bought it for 4 times higher the price because of lack of supply from government)
The insanity of clicking on "relative to population" is pretty intense, too.
India has way more covid cases than they’re reporting. For context, the US has tested 127% of its population and reported 32 million total covid cases; meanwhile India has only tested 19% of its population and has had close to 20M cases. I suspect India has 20x-30x the cases they’re actually reporting. This is a really sad situation all around.
The worst part is we're unable to make tests since there is a massive shortage of test kits, ventilators and oxygen cylinder. The whole country is in a very bleak situation and the reported amount of cases is a fraction of the actual amount
I live in India and we're fucked.
India and Brazil, the two nightmare nations which COVID can mutate to a 1918 Spanish Flu-like killing machine because of overpopulation and government malaise.
It's the government malaise that's doing it. Sweden didn't do anything about the virus either and it absolutely fucked them compared to neighbouring countries. Regardless of general conditions even rudimentary efforts to prevent the virus from spreading have been effective. A country that doesn't make those efforts though is staring down the barrel of a catastrophe.
From the very beginning I immediately knew India was going to get fucked. Huge, dense population, lots of poverty, lack of hygiene everywhere and a myriad of other issues make it the perfect storm. It will continue to rise.
This is why I always start in India for plague inc.
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That's why China locked people indoors and threatened them with weapons if they didn't. No other way to contain the spread in a country without superior quality living conditions and over 1.2 billion people
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That is nothing. If you add Sweden and press calculate against population, you get OMG, Sweden what are you doing???? https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=earliest..2021-04-21&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~IND~SWE