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Comment by karambir | Hacker News Reader

Few things I have seen in past couple days here in Delhi(which was locked down earlier):

- Many people are making excuses of getting groceries/milk/medicine to roam.

- Some people are just treating it as picnic and roaming streets to see what a lock-down looks like. Local police was perplexed with this thought.

- People who are in essential services are having hard time to get to their workplaces. For example: my sister is a Bio-medical engineer in local hospital and she is not able to book a cab or take local public transport. Today I went to drop her off and police stopped me twice to ask why I am out. We need to somehow make this easier. So essential services and their support can function.

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My dad is a Doctor in U.P(state in India for people don't know) and he was on its way to see a critical patient, he was stopped more than 3 times by local police. Being Doctor and seeing a patient was not a good enough excuse, he said. After few minutes of questioning they let him go. But I think the Government should have some measures for this kind of situations.

You'd think having credentials at hand would be a 10-second check.

What a sad way of handling things.

Ah! You don't know nothing about the Indian state we are discussing. It's Uttar Pradhesh, sorta like Florida of India.

more like West Virginia of India.. Florida is a decent place, not that bad.

What about Bihar then

there's touristy florida, and florida.

Rajasthan govt is doing it right, they are giving special ID cards to people with special services.

People roaming in open areas by themselves or with people they cohabitate with is not a threat as long as physical distance is maintained, especially if masks (even improvised ones) are used. Allowing them to do it will allow the public to bear a longer lockdown than cracking down on it.

You don't seem to have an understanding of Indian society. There's a lot of unemployed/non-working youth who usually just roam around aimlessly. If this lockdown is not strictly enforced such people will make the whole effort fruitless. Indian cities are very densily populated. It is virtually impossible to loiter around without getting in close proximity to another person.

Edit: and most of the people who loiter around do it in groups, everybody from a different household.

Edit2: source: I used to be one of those at some point in my life. Thankfully there was no pandemic at that time.

So not the case of "People roaming in open areas by themselves or with people they cohabitate with" on any aspect is it ?

Mostly not.

The problem is that people soon start misusing this. One person comes, then second, then third and soon you have a crowd. This happened at places where people went for morning jogs.

People should walk around outside and keep their distance from other people. Mental health matters too, and being forced to stay indoors will take a toll. There is minimal danger of transmission by taking walks alone or with your household members. Better to simply walk than to have to make an "excuse" like going in to a store when you don't really need to. Unfortunately, in some places you need to do that because outdoor exercise is not permitted.

Distance is not something Indians are used to, we measure distance between vehicles, while driving!, in centimeters and not meters.

Jokes aside, this was a needed measure in India. I just hope the government gives a helping hand to the poor, even if it means I have to pay double the tax this year.

In delhi they've now started giving curfew passes. So people working in essential services can get them.

Places where you can get them : https://twitter.com/BhardwajAnanya/status/124209734947373056...

In the UK / London, this is happening through a system of employer requested letters confirming to the metropolitan police that the holder is in an essential function and should be allowed to travel.

They are doing something of this sort. But it's not the employer but employee themselves that have to go to local police station and get the PASS made. Though this was the provision set by Delhi and not sure how this lockdown(nationwide) changes that.

Also I am worried about support services to essential workers as well. Like just today, my sister(see GP) called a medical equipment company to come and fix an issue with their device that her team is not able to fix. The company refused and just said to talk over video call.

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