When UK went in to lockdown, it had 6700 cases. (23rd March) [2]
When India went in to lockdown, it had 657 cases. (25th March) [2]
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/20/politics/new-york-workfor... [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
It sure feels like there are something not well understood about this virus from infection/death stats alone.
NYC at 6000 cases meant it had approx 1 positive in 1000, and the UK at 6000 cases meant it had approx 1 positive in 10,000.
So even if we assume that the US and UK were not undercounting, and that India was undercounting by a factor of 100 (!), India was about half as infected as the UK and an order of magnitude less infected than NYC when it entered lockdown.
True. I'd argue that there are other factors such as demographics, time elapsed since first cases, etc. But I guess it's hard not to. Specially for media needing to fill column inches or otherwise capture our attention :-) It should be possible to simply look at numbers and draw any conclusions but it seems to be very difficult for human beings to do that. We feel the need create a narrative around and find an explanation for our observations.