What I was implying is that perhaps things did go okay in terms of slowing the spread in India: of course, there's probably more spread than is being reported, but that seems par for course everywhere.
I'm only worried that the lockdown is going to significantly affect the poorer communities worse at the expense of richer folks.
In such situations that is always the case. If there is a lockdown, poor will suffer financially. If no lockdown, poor will be exposed to the infection more than others since they have to be out working.
The fifth biggest city in India population-wise is Ahmedabad but its case count is 2378.
The fifth biggest city in India area-wise is Hyderabad whose case count is 542.
Therefore I assumed OP meant Hyderabad. Both counts are from https://www.covid19india.org/
Today’s fashion is drama and any not hysteric action must end in doom and gloom.
Sorry, what? The lockdown isn't about the rich or the poor. It is mostly about containing a deadly disease we don't fully understand yet. It is for the medics but also mostly to keep the social fabric intact. No one wants this to descent into chaos and madness without controls in-place. A deliberated and measured response is warranted despite an unprecedented loss of livelihood and absence of any real infrastructure to handle the fallout, especially to support the 500m people who live on daily-wages. Unless an effective prophylactic or a therapeutic treatment is discovered, lifting the lockdown can be disastrous for a country as dense as India and for incubation periods as long as they are for a rabidly contagious SARS-CoV-2.
Hopefully, the current situation improves in a month (most cities and states could possibly reopen in the coming weeks), but I wish the conversation around UBI (food subsidies including) and universal healthcare picks up steam rather than the pathetic pettiness around religious faultlines that seems to be in focus, all the time, aided by the ruling party's inclination to make a mockery out of democracy and India's minorities. I digress.
> Sorry, what? The lockdown isn't about rich or poor.
I think you misunderstood the parent comment. They are worried that the poor will be more negatively effected by the lockdown than by the coronavirus, in contrast to the rich. This has been observed in other countries, where the poor have had no way to sustain themselves without work, whereas the rich can just hide inside and wait it out without a problem.
GP said and I quote, "at the expense of the rich", which, to me, implies that somehow the rich are conspiring to persist with the lockdown. The families reliant on dialy-wages have always had massive problems in terms of education, healthcare, food, and shelter, and it isn't something the pandemic has birthed though it has aggravated it. There exists central and state government schemes to address these issues, but I wish there was a more systemic, consorted, and uniform approach to it with UBI and universal healthcare, instead.
The pandemic and quarantine haven't just aggravated an untenable situation, they're pushing it to the limits. The poor can't afford to not work, the rich can afford to remain in lock down. It's happening everywhere, not just in India.
There are those of us who can afford to be out of work for a long time, and there are those of us who can continue to work while maintaining quarantine, however there is a significant portion of the population that has run out of reserves and must work to live. These are people driving trucks, delivering packages, stocking shelves, generally putting themselves at risk while enabling the wealthy to remain quarantined.
I'm sorry it comes off like that. My intention was to point out that this situation isn't of advantage to anyone regardless of their social or economic standing. Sure, a lockdown is harsher on some people than the others, but life, in general, is harsher on some people more than on the others.
The pandemic is doing a great job at ringing the alarm bells. I hope it stirs the government and the policy makers into action and not use it instead for abhorrent religious and political mileage at the expense of steering away from building a support framework for all its citizens.
> ...using your command of the language to minimize the situation.
I'm not the one mentally replacing at the expense of with in contrast to.
> The pandemic and quarantine haven't just aggravated an untenable situation, they're pushing it to the limits.
You'd find that we are in agreement. I don't understand what part of my comment made you think I'm cold to their struggles.
As I said, it's the minimizing choice of language and your choice to ignore a grammatical error.
> I'm not the one mentally replacing at the expense of with in contrast to.
As I said before you're ignoring the grammatical errors in that sentence and paraphrasing to suit your argument.
> GP said and I quote, "at the expense of the rich",
That isn't what was said. The full quote:
> I'm only worried that the lockdown is going to significantly affect the poorer communities worse at the expense of richer folks.
Which is grammatically incorrect and doesn't make sense. However given the context and the structure of the sentence it's hard to draw the conclusion that you did. Rather, it's more likely the op mean to say something like:
> I'm only worried that the lockdown is going to significantly affect the poorer communities worse than richer folks.
But some how you've interpreted it to mean that the richer are willing to accept some self harm if it means harming poor communities?
Fwiw, I didn't somehow interpret it purposefully in any sinsiter way or choose to ignore an error to start an argument. For some reason, that's just how I read it.
No worries, a lot of that was probably how it sounded in my head.
Isn't the whole point of the article that this isn't the case?
The author rather paints a skeptical view of the numbers coming out of India.