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Comment by sharadov | Hacker News Reader

India going all Wuhan on the virus. The difference between India and the US particularly is that it's lockdown lite in USA while it's full on there. You can't take a walk, you can't drive farther than 3 KM, cops will kick your butt and impound your vehicle. And the population by and large listens, while we have morons here who want lockdown eased to get haircuts.

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I'm in Canada (west coast). No restrictions on driving. People are still taveling to their cabins on the weekend. They get yelled at by other people but are not breaking any laws. My neighourhood is full of elderly people walking their dogs. Bicylists are everywhere. Restaurants never stopped doing takeout. But we cannot get haircuts.

Cops have stopped speed enforcement in my area, at least the dedicated speed traps.

The speeding has been happening all over the US too and it makes me sick. These people should be fined into oblivion, cars impounded, licenses revoked. Now is not the time to be creating extra problems for society.

As always, it depends on the circumstances. If you're doing 15-20 mph over the limit on a highway with very little traffic in the daytime and good weather? That's probably appropriate speed for the conditions.

If you're doing double the limit, or freeway speeds through neighborhoods, that's probably dangerous.

Typical city dwelling urbanite bugman attitude. There's never been a time when people weren't speeding at every chance, and there's never been a safer time to do it. Pretty sure if you continue to hide in your apartment you'll be safe from the bad people who are driving faster than the 1950s norm.

LICENSES REVOKED, he says, SHOULD NEVER DRIVE AGAIN. You sound like an old church lady waving an umbrella.

If a person can't restrain themself from driving over 100mph, they don't have the temperament to drive on public roads. They're just a sociopathic child with twisted priorities and no self control. What I find especially strange is how these people think they are somehow special and exempt from the law. They are not special, no matter how fast their vroom vroom machine can go.

>> If a person can't restrain themself from driving over 100mph

That isn't speed. In my neck of the woods that will be called street racing. License revoked. Car impounded. Probably criminal charges. "Speeding" is doing 60 in a 50, 60 in a 30 because the "construction zone" stopped all activity a month ago but forgot to take down the signs. Or it is doing 32 in a 30 school zone ... when no student has attended a school in months. 100 is a different league.

100 mph is 160 kph. Yes, you lose your license for that most places. That's not "speeding", it's street racing.

Which is also fun, but I won't defend it, as I've restrained myself from doing so for quite a long time now. Stupid kids are going to do what they're going to do, though, and the threat of losing their license probably won't make much difference.

So you come across pandemics and traffic accident risks and your response is you want to stay drunk on adrenaline.

So you come across comments on HN and your response is that you want to blow them out of proportion

I'm in Western Canada, too. Seeing the same thing here.

Cases keep dropping, regardless.

I suspect a late cold snap and some snow a month ago, followed by a lot of rains in the last couple weeks, have also helped.

Calgary is having trouble -- that's where most of the cases are in AB -- but case load across AB and Western provinces is stable and below projections.

edit: cases in the province, via the CBC:

Calgary zone: 3,366

South zone: 685

Edmonton zone: 486

North zone: 202

Central zone: 84

Unknown: 27

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/covid-19-deena-hinsh...

there is no evidence for that whatsoever. You have absolutely no data on what takes place in India - it is a gigantic country with gigantic variation across. Plus the families are much larger, all confined together. When the train was shut down millions traveled back home for days on packed buses, it unlikely that any lockdown could have had such a pronounced effect so quickly.

The truth probably lies elsewhere, perhaps the population is overall a lot less susceptible, perhaps the genetics is such that adverse reactions are far less common, perhaps the weather conditions make the virus less virulent etc.

There is no way in hell that India was more locked down than Spain - yet Spain, with a population that is of a tiny fraction of India is still producing many more cases per day even today, more than a month after a full lockdown.

If anything Spain compared to say Sweden shows that brutal lockdowns don't work, the disease would have taken the same course had there been much less strict measures.

If Spain had taken strict lockdown measures before the virus took hold they would not be in the mess that they are in now.

Compare Denmark to Sweden and it gets pretty obvious that early lockdowns have an effect

They simply don't test and don't count. There is a strong incentive to show low numbers at state level. They conduct covid test on everyone who come to hospital for any reason, but not anyone outside hospital.

There are serious issues with the numbers coming out of India. For instance, some states which share huge borders with other states are showing far less numbers than the states they share the borders with even though these states didn't really implement movement restrictions at the border.

India has some of the densest urban environments on the planet... Mumbai, Calcutta, Howraw, etc.

And, it has pockets of density that are mind-boggling, such as the slums at Dharavi. 9 to 10 people in a room, families taking 'shifts' in the same living areas, 100+ people per latrine in some parts.

Yet, absent a massive cover-up, no reports of mass deaths.

The same goes for many of the world's other dense cities: Manila, Caloocan, Port-au-Prince, Kathmandu, Subang Jaya, Tokyo (not to mention the dozen or so 10mill+ cities in China.)

When this is mentioned, the response is invariably that "they have an amazing lockdown system with state-of-the art contact tracing." Or, "well, THOSE people are very submissive and obedient to authority."

It's not believable.

What does it even mean to "lock-down" Dharavi?! That's absurd...

Millions of deaths were predicted. There aren't millions of deaths. Great. The lethality of the virus was grossly over-estimated. Yet, instead of happily acknowledging this, there are some bending over backwards trying to maintain that the Virus magically avoids places like Dharavi (or homeless camps in LA, or San Fran, or the elderly-populated Florida) because of government pronouncements.

I don't live in Dharavi. I've been there. And, I know there are plenty of people from India on this site. Maybe I'm wrong, but I cannot wrap my head around ANY lockdown policy that would make a rat's ass worth of a difference to virus spread in Dharavi. Ditto for Mexico City, the slums in Monterrey, Lagos, and the urban/slum sprawl in the metro areas of S. America.

Edit: "I don't live in Dharavi. I've never been there."

this is the elephant in the room,

it is not fashionable to talk about, it does not fit the current narrative - the scientific "group think" when it comes to the virus is incredibly strong

People there have been exposed to more viruses and in India specifically - BCG vaccine which protects against Tuberculosis. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/nations-that-manda... Yes, am with you that expected numbers were blown out of proportion, but in a way that was needed to, because governments are complacent and people more so.

Heh, families in India have started doing haircuts at home. Some people get it right, and some people don't ... it's not even funny anymore.

I could have been the moron standing with a placard demanding a haircut, but I took the simpler route by buzzing my hair with a clipper :-)

People are largely forced to comply to the lockdown because police are often resorting to using of indiscriminate force, which isn't becoming in any modern country. Serious lack of empathy from the Police and Governments in India.

India has one of the lowest police officers to population ratio in the world, with 144 policemen to 100,000 citizens [1].Significanty, large majority of the policemen do not even carry guns or even tasers. The public trust of the police is also fairly low.

People are staying in and following the curfew because thanks to a robust media ecosystem and insane connectivity facilitated by cheap data plans and accessible smart phones, most folks are aware of the severity of the challenge confronting the country.

There are significant issues, especially with testing and the plight of the unorganised migrant labour, with how this is playing out, many due to simply the massive scale and relatively poor Indian state capacity, as well as some political football from all players involved.

Nonetheless, a large reason why people are "complying" with the lockdown is (IMO) because of a lot of awareness and a high degree of social responsibility.

It is difficult to imagine how the microscopic "blue line", or khakhi line, in India, as it were, could "force compliance" in this situation if the society at large did not accept that it was required.

This argument that the large majority of the population is complying due to fear of the police or authorities is (IMO) a disservice to the maturity demonstrated by the Indian society.

I can only hope the Indian govt and political class can step up to the plate and manage the exit and restart of the economy with the same maturity and sagacity.

[1] https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-police-force-amo...

Edit: added link and clarified 2 sentences to improve readability

The level of ignorance exhibited here is breathtaking!

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