Bangalore has 12M residents and only 385 Covid-19 cases | Hacker News Reader

Bangalore has 12M residents and only 385 Covid-19 cases

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What has become clear is levels of testing and how deaths are recorded vary greatly. So somebody in the UK who tested or even suspected of COVID-19 dieing from a heart attack - that is recorded as covid-19 death, in somewhere like Germany - that would be recorded as a heart attack, even if it is clear that the illness caused the issue.

But one thing that has struck me as worrying, is the faily recorded cases - looking at WHO data, always a spike on a friday! Why is that, backlog, testing pattern or rush to get to the weekend - dunno, but a very clear trend until recently and now seeing spike more common than that 7 day trend. IMHO, all the signs of a second wave and a\ll the actions to enable it. Governments be damned if they don't ease lockdown and damned if people still die.

But I do wished there was some better universal defined way deaths are recorded as currently it is a fallacy to compare countries due to the nuances of how deaths are recorded.

One thing I do know and been a concern of mine for months, once things ease - how many poor postman and postwoman are going to be asked to record buildup of mail at address - a solid indication that somebody died inside. Those deaths are the ones which we are still to realise and they are out there awaiting to be found.

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... You can view the stats for daily cases there bottom right, expand that and hit the daily cases tab - you can see the week trend most prominent and also the changes to that recently that are not a good sign IMHO.

Friday is probably a reporting deadline. You see similar spikes on Mondays after the weekend. You would want to take a weekly average basically.. or some do a 3 day rolling average.

Looks like a reliable signal is to count how many deaths above average happened for a particular month, for example here in St. Petersburg, Russia: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/st-petersburg-...

In the UK non white ethnic groups and especially Bangladeshis have had the highest mortality rate from Covid 19 and yet the countries they come from are faring better than the UK is against the disease. The explanation for this when it's found will be interesting, one factor might be climate and possible vitamin D deficiency among these groups in Britain.

The vitamin d connection might partially also explain why Sweden has a higher mortality rate than its neighboring countries, because Sweden has accepted more immigrants

Vitamin D supplements and fortifications in food are commonplace here though, so that would have to be compared to actual vitamin D levels to know for sure

Or it could be because Sweden has reacted far less than us...

There are plenty of dark skinned Norwegians, Finns and Danes these days.

I guess everyone finds the explanation that suits his beliefs best.

It is quite obvious that the reasons Sweden has > 3000 deaths and Norway has less than 300 is because of much less severe restrictions. Sweden has twice the population, but quite similar demographics.

Sweden has much more of an immigrant / foreign-born parent population. About 25%-30% vs. 13-15%.

As of 2017, Statistics Sweden reported that around 2,439,007 or 24.1% of the inhabitants of Sweden were from a foreign background: that is, each such person either had been born abroad or had been born in Sweden to two parents who themselves had both been born abroad.[22] Also taking into account people with only one parent born abroad, this number increases to almost a third in 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden#Migrati...

Immigrants constituted 13% of the population at the start of 2015, and an additional 2.6% were born in Norway by immigrant parents[12] (up from 8,3% and 1,5% in 2006[13]). The same year, 19% of births in Norway were to immigrant parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Norway#Ethnici...

GP isn't denying they have more immigrants, they are saying it makes more sense to point to their reaction to the pandemic than to point at their number of immigrants. This explanation is both more simple and it doesn't have strange racist undertones.

I was just replying to the idea that the demographics are the same.

Pointing out an observation in relation biology and vitamin d production, even if totally incorrect, does not mean it's racist. If anything, if someone with darker skin living in Sweden would get their vitamin d levels checked and correct it because the comment above, it would help them.

> Sweden has much more of an immigrant / foreign-born parent population.

This was said in response to the statement that Sweden has 10x more deaths than Norway.

For the same year, 2017, it's 24.1% for Sweden and 16.8% for Norway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Norway

And in both countries almost half of the immigrants come from Europe or similar latitudes.

This doesn't explain the factor 10 difference in outcome.

Most cases in Sweden are in the age groups >70 since the elder care homes and elder care workers.

The situation would probably be very different if they have the equipment and training to deal with it. Many were even threatened to be fired if they put on face masks.

Not sure it's that simple. Massachusetts has a population of 6.7M and 7152 deaths (average age 82) with a lockdown.

Sweden has a pop. of 10M with 3K deaths.

Florida has a pop. of 20M with 2566 deaths and not much of a lockdown.

It seems to me that the death rate is a function of how well protected the elderly are and in particular if C19 has gotten into long term care homes as it has in MA (62% of MA C19 deaths in long term care homes) and I think Sweden, but Florida locked down its LTC homes at the beginning of March.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/05/26/nursin...

It is not as clear cut as this. Massachusetts has a population of 6.7M and 7152 deaths. Sweden has a pop. of 10M with 3K deaths.

Massachusetts is approximately 20,306 sq km, while Sweden is approximately 450,295 sq km, making Sweden 2,118% larger than Massachusetts.

So the 10M residents of Sweden are much more spread than in MA. Also MA was late in how they have dealt with Covid and the number of cases was progressing much faster.

It's not that simple. Population density numbers don't tell us anything useful at the national level. Most Swedes are clustered into a few urban areas.

ok then look at the stats in Stockholm

> the 10M residents of Sweden are much more spread than in MA.

Probably not. Swedes are a fairly urban people, many living in blocks of flats in cities.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Stockholm:

    Population (31 December 2019)[3][4][5]
     • Capital city 975,904
     • Density 5,200/km2 (13,000/sq mi)
     • Urban[6] 1,605,030
     • Urban density 4,200/km2 (11,000/sq mi)
     • Metro 2,377,081
     • Metro density 360/km2 (940/sq mi)

And here is Boston:

    Population (2019)[2][3][4][5][6]
     • City 692,600
     • Density 14,344/sq mi (5,538/km2)
     • Urban 4,180,000 (US: 10th)
     • Metro 4,628,910 (US: 10th)[1]

So Sweden might be twenty times the size but the urban population density is not so wildly different.

Texas is an even more dramatic example.

29 million people with only 1,734 deaths, and 4 of the 11 largest US cities.

If you scale Norway to Texas on population, you would get 1,000 deaths.

If you scale Finland to Texas, you would get 1,700 deaths.

Texas did as well as Finland with five times the population, with barely any lockdown.

It's the climate. The same reason Greece did so well. The same reason Rome didn't get hit like Milan (when it should have been hit far worse).

It's why all of San Diego County only has 283 deaths with a population of 3.3 million.

And it's why formerly hard hit locations are starting to open up: their temperatures have climbed enough to slow the virus. NYC will be fully open this Summer and yet the virus won't be ravaging the city like it previously did, and this is why.

The Italian doctor - Alberto Zangrillo - that recently made headlines by saying the virus was fading in potency? That's the higher temperatures reducing the potential of the virus to transmit, it's reducing the viral loads they're seeing. We already knew to expect this, that's why numerous experts were predicting the virus would fade as the seasons changed and temps climbed.

How do you explain Mexico and Brazil in that case?

The much lower viral loads in Italy could be a result of other things such as widespread mask usage.

I think you could well be on to something. But there are still too many questions to be certain that heat is slowing transmission.

Right, and that's why LA with its 30+ degrees Celsius, right next to San Diego, is stil growing in the amount of cases per day.

There are clearly other variables related to the _spread_ of C19 (for example public transport -- Texas and California don't have much, whereas it's widely used in Boston, NYC and many European cities).

I'm not sure I buy into the climate aspect (Brazil?) ... as for the "fading potency" theory? Maybe. But could it be that as it spreads asymptomatically through the healthy, younger population we're seeing the beginnings of some sort of herd immunity? "They" say we need 60-80% which we're not seeing yet, but clearly it's not going to be a "binary" thing where the spread suddenly stops when we get to 80%.

I think if you separate the spread of SARS-Cov2 from the severe/fatal cases of the C19 disease, what's emerging is that it's the elderly and "infirm" that are dying, but not the remainder of the population (aside from those with health issues). Perhaps the death rate correlates to 1) how much SARS-Cov2 has spread asymptomatically within the healthy population and 2) how much of that asymptomatic but healthy population have _interacted_ with elderly people / long term care homes (thus introducing SARS-Cov2 which is devastating to them).

Texas and California are now at the top with way more new cases than NY.

Internationally, Brazil is outstripping the US in new cases, and India, Russia, Pakistan, and many others are ahead of the western European countries people are still discussing.

The character of the epidemic has changed rapidly and people don't seem to be paying attention.

You really shouldn't be using Texas as an example, because Texas is a prime example of how the bulk of the new cases are shifting to states and countries that didn't originally rank at the top.

People are having discussions and making pronouncements as though the epidemic is over, or at least no longer rapidly evolving and can be judged in retrospect.

States that had more new cases the other day than NY or NJ:

California, Texas, North Carolina, Illinois, Arizona...

There are about fifty countries with more new cases recently than Italy. Do you think those countries are all really cold or something?

Norway has similar ratios for immigration and lower mortality.

It's not that.

Sweden tested a lax social distancing approach and it backfired.

You and OP mention Vitamin D as a possible rationale for the differences. But, what about countries like Mexico? No shortage of sun there.

More sun in India, Bangladesh. Less in UK. Might be simple answer is that the darker skin = less vitamin D. So higher the latitude, dark skinned people might be in more trouble.

Yes I've been interested in this theory as well. Also see the number of deaths in carehomes - where a lot of people spend all days indoors.

Let's just say I've been taking my Vit-Ds for the last 3 months!

Care homes house at risk people that are susceptible to getting sick from anything. They live in close quarters and are touched by lots of workers throughout the day. I doubt Vitamin D and indoors has anything to do with it.

It certainly doesn’t help.

In the UK, April 2020 was the sunniest April on record (224 hours of bright sunshine), and May 2020 was the sunniest month on record (626 hours).

Now, how much time UK citizens spent in the sun compared to those in other countries is a different question, but "less sun" doesn't appear to be the answer at face value.

[1] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weat... [2] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weat...

You also need the sun at a higher angle to get enough UV exposure (vitamin D creation is triggered by UV B exposure).

More sunshine isn't enough.

The UV responsible for vitamin D production effectively does not penetrate glass so it depends how much time people actually go outside.

As a dark-skinned developer, I used to feel terrible when I was in Germany/US for over 2 months - to the point of being suicidal. It was like my body and mind was breaking down. Colds, migraines, illness, body aches, joint pain. Only later was I diagnosed with acute vitamin-D deficiency.

Vitamin-D supplements turned around my life like a miracle. Nowadays I pop myself with every single vitamin-<anything> tablet in the market.

I tried Sunlight, but Sunlight in northern latitudes is a joke.

If you have darker skin yes. But I always thought that white skin is an evolutionary adaptation to the reduced levels of sunlight available at Northern latitudes.

It's more about the colour of skin * place of residence interaction than anything else.

> I tried Sunlight, but Sunlight in northern latitudes is a joke.

hahaha, brilliant!

Also the definition of a covid 19 death in the UK is extremely, err, innacurate

No one in Bangladesh believes Bangladesh's low death number. I live here. Freedom of the press is non-existent (al-most all press/media is owned by government party). There are actual laws that say that you can't say anything against the government online (many have been prosecuted for this).

There is literally only 1 party - all other parties are destroyed, their members arrested or banned, jailed on real or fake cases.

Bangladesh's health care has been horrible even before the pandemic. Air pollution is extremely high. We don't have the infrastructure to handle so many patients - private hospitals are having a hard time handling patients. Public hospitals are even worse. Central oxygen is almost non-existent, lack of proper PPE, masks or proper testing. They only recently started ramping up tests - but the numbers are still very low.

Even with all the hiding and misinformation by the government, the official number is still climbing at an alarming rate.

I fear that we in the west will simply not even know that this catastrophy is occuring all over the third world. Maybe in a few years we will find out just how terrible this pandemic was.

I genuinely wonder if there is any data that backs the hypothesis what countries where the current health and healthcare conditions are already very poor are showing low numbers of symptomatic covid-19 cases because most people who are susceptible to disease have already succumbed to other diseases over the years.

Also, testing. Testing is hard to get in the US. We are obviously fucking up in many ways ATM, but if you can't get testing here when you want it, imagine getting it in a poor country with inadequate healthcare.

In my anecdotal experience I haven't seen it hard. Lots of counties in California are offering free testing for anyone. Not to mention commercial testing has been open for anyone for months now.

I'm not sure what you are comparing it to.

The US has had more testing per capita than New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, or Canada.

Compared to countries like India and Bangladesh, the US has had well over an order of magnitude more testing.

I'm looking at the main chart, second to last column, at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Lower life expectancies and lack of elder group homes might also explain it. For the first one, those with pre-existing conditions that the virus usually has more of an effect on are mostly already dead. For the latter, a lot of the cases in the west have been in nursing homes that simply don’t exist in poorer countries.

Or they might just not have the resources to get accurate statistics and ascertain cause of death due to the virus.

a lot of dirt poor countries have closed EVERYTHING, and given jack to the people. Complain to the hand. Obviously low deaths--on Covid, and so far. Not something to be proud of and definitely not long term. Virus is still around, waiting for the opportunity.

I think that in some of these countries the virus doesn't exist anymore, for example in Montenegro: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/montenegro...

Is there a difference in obesity rates between the two populations?

Vietnam at 0 deaths.

Singapore at 24 deaths (despite a relatively high number of cases).

There's a thread on the front page right now re Sweden's handling. A lot of the comments seem to be trying to rate the performance of various European countries against each other. I guess I'm missing something, because I'd just categorize most of it as a disaster.

Vietnam’s numbers are incredible and I cheer for them, but I wouldn’t trust their exactness, given the country’s placement in the freedom of the press index as the 4th least free.

Mistrust about the vietnam numbers comes up every time this is discussed. But I have not yet seen any evidence that they're forged.

I admit I find it hard to believe that a country bordering china could handle this so well. But I am more inclined to believe the numbers are real than that the numbers are completely fake and nobody has produced any evidence of this.

Vietnam isn't North Korea. It's a country well connected to the world, plenty of people work there that have international connections or come from other countries.

Vietnam also has everything to lose. Lots of companies are moving their factories to Vietnam and China's faltering has been to Vietnam's gains.

It seems more likely to me that the COVID reporting is shoddy, rather than the implementation of some genius plan. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year in Vietnam [1] and you're telling me there's a zero percent chance that some of them were miscategorized? Seems unlikely to me.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101034/vietnam-number-o...

You can look at extra deaths and miscategorization is not a a giant problem.

The extra deaths thing also seems sketchy to me, this early after the outbreak. If someone was within ±12 months of dying and the coronavirus got them, then the death rates of the past month would be higher while the death rates of the next year would still be the same. We are too early to make any statements of fact about it.

You can wait a bit more and average things, but anyway this last point is not part of miss-categorization point I was replying to.

> this last point is not part of miss-categorization point I was replying to

Yes, you're right, and I realized that just as I made the post. But I still don't think that normal rates of death automatically equal coronavirus didn't kill anyone.

You will have a margin of error , my main point is that even if some politicians will push too miss=categorize the deaths, if the numbers are sufficiently large things can't be hidden that way.

Do you have any statistics that show that if I die of COVID then this imply that my probability to live 1 more year was very slim without COVID? This kind of number as less then 1 year seems very non-scientific and more something you would use to push your opinion, like yes 400K people died but 99% of them would ahve been dead anyway in a few months

On a related topic "City [St Petersburg] issues 1,552 more death certificates in May than last year, but Covid-19 toll was 171" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/st-petersburg-...

What Vietnam has done is pretty well documented (1). As a single example, schools were closed in early February.

It would be nice to have 1 fact or even a made-up-fact that the numbers are screwed aside from _they have to be_. But even if we decided that it was impossible for Vietnam to have handled this properly, you'd still be left with the relatively minuscule death rates from Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand.

I grew up in Canada but have lived in Vietnam. There was no doubt in my mind who'd handle this better.

(1) https://theconversation.com/vietnam-has-reported-no-coronavi...

The most infuriating thing about the Sweden situation to me is that Anders Tegnell has claimed that no country has managed to stop or slow down the spread of the virus. Even if you dismiss China's claims due to government meddling (fair enough), Tegnell was being ignorant of a number of other Asian countries at the time he said this.

I know that I'm somewhat jumping to conclusions, but this feels so much like typical Eurocentric ignorance of other parts of the world whenever the latter manages to handle something better than them that it makes my blood boil. Just swallow your pride and acknowledge the findings of others, dammit.

In general there are multiple Asian countries with recent experiences with these kinds of outbreaks - you know, SARS? Would it be so hard to look at their conclusions of which methods of handling past outbreaks worked and didn't work? To learn from their mistakes so we don't have to repeat them in our arrogance?

I don't know if Asian countries should be patting themselves on the backs yet. Here in India, it seemed like we had everything under control in the first 6 weeks of the lockdown.

But now, our cases and deaths are rising fast, just as we're winding down the lockdowns.

Bangalore avoided infections since much of the country was locked down. The real litmus test will be to see how the infection rate holds after the lockdowns end.

Oh I agree - nobody should pat themselves on the back until this is over, and even then I'm sure all countries involved could have handled the situation better.

This is a separate issue from Tegnell ignoring a lot of knowledge that is out there in order to stick to his existing narrative.

I don't know the actual situation on the ground, but here in Europe TV were showing massive crowds of people leaving cities, etc. when the lockdown started in India.

Based on that it seemed unlikely that things were under control...

I saw a similar thing about China in the beginning. When Wuhan went on lockdown something like a million people fled.

Some of my Indian coworkers said their relatives said a mysterious flu was killing some people but they hadn’t made a link to Covid. This was months ago.

I think when they say Asia India is not included.

I usually find that India/Bangladesh/Sri lanka/Pakistan etc are categorized as "the subcontinent"

That said, infection rates in India have been weird.

Despite what they try to convey publicly, Swedes still live with a 19th century mindset. It doesn't even cross their minds that a southern European, yet alone Asian country could outperform them in any way possible because of a subconscious mindset of "Swedes are superior to others".

Haven't seen any Swede question the fact that they gave the absolute power of handling the crisis to some unelected old white male boomer btw.

Anything else you'd like to make up about Sweden while you're at it?

Yes. I miss Abba...

Vietnam's political system is the same as China's. The starting point ought to be as cautious with Vietnamese numbers as with Chinese numbers.

If the massive differences with see among countries turn out to be accurate I suspect that natural causes will be found quite apart from governments' performances in managing the virus. Age, climate, genetic susceptibility, or other natural factors seem to be playing a big role.

Also Japan at all of 900 deaths despite an early start. Articles have been written about government responses and cultural behaviours, but it feels like there's something with a stronger effect out there waiting to be discovered.

A genetic quirk, perhaps? Or maybe a strain of another coronavirus (a kind that gives 'common cold' type symptoms) that has already swept the region and confers some immunity? Presumably people with the right expertise are looking into this sort of question already, but it seems like a lot of media reports are going off half-cocked. I'm not trying to apologise for European or US governments' handling of the crisis, but countries have all reacted differently and it doesn't look like that strong a correlation between their responses and the outcomes.

The simplest explanation that seems potentially correct is - masks and climate. Japan has basically 100% mask wearing rate. The climate in India is probably helpful.

But crazy thought- what if different languages spread this virus at different amounts? some words in English release more droplets than those in other languages? Or because Italians speak more loudly than Japanese?

But I’d vote for simpler explanations.

It’s called sneezing and it sprays droplets everywhere. If you have close to 100% mask use then you can stop the infection rate faster than hand washing alone.

Sneeze visualization.

https://youtu.be/wnafrAtfMzE

Yes, the Italians-speak-loud-and-close theory is both plausible and bleakly funny. It works for New Yorkers as well.

In general, India has dealt unexpectedly well with this health crisis, given it's lack of resources for health care (compared to other large economies).

Bengaluru, in particular, is better off because of relatively lesser number of ghettos compared to other major cities in the country.

Considering it's a hub significantly driven by ITES money, what would be more interesting to watch is how does it come out of it, now that it's quite evident that IT processionals can quite capably work from home.

Would bengaluru still hold the crown of the IT of india or this will finally incentivize the breaking down of budding metro cities?

>>In general, India has dealt unexpectedly well with this health crisis, given it's lack of resources for health care (compared to other large economies).

Resources are overrated in these cases. Instead of modern police batons, bamboo or simply wooden ones will work as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wNQ_V-Ol78 Let's how India does when they have no option but to open up.

Bangalorean here. What I saw was everyone followed the lockdown guidelines very well when it was put in.

A bit worried now as it has relaxed, and the numbers are growing. Not sure if the rate is lower or higher than similar cities. Anyone have data?

Chennai is looking troublesome. ~1000 cases yesterday with a 7m pop compared to ~1200 in Mumbai with 18m pop. Granted, Chennai is testing the highest in number of tests and per capita in Indian big cities and death rate is at 0.8%. ( compared to approx 2.3% for even Bangalore)

According to data collected by Johns Hopkins, India has not yet had any effect on controlling the geometric growth of Corona virus:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

They do not have data broken down by region. Does India not report that?

You can find regionwise data here.

https://www.covid19india.org/

Here in Delhi, the streets were completely empty during the lockdown. But now, it seems like everyone has forgotten it already. Saw people mingling, sniffing, touching the same fruit at the vegetable market yesterday.

Everyone is wearing masks but that's about it.

I'm in a smaller town in TN. Lockdown was respected, but people have all but forgotten about it now. 9/10 people on the street are no longer wearing masks.

I would be surprised if we don't see an uptick soon.

I note the continued comments that are unable to believe that this virus can be contained. While I am highly skeptical that India will be able to keep cases down. Other wealthier countries certainly can.

Since I live in Australia, and hence in a country that has effectively eliminated community spread. I would like to confirm that we did actually stop the virus and the government numbers are absolutely real. Lockdown is basically over, people can socialise again, people are hiring, within-state (but not inter-state) travel is now allowed almost everywhere. People are no longer scared.

I really hope.

My personal belief is that I dont think this question will truly be settled for you gents until July... unless you are truly able to eradicate the virus before then AND shut down air travel during that period

What did Australia do? I can't help it but feel that my country is doing everything absolutely wrong.

"As of 12:00 am June 3, 2020, Chile has 113,628 confirmed cases of COVID-19 within its borders. Chile remains in Phase 4 of the outbreak, i.e., uncontrolled and widespread community transmission."

> I can't help it but feel that my country is doing everything absolutely wrong.

Last year Australia suffer a horrendous year of nation wide bushfires (wildfires) and the current government handled that response very badly.

For that disaster they where very slow to act and appeared to have very little in the way of a plan.

I think they learnt a lot from that earlier mistake, because their handling of the COVID-19 crisis has been almost perfect.

> What did Australia do?

The first response was to limit travel form overseas and to also require anyone coming in from overseas to spend 14 days in quarantine.

The general public also went in lock down.

That meant you could only go outside to buy food, go to the doctor, go to the chemist or go to work and you were also allowed 1 hour of limited exercise every day.

Non essential business where force to close (pub, clubs gyms, restaurants, etc).

Public spaces where people could congregate (i.e. beaches parks etc) where also closed.

Businesses where encouraged to let their workers work from home where possible.

All interstate travel basically came end as many states imposed border closures.

Police would enforce these rules and they would also enforce social distancing rules in public spaces.

For example if you where found to be outside of your local area you would get a fine.

Also if you where found to be loitering in a public space you would get warned and repeat offender fined.

Because of the forced business closures many people became instantly unemployed.

To help with this disruption the government also introduced big changes to the social welfare system to help people with this disruption.

It also introduce anti-eviction laws for renters.

These are just some of the changes made and they all helped the country get on top of the virus.

Now after several months of these restrictions we are seeing the light at the end of what has be a very dark tunnel.

This fits my own experience as an Australian. Nice clear write-up.

One thing I would add is that Australia had a plan ready to go before the pandemic even hit [0]. Complete with already passed legislation.

0. https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Cont...

Thanks for laying it out so clearly. I'm sorry that you had to go through something so terrible, but it's great that you took it as a lesson; we've been through a lot of shit (earthquakes, civil unrest) and simply don't get it.

> To help with this disruption the government also introduced big changes to the social welfare system to help people with this disruption.

Chile has been avoiding getting to this step by sacrificing its citizen's health, and lives.

Reporting and testing across different countries is not equal by any means. I'm always amazed by these headlines that mean literally nothing. Statistics 101? The conclusions you can actually derive by the deviation in deaths YoY https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country are that the least densely populated countries are the ones faring better. Germany being the outlier. Taiwan did great because @n95s for every citizen.

> The inability to control clusters like Dharavi in Mumbai, Koyambedu market in Chennai and the Tablighi Jamaat conference in Delhi, led to these respective city administrations losing control over COVID-19

Being a bit unfair to Chennai there, which was bombarded with both Tablighi Jamaat cluster and Koyambedu (one of Asia's largest vegetable markets)

Also Chennai is testing highest in both units and per capita amongst Indian cities, and death rate is at 0.8% compated to 2.3% for Bangalore which is not mentioned.

Mumbai and Delhi are also massive hubs for international travel, they were going to be the gateways for the virus.

Not sure how to translate that list of cities.

I was frankly surprised that Bangalore has been low given how much tech travel within and outside India happens there. Hopefully things remain manageable as lockdown eases more

True! Bangalore has definitely gotten it right, making it a bright spot in the news coming out of India.

I do remember one thing the Kerala Chief minister said to the Maharashtra CM about the differences between their states and in particular Mumbai - Mumbai has slums.

>"For a population of approximately 1.2 crores, Bengaluru city has had just 385 reported cases of COVID-19(...)"

TIL! https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crore

During the lockdown, normally busy areas of the city have been largely deserted.

Of course, there are concerns that the city likely is under-reporting the incidence of infection, but as for fatality data you cannot hide mass deaths.

It's because they don't test as much and they are not eager to mark deaths as covid-19.

This frankly stupid meme needs to die. Not testing can hide the disaster only for a maximum of 3 weeks, after which the dead start piling up.

Considering that the dead have not being piling up anywhere in India, I'd say India has succeeded in managing it all.

It's easy to hide the number of deaths too. How often does an average person actually see a dead person? Almost never.

Whoever controls the narrative, decides on what numbers to report.

Despite what some sections of the internet might want to portray or believe, India is not a totalitarian state in the vein of China or Vietnam that can effectively censor speech on an almost watertight level. There is no Great Firewall here that can filter internet traffic in real time that such a large scale narrative control requires. And even China with the great firewall was not able to hold this in completely.

Do you think the government would have been able to hide the large number of deaths that would have occurred, if the death rate was the same as reported by Europeans and Americans? It's not easy to hide a large amount of bodies, given that half of the country is ruled by political outfits that oppose the central government.

The dead bodies in real life don't just vanish into thin air like in star wars.

You painting Indian government as this corruption-free bastion is cute. All it takes is a bunch of local government heads to look better than the other regions, and there you go - they report fake numbers. Or it can be worse, they pretend to do N tests, while paying for 1% of N tests, and faking the rest, putting the difference in their pocket.

None of the countries who tried to hide it really succeeded, like Iran or China. There is no reason to believe governments of India or Bangladesh are more competent in this coverup business than those experts.

I'm a Bangladeshi and I don't trust my government a singe bit. Still, I believe that while these numbers may not be exact, they are not wildly off the mark either.

It's not a coverup, they just don't care that much.

The latter half of your sentence is incorrect. I agree we can still do more testing.

India's official numbers are exploding [1]. They were under lockdown, which does not seem to have had any effect and which is now being relaxed. It does not strike me as outstanding management.

I really don't know to make of official numbers in many countries, especially when comparing among countries. They seem to go all over the place and it's hard to make sense of them. Part of it, I think, is that we don't fully understand the virus and I suspect a lot of natural causes will be found to explain some of the differences.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

> Apart from contact tracing, testing the right people helped the state keep a check on the spread.

I see this sentence a little problematic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Namibia with 27 million population did even better. Just 23 cases and no deaths;

1st case was detected on 14th March; Same day Namibia suspended Air travel;

385 reported cases. How many people have they tested?

It's right there in the article, if you could figure how to click on a link.

A well written article would have it in the first paragraph.

I saw the title and i said to myself

"......For now"

This will be a supremely important question to settle in 2 months once moonson season is in full swing

It could completely upend the COVID status quo

The warm climate probably helps the R numbers. That said, I don't think the number is that low given the population density etc..

Ask any India or Vietnam people if they believe the number... don’t be so naive those countries have every things to lose as well

Vietnamese here, we totally trust the number because:

  - Every cases are documented and published on the medias (yes, I know that's not a good thing for privacy) to make contact tracing easier.
  - Vietnam is an authoritarian country with extensive public security apparatus so tracing and quarantining is easy. There have been cases that someone got quarantined because her friend who lives in other country tested positive, and that's after she returned to Vietnam.
  - Also the Communist Party of Vietnam has everything to lose if they can't handle this, so they are serious at containing covid 19. They even used cyber attacks on China to gain intel on how serious Ncov is back in December last year.
  - Most importantly, wartime like mass mobilization helped a lot. Every people did their part, the military set up quarantine camps and check points, disinfecting hotspot. The people cooperated with the guideline: avoiding going out, wearing mask or stay in quarantine if their areas has positive cases (the government will provided food and other necessities).
  - They do everything to keep the number of deaths at zero: The worst case, patient 91, was recently detached from ECMO after 2 months, his lung recovered from 10% to 40% capacity and he has woken up from coma. The cost for his treatment is $200k and counting, and he isn't even a Vietnam national!

Somehow I thought Vietnam was a democratic country.

...that we know of

Is this credible?

Why were Jammu and Kashmir included in their chart? I thought that's not part of India but a part their Hindu party is trying to forcibly take over.

Parts of the region are disputed between India, Pakistan and China. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is a part of India, with regular elections and a functioning assembly, although from time to time the central government keeps intruding in state's affairs and has recently redefined certain parts as a union territory. Citizens of J&K are citizens of India, but have certain special rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammu_and_Kashmir_(union_terri...

J&K is a part of India.

Jammu, Kashmir & Ladakh (incl. Gilgit Baltistan) - is what was known as a J&K.

Post independence in 1947, Nehru was propped up by the British as the first Prime minister of India, he was a pacifist. He was incidentally also a Kashmiri himself.

Pakistan invaded and occupied large parts of the Kingdom. Pakistan then had inherited a disproportionately large army, after their separated from India. And yes they became an Islamic state, and during whose creation between 1920s to 1947 waves of genocide against non-muslims changed the demography from 70% muslim to 97% muslim in Pakistan (claimed number).

China on the other hand invaded and occupied parts of Ladakh known as Aksai Chin after they had invaded Tibet in 1962. This is the place where there is a current standoff, the Chinese threatening to invade more territory.

Technically and historically Kashmir has always been part of India. Radicalisation of the muslim majority population in Kashmir in the 1990, resulted in the ethnic cleansing of half a million Hindus in a matter of 2 weeks. The muslim demography in the valley changed from 76% to 99.9% muslim in those 2 weeks.

This was mostly possible because Pakistan was until then an indespensible allay of the west in their fight against Soviets in Afghanistan.

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