India’s second wave | Hacker News Reader

India’s second wave

ft.com

313 pointsDanBC450 comments

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https://archive.is/VYm6A

Thank you. I don't understand why people continue to post paywalled content on HN.

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

I'm suprised, I know you are the mod, but do you read all comments posted on HN? :D

Not even close!

Thanks! did not see that before. Will keep the complaints to myself :)

The article was not paywalled to me when I posted it.

Seems bullshit paywalls are evolving.

The Indian Government had one job. Prepare for this crisis. They had one year to prepare for it. They did nothing apart from grandstanding,claiming credit for vaccines, and suggesting home remedies and cow urine (not joking) while telling each other that Indians are immune to this virus. These naratives played out across whatsapp groups and yoga guru channels. The health minister even endorsed some of these remedies on TV.

The Prime Minister appears on TV on a regular basis to take credit for all things from all time and sermonise. Rarely has he been insightful or organized. The cabinet of ministers they have also seem to have failed to knock some sense into the Prime Minister and his egotistical proclamations that have put India on to this path.

The death toll is likely to be vast and India should expect generational impact. A resolution will take time, a lot of pain, and lots of external help. In the meanwhile, Indian officials will fudge numbers while the truth is out there for everyone to see in the fires that burn all across India and possibly visbile from space. It's unfortunate that a lack of education leads to populations electing incapable leadership leading to horrendous after effects like these.

So true, the PM still doesn't have the decency to take questions even now. He has not given a single press conference since 7 years. He is just a press conference shy version of Donald Trump. All he can do is claim credit and vanish without completing even a single thing.

The fact that the official numbers are through the roof tell you how bad the unofficial (and real) numbers are.

In the past week, there have been reports from several cities where the number of Covid deaths are measured in single digits - yet crematoriums are so full that people have started cremating their dead ones on sidewalks.

In some places by 20x! https://i.imgur.com/VJHL2VT.jpg

how do they know a cremation was for a covid-19 victim?

You don't, but if the death rates are generally stable and predictable a huge increase during a COVID wave seems highly likely to be related.

There have been plenty of analysis of various countries mortality rates compared to normal years. In general, the trend seems to be that poorer countries have probably missed a lot of COVID deaths due to lack of testing infrastructure and heavily rural populations.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

> You don't, but if the death rates are generally stable [...]

For example: if a crematorium has historically dealt with 20 cremations a week and is now doing 100 a week, you can estimate that 80 people are dying from COVID per week. The estimate is likely to be pretty inaccurate, but it's the best source of information that there is.

Certainly in NYC, I recall that at the worst of the first wave, excess deaths were very correlated with registered COVID deaths and they spiked simultaneously. There were fewer registered COVID deaths than excess deaths, but during the first spike testing wasn't always done, and people who died at home didn't always get a test postmortem.

When there's a COVID spike, most of the excess deaths are people dying of COVID (some might be people dying due to fear of COVID, or hospitals collapsing- arguably still "COVID fatalities" even if they don't test positive).

>>The estimate is likely to be pretty inaccurate

But let's be clear, inaccurate has different meanings - in this context if the official figure is 20 and it turns out that only 40 have died then that's 100% out on the official side and 50% out on the estimated side. In this context the high figure may have far more utility as well - by producing a more appropriate response from the authorities and society.

I'd expect in aggregate at the country level, its fairly accurate.

E.g. its unlikely deaths increased 100%+ across all of india due to existing death-causes.

You also have to take into account how many people are not dying of Covid, but some other diseases because the healthcare system is overwhelmed by covid, and they did not get treatment. Which is immensely more sad. Most of these deaths would have been prevented, if not for Covid.

Exactly it an order of magnitude number that helps you assess the official numbers.

Many people do not get admitted in hospitals (due to lack of beds etc) and they die home. Many of These "at home COVID deaths" do not get recorded as COVID.

By process of elimination. Some of the places are about a thousand mile apart. There aren't too many causes that could explain a simultaneous spike in cremations at all those places coinciding with the nation wide second wave of COVID-19.

The article says, "number of people being cremated at special Covid sites"

COVID-19 victim bodies come in specialized vehicles with PPE-kit-wearing crews, at least as far as I have seen.

I am surprised that there is no skepticism here about the cremation numbers.

1. Crematoriums usually have enough capacity to deal with average death rates. Anything above that and it starts to look horrific.

2. What is the definition of "covid protocol" for cremation? Does it mean the patient had covid? I don't see this clearly stated any where.

3. There might be a delay between the two numbers with crematorium numbers being more current. This also contributes to the "10x".

The numbers are bad enough even without unscientific exaggerations.

I am open-minded about this FT article's claims being accurate, but there

Well, science is all about observations, the idea of people being forced into adhoc cremations on the street is quite an observation.

Is it due to space capacity or labor capacity?

That is an really interesting question - if it's labour capacity then maybe there's a conflation due to cross infection.

Being India, it almost certainly isn't a labor capacity.

I'm in Delhi right now and its truly bad over here. My neighbor was sick and we literally couldn't find a hospital bed for him that had sufficient oxygen. The system is breaking down.

This is what they originally warned us about.

I know well connected people in Delhi who are advisors to the Health ministry and they are unable to find beds for their relatives. Things are truly fucked.

Yeah, have heard the same from friends - IAS officers are unable to find beds for their close family. Remdesivir is being sold at 20-50x retail price.

A colleague at my work from Hyderabad's cousin has it, I don't know how wealthy he is, but he got a bed yesterday in a "good" hospital, I guess there are some areas which are way more affected then others?

A potential future head of our satellite office in Hyderabad has just lost his father. Just 57

Luck and that anecdote doesn't make for information. I'm glad that person has a bed, but it doesn't tell me how people there are, possibly many, possibly none, in Hyderabad in need of a bed that can't get one.

Delhi/Gujarat/UP are worse than other places. It also seems connections are trumping wealth right now.

Kerala as well , not sure if they are trumping wealth here though

I remember the same exact thing being said about Wuhan. That urns were completely sold out, that the gov't was covering it up, just terrible. To date China insists less than 5,000 people died of Covid, though and all of that was conspiracy talk.

If China hadn't tried to put it under the rug, Italy/Europe wouldn't have been so underprepaired (well it also would've helped if the US would have played its usual part as a world leader). But I'm digressing... all the talk about our bad past doesn't alleviate the mistakes we still do today. Those are the most shameful even, where we have so much knowledge about the virus and still take the wrong turns all the time.

Also keep in mind that most East/South East Asian countries had been preparing for a COVID-like event since SARS in 2003.

Sixteen years of preparation, and everything that goes into it, paid off.

The prep of setting up a pandemic task force that the previous US admin did was axed by Bumf.

Thereby probably contributing to / enabling many more tens of thousands of US COVID deaths and the same for suffering, than there need have ever been.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/04/trump-fired-pand...

A lot of this also had to do with the Chinese going all in with their lockdown effort, which made it look like the situation was significantly worse than it actually was (it was bad, but some of the rumors going around at the time made it sound apocalyptic).

Crematorium's in Los Angeles had to get the smog pollution limit lifted so they could cremate more

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...

so this suggests that its not conspiracy talk as all forms of governing systems around the world experienced the exact same issues

all forms of governing systems had bad data, intentionally hidden data, and inadequate forms of transparency depending on whether the person trusted that institution or whether that person was skeptical of that institution

The difference being that reported deaths in Los Angeles county up ‘till now are about 20,000.

I don't believe the CCPs exact figures, but they locked down hard and fast to eliminate the virus and had very extreme contact tracing and wore masks. The results are in line with liberal democracies have achieved with the same mitigations.

It's terrible but not unheard of. The same thing happened in Italy too and possibly in Wuhan. India is going to have a terrible period, but not very much worse than other cases like Northern Italy, London, New York, Belgium, Brazil, etc..

This Govt has been lying so consistently that people have stopped asking now.

It’s surreal in its darkest sense. It’s killing out there. People are dying on hospital floors lying and running out of air in their lungs because let alone oxygen cylinders there are not even empty simple beds of stretchers.

Daily deaths are easily in high 5 digits. At least!

High walls have been put around the place where pyres are burnt (so that they can easily fudge the numbers). There's no accountability. There has not been any since last 3-4 years now. Most of the media any is Govt mouthpiece. Every machinery/pillar of the state has been subverted and subjugated - press, election commission, judiciary. Indian bureaucracy was anyway always as bad as it gets.

A week ago one of the cities (Bhopal) released death count as 4. A local newspaper flew a drone above one COVID funeral ground and in its main page printed the photo of the burning pyres (those are COVID specific funerals). In that one drone shot at least 20+ pyres were burning. They put the number as 112 (or more) [0]

Govt released death count = 4

Min. number of deaths (as many the news paper was able to track) = 112

And this was just one city (tier 2 at that) and 7 days ago!

[0] (image of burning pyres - please decide if you want to click the link) https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/16/burning-pyres-telling...

This is what I feared the first time would be, but somehow the virus spared India. The first time around majority of the population was careful, masked up and stayed indoors. The death was super low. That caused people to get over confident, people believed that covid is not harmful in the country and they fully ignored it. Now there is an Indian variant of the virus which apparently and the infection rates and deaths are up.

Still a small fraction of what Europe has experienced.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

There are serious indications that India is under-reporting death count by a factor of 5-50x. Despite showing 5-10x lower death rate in your source, it was rare for European crematoriums have backlogs like in India [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/india/non-stop-cremations-cast...

Wouldn’t the opposition parties, independent media, foreign watchdogs raise the alarm if that was the case (prior to the current strain)? This would’ve been a golden opportunity to discredit the ruling government.

My (Indian) wife says that the media just print the good things their party does because if they printed dirt about their opponents, those people would print dirt about them.

Because no one have correct numbers to be frank. Media sometimes does act responsibly can be one of other reasons as well.

But as people pointing here, Indian govt surely not controlling all media outlets. They does manage couple though.

The doctors in my family all openly say that the real numbers are at least bigger by a factor of 10.

This is varying a lot by state according to doctors I am connected to. UP and Gujarat are definitely fudging deaths by 5-10x, Karnataka seems to be more or less in line with reported deaths.

If the any of the "independent media" does this, they get censored for spreading "false covid information". It's painted as a conspiracy theory almost immediately.

No, arrests and convictions for spreading "misinformation" and "fake news" are very brutal in India currently (at least for those who aren't on the government's side).

There is no reason to under report, because the government provides funds for everything. They may over report it, rather than under report it.

In Slovakia there were ice truck parked on the street, because crematoriums were full.

Isn't cremation the go to in India, but second to burials in places like Europe?

cremation is the majority option in northern europe and UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cremation...

I see, still pretty far from India’s 84% though. UK, Sweden, and Denmark are in the 70s, and everything else is lower.

And Belgium counted every possible related death as covid related.

Overreporting 100%

Now that excess mortality figures are available for comparison, Belgium's reporting looks in line with e.g. France or Israel:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.21250604v...

As in several other countries, Belgium's excess mortality was lower than the number of reported COVID deaths, but that's most likely because there was a lower number of flu deaths than usual.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

Looks like we are now over-counting instead of undercounting as we were a few months ago. Well, maybe, since things like car crashes and suicides are down in most places so excess would be negative with lockdowns but without COVID.

Last peak was around october. It was expected to go higher due to reduced restrictions and coming up festivals. But instead it came down drastically. There were many articles on what caused it to go down(weather, sanitation, food etc). Now in peak summer April suddenly its going up. Its a sharp rise. Would be interested to know the cause of the sudden rise in coming months.

The new variants seem to be far more infectious, and this time make up a majority of infections.

I wonder if epidemiologists have confidence taken in account in their modesls. Probably but still.. it seems such a natural social bounce after extreme fear then lower rates..

Mask and isolation fatigue sets in.

I was traveling to India during March (Mumbai area) and immediately concerned about the lack of masks and possibility of super spreader events like kumbh - https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/indias-covid-conundrum. Unfortunately the worst case scenario has happened and it will now take time for the lockdowns to take into effect and the cases to reduce.

For those in India, please support healthcare workers. This is something I wrote about in another post - https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/healthcare-services-in-indi...

Holi + Mahashivratri + Kumbh + IPL + election rallies

Based on over a year's worth of global data, it is reasonable to highly correlate confirmed positive infections with death counts, with only the degree varying from 2% to 6%.

Using "official" numbers alone, and the exponential growth they have exhibited in the past week, it is impossible to deny that an unmitigated disaster is unfolding before our eyes in India.

Speculate and blame all you want, the situation is deadlier and more real than we have seen globally thus far.

It seems to me the most appropriate reaction is to be aghast, and ask "How can I help?"

Shipping vaccines and materials needed for vaccine manufacture would be a good start.

Reversing this would be good too. https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/11/rich_countries_block_...

Agree. It's disappointing that embargoes on exporting vaccine materials to a country, who under normal circumstances produces so much vaccine for the world, are a matter of emergency use policy.

There are 1.3B people in India. There is no way a vaccine is going to arrive in time or be injectable at a scale that matters. If that was a solution, I'd be all for it, but it is not.

The population pyramid there skews heavily young, so it won’t take nearly as many vaccines to protect the most vulnerable.

You’re missing the issue. Once hospital access is unavailable, the death rate spikes.

Young people are absolutely at risk. I can probably name a dozen <45 who required hospitalization, most briefly. Most of those folks had some impact for weeks or months.

The India variant, B.1.617, is a double mutation that seems to effect younger populations. The new explosion in cases is purported to be related to this variant and is said to be more transmissible than the South African variant.

Making sure that at least the health care people are taken care of would be a good start.

They do have vaccines that they are manufacturing in country.

Are they sufficient to have vaccinated all their health care people?

And here's a good article explaining why waiving vaccine intellectual property rights is a misguided area of focus: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/03/15/vaccine-co...

Only if you take a constrained view of what constitutes "property rights."

The emergence of an even worse variant is potentially catastrophic, at least economically - our government can compel Pfizer or Moderna to release the details of the vaccine production process to producers in developing nations or publicly.

> Using "official" numbers alone

Those are corroborated by sentinel cases in Australia. The rate has risen to the point where quarantine is struggling to cope, and the doctors' union has suggested a complete ban on flights from India.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-21/nt-covid-active-cases...

>"How can I help?"

NGOs with selfless people are the ones which saved many from perishing on the roads during national lock-down in the first wave, Now they are the ones again helping the needy in the second wave where states, unions are taking the initiative for lock downs upon themselves; Yet the result is is same - Poor suffer and perish.

Those who wish to help, please donate to those NGOs. I'm not going name any to avoid spiraling this into another slug-fest and so I'm including a 'List of NGOs providing relief during Covid-19'[1] from the Govt. itself.

[1]https://www.investindia.gov.in/bip/resources/list-ngos-provi...

The problem with subcontinent countries is that their citizens mostly believe in pseudo science promoted by religious celebrities. Yesterday I was reading that Baba Ram Dev has suggested to inhale olive oil which will push covid-19 virus in stomach where it'd be killed by stomach acid. Such ppl exist here in Pakistan too one way and other and I see ppl don't bother to use masks when going mosques. Not sure what kind of stuff do these guys smoke.

It's also a problem in the United States - led by Dr Oz and Fox News

I haven't heard this particular Baba Ramdev remedy, though I don't think he'd suggest olive oil - he'd pick something native.

Part of the issue in the Indian middle class (with presumably similar things in Pakistan) is the strong desire to find wisdom in old folk remedies. I can't begin to count the number of WhatsApp forwards early in the pandemic touting gargling with salt water as a means to combat the virus. That, or nigella seeds, ginger, tulsi, ghee, etc.

Yes Asians have lots of such hacks based on wisdom of ancient ppl. Many work too. My only concern is ppl don't take precautions like masks etc after following such hacks. In Pakistan ppl started taking a Herb based on Prophet Hadith which has nothing to do with this covid-19. Some one recommend and everyone started following as a religious obligatory. Many suffered from dirrehea . My friend died due to one of these hacks. He took no mask, got severe congestion and died.

Sorry to hear about your friend.

While these nuskas might work for some things, it's the sheer confidence with which they were touted to work on COVID-19. Gargling with warm salt water might help with the symptoms of congestion, but will it eliminate coronaviruses before they take hold? The WhatsApp forwards virtually offered guarantees: "do this everyday and you'll never get COVID-19"

"Our ancestors didn't have such problems because they ate lots of ghee", etc etc

> Not sure what kind of stuff do these guys smoke.

Pretty sure they know whatever they say is slander, it's just the invisible hand of monetary incentives doing its job. Who knew public stupidity could be leveraged to such an extent.

Many out here are saying that "the system has collapsed".

They are _SO_ wrong. We never _had_ a system to begin with, in the first place!

Our "system" is only _EXPOSED_ now, to the entire world.

What's seen and exposed now, is what had been operational for the last 30 odd years. Everything needs some strings to be pulled and some hands made warm with a stash of notes.

A nation full of mostly meek, timid, inherently corrupt people all of a sudden wondering that "our system has failed! uiuiuiui!"

Indian nation had a grand opportunity at getting better. The Indian public just shat on it and smeared cowdung listening to the right wing propaganda. Now, let them drown in cow-urine / dung.

This might sound like a dark humor but yesterday the issue of Oxygen shortage came up in Supreme Court of India. (For the uninitiated Indian Supreme Court acts a bit like village elder where they can give any random order to government for any reason even if there is no actual lawsuits under consideration.)

Supreme court asked Government what their plan to increase Oxygen supply is and if they are planning to import it. The government's response is that they have floated a "tender" and have received 3-4 quotes. (Note that, many hospitals in India right now have < 24 hours of Oxygen supply).

Supreme court then asked government to force steel and petrolium factories to divert their oxygen to hospitals because steel and petrolium is not important. :)

When hospitals run out of oxygen you end up with ICUs full of corpses:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/world/middleeast/egypt-ho...

Seems like a rational thing to want to avoid, even if you have to screw steel mills for a little while.

In India Supreme Court can do the governing?!

Yes. Judicial overreach is as common as bribery in India.

Lockdowns hurt poor people very badly; they need to earn to survive. All the more reason everyone should mask up. And yet, most people stopped masking months ago. Crowds are as bad as they were in 2019.

On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it.

The central and state governments have mismanaged plenty of things. While they deserve their share of blame, the ordinary people have only made matters worse. Chin-mask, no-mask, herbal "remedies", religious gatherings, weddings, engagements, naming ceremonies... the list goes on.

As a truly perfect representative of the people, the chief minister here got COVID once, got vaccinated, and then got COVID a second time.

I wish people gave a bit more shit about protecting themselves properly, I see too many half-assed mask wearing (with the nose out) around. Or people thinking being masked means they can just hover near others.

I also wish that governments try to inform more, I don't really see anyone saying "Ventilate more!" like this research results suggest they should: https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-a... .

> I wish people gave a bit more shit about protecting themselves properly

I wish people gave a bit more shit about protecting others properly. The people who don't wear masks properly are the ones who think only about themselves ("this mask won't protect me anyway") and don't care about how masks help protect the people around them.

Absolutely this.

People who refuse to wear a mask around others, or intentionally wear one poorly are just telegraphing how little they care for other people.

I'm vaccinated, why the hell should I wear a mask besides the fact that the government says so? The odds of me having any detectable viral load to transmit are extremely low. [1]

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0329-COVID-19-Vacci...

> I'm vaccinated, why the hell should I wear a mask

0. To prevent fresh distribution of constantly mutating variants so that we don't lose this wonderful chance we currently have of ending the pandemic. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/health/coronavirus-...

1. Signaling to intransigent anti-vax anti-maskers that wearing a mask is the right thing to do for the sake of others, because social messaging works.

2. Making it harder for intransigent anti-vax anti-maskers to blend in.

3. Informing others around you in a communicating society that you care about them, because nobody but you knows that you're vaccinated.

4. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belt-and-suspende...

b. It costs you nothing.

I'll probably think of other reasons later, but these seem good enough for now.

So it is really about signaling your affiliation at this point. At least you admit it. I wore a mask since last summer but the idea that I still need to wear it for no medical purpose, when over half of eligible Americans have received at least one shot and that number is rising every day, is just pure performative politics.

And the cost isn’t zero. It prevents others from seeing my face which is a critical component of social interaction. This was an acceptable cost last fall when cases were surging and we had no cure, but now it’s just ridiculous. I’ll get downvoted I’m sure, but if the mask mandates continue past May it’ll be a very strong sign that they were never primarily about following the science.

> no medical purpose

The first reason I gave was medical. Maybe you missed it? It's the one marked with a 0.

> It prevents others from seeing my face

I'm sure it's a very nice face. What if you carry a photo of it on a necklace? Best of both worlds.

> over half of eligible Americans have received

"Eligible" is a weasel word in this context because it artificially constrains the set of people that you're taking into account who can breed and transmit mutated strains. Fewer than half of all Americans have received at least one shot so far. That is improving rapidly, of course, but there are also a number of mutated variants currently in the wild with more to come, and we should all want to stop them from gaining traction because we all want to live our lives.

When we get to a point soon where the only people without immunity are either intransigent anti-vaxxers (for whom its their own fault if they get sick) or small children (who only get sick very rarely from covid, much more rarely than even young adults) then we can just ignore the disease as a society. Yes, over time variants will evolve and cause cold like symptoms in vaccinated people, but that's how every single common cold came about originally! Doctors have been saying since last year that this would happen with covid too.

The idea being thrown around that people should continue to wear masks for the rest of their lives is just not justifiable.

> for whom its their own fault if they get sick

You appear to be focusing exclusively on individuals instead of on the fact that spreading to to those individuals also rolls the dice on new mutated strains that could kill another half million Americans and cause major vascular and neurologic harm in millions more, including those who are already vaccinated. Protecting the intransigent from themselves also protects everyone else.

> for the rest of their lives

This is a straw man. Everyone advocating for mask use has the goal of stamping out the disease so that wearing masks stops being clearly beneficial.

> The idea being thrown around that people should continue to wear masks ... is just not justifiable.

From a public health perspective it would be. On one side we have the potential for significantly reduced viral transmission (all oronasal-route viruses, not just COVID19) across populations and fewer people getting sick and dying every year, and on the other side we have your pretty smile. Everyone who decides that they can still interact socially without spitting on each other has actually a perfect justification for wanting everyone to continue using masks.

You appear to be communicating in very immediate self-oriented terms ("_I'm_ vaccinated", "odds of _me_ having", "_my_ face") while the people you're arguing against are focusing on a bigger scale of effect that accounts for what happens when the virus that killed more than half a million people in a year in the US alone and which appears to cause serious long-term harm in survivors is allowed to mutate in unvaccinated people.

If you've reached your 95% resistance level from the vaccine, then I don't think it's particularly egregious to not wear a mask.

I'm sorry my two sentences didn't cover every single nuance of the complicated topic!

I will say, I think there is value to wearing a mask even after being vaccinated, as a symbol of social cohesion, but I totally accept someone deciding that isn't a good enough reason to wear a mask. But, if you don't wear a mask because you've hit your vaccine resitence level, I don't think you're being selfish.

That said, I still support a business or individual's right to require all people to wear a mask on their premises. After all, it might be impractical for them to properly screen who has and hasn't worn a mask.

Indian people are very selfish in general unfortunately. Living in a resource-starved environment would do that to you.

This is hyper generalization without any references to back the assertion.

This is not a scientific paper. Sometimes sharing your experience/opinion for a place you grew up and lived your whole life, is ok too

I think putting the blame on people for weddings, religious ceremonies (aka normal everyday life which is going to happen, even during the Afghanistan War people had wedding celebrations despite the danger) is misguided.

Governments are getting rightful blame. I think the media also don't help. How many stupid news outlets were saying that Indian people have some kind of genetic immunity to COVID with absolutely no evidence of any such thing? That affects people more than one wedding.

The virus does not care what you consider misguided. Make all the excuses you want, but crowds lead to spreading of airborne diseases.

Sure, but disease containment is not (or should not be) the sole metric to optimize for.

Edit: grammar fix

Problem is people don't understand exponential growth, whenever the R number if >1 you're totally screwed, even if just 1 person is infected

The virus may spread in whatever way it does, but what public-health measures are to be used to respond to it, have to have some kind of mandate from the population. Already in several countries the authorities have chosen not to impose tighter restrictions on gatherings because the population has shown that it would flaunt them. In that case, public-health officials have to change their messaging to e.g. encouraging those gathering to do so outdoors, where transmission is less likely.

If only there were some way to punish people who violate government mandated measures. Like, I don't know, maybe we could dress some people up with a uniform and badge, and give them the authority to stop violators and "fine" or "incarcerate" them. Some kind of "justice system" or something. I don't know, this is a new invention I'm coming up with on the fly.

We had this problem in the USA, too. All these "mandates" flying around, and governments congratulating themselves over their stay-at-home "orders", yet very little to nothing in the way of enforcement. We seem to be able to enforce drunk driving and seatbelt laws, but when it comes to masks and preventing gatherings, we're flummoxed! Suddenly, nobody knows how to enforce the rules anymore!

One cannot always just tell police to enforce restrictions and that is that. Courts have the right to review laws and decrees, after all, and in some countries courts have found that the government exceeded its authority by imposing mask laws, social distancing, or business closures. Consequently, police could give you a fine, but that fine would be dismissed when you go to court. After a series of defeats in court, ruling parties may then ask police to stop enforcing the restrictions, because the embarrassment could help cost them the next election.

Again, COVID restrictions ultimately require some kind of mandate from the people. If a country’s government is unable to legally impose restrictions within its current constitutional order, and it is unable to gather sufficient votes to amend the constitution, then it will simply have to limit itself to public-health measures that the people will accept.

That's a horrible idea in today's social/political climate. Just try visualizing a police officer trying to arrest a black person for not wearing a mask. Or police being sent to gatherings in black neighborhoods. Sorry but I'd rather have more covid deaths than more riots and possibly a race war in my country.

Why would the color of their skin have anything to do with it?

It has everything to do with it when it comes to the U.S. If we were another country, maybe it would be acceptable to have police harrass people for not wearing masks. But in the U.S., giving police the license to harrass people minding their own business will inevitably result in more police brutality that affects some races more than others.

So, you shouldn't have laws at all, because they're enforced unevenly against some races? Is that what you're saying? I'm outspoken against police overreach and misconduct and even I won't go that far.

I wouldn't say that we shouldn't have laws. I just think it would be best for society if we avoided doing shit that will cause more riots. I think it's called consequentialism? Not sure. Whether or not it's a good idea to arrest/fine people who don't wear masks, I know for a fact that it will lead to disproportionately more black and brown people being at best fined/harrassed or at worst killed by police. So I am against it.

> Whether or not it's a good idea to arrest/fine people who don't wear masks, I know for a fact that it will lead to disproportionately more black and brown people being at best fined/harrassed or at worst killed by police. So I am against it.

In the context of the US, how does this differ from any other law? It sounds to me like this would lead to a situation where if people make it difficult enough to enforce the law then that law will stop applying to them.

I wish it wasn't like this, but it is what it s.

It’s public health. If your policies get people sick, then you’ve failed at managing public health. You can blame whomever you like but ultimately you’ve failed.

haven't been keeping up with updates from there but what's with vaccinated people getting the disease? is that common there due double mutant variant(s)?

Some have only had one dose . Vaccination does not always prevent infection, but it does reduce severity of disease we are told.

I don't know how much the mutations have to do with it. But the Indian studies show a reinfection rate of 4.5% [1]. Apparently, it is common among the elderly [2]. Our CM is 78.

[1] https://science.thewire.in/health/icmr-defines-interval-for-...

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/covid-reinfection-rare-...

None of the vaccines are 100% effective. A 74% effective (at preventing symptoms) vaccine (like Oxford/AstraZeneca) means 26% of people can still get the disease (and likely some more can get infected, without getting disease symptoms). A 95% effective (at preventing symptoms) vaccine like the Pfizer/BioNTech one means 5% of people can still get symptoms (and likely some more can get infected, without getting disease symptoms).

The vaccines effectiveness is (mostly) a factor of how well they prevent the disease COVID-19. It's NOT a direct indication of how well they prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2, since not all infections cause COVID-19 (some are asymptomatic) but it seems to be a reasonably close bound.

> 74% effective (at preventing symptoms)

Preventing "moderate symptoms", which is enough symptoms that the typical person would stay home from work.

"mild symptoms" means people notice they were more tired than usual, but otherwise didn't feel like it was bad enough to stay home.

"Severe" symptoms, which means people went to a hospital to get treated.

-----------

The 74% and 95% numbers you quoted were against "moderate" symptoms in the Phase 3 trials. IIRC, all vaccines were 100% effective against "hospitalizations" and "death" (severe).

-------

With that being said, it seems like the asymptomatic effectiveness is something like 60% to 80% (depending on the vaccine). That is: if we constatly do COVID19 tests to check for ASYMPTOMATIC infection, we still see a major reduction in asymptomatic COVID19 in vaccinated individuals.

"IIRC, all vaccines were 100% effective against "hospitalizations" and "death" (severe)."

Very close to 100%, but not quite. In US state of Ohio, 2.8 million vaccinated, 14 hospitalizations from breakthrough cases, all folks with multiple co-morbidities that would have killed them. So, 14/2.8 million = about 99.9995 % over about two months.

The 100% figure was specific to the "in the Phase 3 trials" tidbit I left in my post.

Apologies if that was unclear. With only 30,000 people or 40,000 people in the phase 3 trial, its impossible to differentiate between 99.99% and 100%. We can only see how far above 99.99% we've gotten by deploying to the public.

Pretty sure it's worse than that. The number that dictates how accurate the "100% effective against hospitalizations and death" stat from the trials can be isn't the total number of people in the trial, it's the much smaller number of people in it who were hospitalized and died. In reality, I don't think that's enough to differentiate between 90% and 100%, and honestly it'd probably be pretty hard to rule out 80% either.

There have been 74 breakthrough COVID19 deaths in the USA so far. (Number of people who were vaccinated, but died of COVID19 anyway). 9 of those cases were not attributed to COVID19, but lets stick with the bigger 74 number for "steelman" purposes.

In contrast, there have been anywhere from 1000 to 3000 deaths PER DAY due to COVID19. The only question remaining is: how far back do we go to count COVID19 deaths. Do you want to start in January, or do you want to start in February? Vaccination started in December, maybe we should include December deaths?

The month of February 2021 was well in excess of 50,000 COVID19 deaths. (2000 to 3000 COVID19 deaths per day every day through Feburary). Estimating that to a round number is ~70,000 or so.

74 breakout deaths vs 70,000-ish total deaths puts us in the 99% effective range already. And that's after I've "steelman" chosen lots of numbers not very favorable to my argument.

It seems like a verifiable fact that the vaccines are well in excess of 99% effective against death. How much so (99.9% or 99.99%???) is a mystery to be left for someone who is better at analyzing these statistics.

--------

The USA is currently experiencing 700 deaths/day due to COVID19. Its not over. As the death count of the unvaccinated population rises day-after-day, it will only make the safety results of the vaccine more and more certain.

I believe that 74% and 95% are efficacy values. The actual effective values would be lower.

What's the difference?

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/what-difference-between-ef...

>Efficacy is the degree to which a vaccine prevents disease, and possibly also transmission, under ideal and controlled circumstances – comparing a vaccinated group with a placebo group. Effectiveness meanwhile refers to how well it performs in the real world.

Got it, and will check that link out, thanks.

The initial tests prior to approval looked to see if severe infection could be reduced. Follow up studies have shown that they are also effective at preventing transmission.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/yes-vacci...

>While they deserve their share of blame, the ordinary people have only made matters worse. Chin-mask, no-mask, herbal "remedies", religious gatherings, weddings, engagements, naming ceremonies... the list goes on.

Culture does not change in a day even at desperate times.

Government should ban gathering and events.

Even my extended family is planning to attend a wedding despite huge risk in doing so, why? In India attending someone's wedding is very important and basis for building social wealth. If you don't attend others wedding, they'll not attend yours. As simple as that, all families live in this fear of having no one attending wedding of their daughter or son that they take this massive risk to arrived at the wedding of their friends and relatives.

Only strict government rule can fix this, otherwise I've heard misinformed people claiming that Coronavirus is just a hoax by government and no one is dying, why can't you attend the wedding if the everyone is coming. Unfortunately, you can't teach the people who hold this view, you only lose to them if you try to use reason.

The UK changed culture around weddings and funerals see teh Late Prince Phillips funeral.

The UK is very individualistic when compared to India. So the UK experience doesn’t translate so readily.

In the UK it was the funeral of a single dead rich guy and a singular instance. OP just said that weddings are the basis for societal wealth. Without an alternative in an already poor nation, how do you expect them just to change, shrug their shoulders and say oh well, guess we are poor forever now.

Or stop treating women as cash cows maybe

You’re missing the point - how do you think people find marriage partners there? Often at other people’s weddings.

"Only strict government rule can fix this" kind of applies to the UK. We had quite a lot of rules and fines threatened.

Seems pretty unlikely the commoners banned from attending the funeral procession are worried the queen will fail to attend their own funeral now.

They did stick to the 30 max attendees rules

In addition to the financial, the environmental strain is intense too. City living with the kind of strict lockdowns imposed was to say the least claustrophobic.

What is surprising is misinformation around the variant when there isn't definitive evidence on its morbidity or contagion. The obvious cause is a population letting its guard down!

Non-paywall link:

https://californianewstimes.com/it-is-much-worse-this-time-i...

What I don't get is why we call ourselves democracies and speak as "lockdowns hurt poor people very badly"

In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.

locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does.

It's like this pandemic is proving one thing - that we suck at democracy and we're not willing to do anything to fix it because we don't want to change how it works for so few when it doesn't work for exponentially more - as long as we're part of the so few, we'll turn a blind eye.

Canada, Australia & New Zealand (and I'm sure many other countries) have done an excellent job providing money to people who are stuck at home because they can't go to work. Here in Canada it was $500/week for 28 weeks, then you moved onto a different scheme if you still needed support. Everyone who needed it go it. We have not been desperately waiting for a pittance of $1200.

Be careful not to generalize that all democracies have done a poor job just because some have.

>> We have not been desperately waiting for a pittance of $1200.

No, we've been desperately waiting for vacinnes after being repeatedly promised there will be plently for everyone ("look at all these contracts we've signed!") while they pay you off with massive borrowing that someone is going to be responsible for when the music stops.

Meanwhile Texas, the poster-child for bad behaviour, is headed back to normal.

Texas is not normal :)

Most of us are staying home still, in the major cities we collectively wear masks regardless of our goofy gov. Large places of employment still aren't opening offices and many that are talking about opening are doing so with the realization it won't be like it used to be...

Not sure where you live - but I travel full time in an RV and have stayed and traveled through El Paso, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and everywhere in between in the last 3 months. Maybe some are still hiding at home, but from my experience the overwhelming majority of Texans seem to be out enjoying the sunshine and open businesses.

Living in Austin I would say it’s a mix, but the main thing is that you now have about a third of people (including most of the high risk) who are vaccinated (at least the first dose) and joining the ... 1/5? Or so? ... who “don’t believe in COVID.”

Combined that’s a decent chunk of the population getting back out. I think it’s still quiet compared to normal, but it sure seems like one giant party compared to the last year. It’s really hard to subjectively judge these things.

Yeah, the traffic is starting to suck again!

Agree. White collar workers are mostly working from home. But everyone is out and about (mostly wearing masks). Most fast food restaurants have their dining rooms closed, but plenty of sit down places.

> Meanwhile Texas, the poster-child for bad behaviour, is headed back to normal.

Fifty THOUSAND people died in Texas. I'm not sure how anyone can hold it up as a *good" comparison.

The population of Texas is 29,000,000 - so even (incorrectly) assuming that these 50,000 people died exclusively from Covid and not compounded by several co-morbities... that's 0.17% of the state's population. And even as a factor of the number of cases in TX (2.84mil, last check), that comes to 1.7%.

At 1,721 deaths per million of population, if Texas were a country it would be the 16th worst on the planet.

Ranking 16th worst out of 198 is not an enviable or "good" place to be.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?new

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/

It's a fairly typical place for a western country to be at this stage of the pandemic. Because of the way the disease spread via inter-country travel from, mostly, Italy and surrounding countries, the developed western world was hit first - and because people have to be tested in order for their deaths to be recorded as Covid-19 related, only countries with a reasonably well-developed healthcare system and economy actually report meaningful death counts. (The US in particular had really widespread testing compared to almost everyone else during the whole time period where it had a widespread Covid-19 outbreak - though the mainstream media gave the opposite impression for partisan political reasons.)

The CDC failures at the beginning were a stitchup by the Democrats? Quick, write your article in time for the Pulitzer!

The reporting on the CDC's failures certainly was a stitchup on behalf of the Democrats. For example, the US had a really aggressive rollout of Covid-19 testing compared to Europe and other places which would've left it much better equipped to spot community spread early on when the number of cases was still small - right up until the point the reagents turned up at labs and didn't work, and ages was wasted working out why. Turns out some nominally well-qualified, non-partisan CDC official had covered up the fact the tests were contaminated and let them roll out to labs anyway. You wouldn't know this from the media reporting which inverted the blame, telling their readers it was Trump and his administration which decided not to have widespread Covid testing, that any screw-ups were due to his political appointees, and literally had people begging in the NYT comments section for career CDC staff to take over the running of the whole pandemic response because at least they were competent, unlike Trump and co.

I think you are letting Trump appointees at the CDC off far too easily: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cd...

'McGowan reached his breaking point when Redfield asked him to stop the deportation of a dog, according to people who worked closely with him.

In late June, a Peace Corps volunteer evacuated from West Africa was told that the rabies vaccine of her dog, a terrier mix named Socrates, was not valid. Rabies vaccines are marked with pink dye, and a photo of Socrates’ vaccination showed a clear liquid, a CDC email said. Border authorities said Socrates had to be sent back to Africa, revaccinated and quarantined there for 28 days before returning. The Peace Corps volunteer sparked a #SaveSocrates outcry on social media.

CDC experts told McGowan that the last foreign dog with rabies that slipped through had cost more than $500,000 in public health charges, including shots for 44 people who had been near the animal, an email shows. Making an exception threatened to render the policy unenforceable for the 500 animals that are deported every year.

At a time when the pandemic had killed nearly 130,000 Americans, McGowan spent an hour and a half on the phone with the HHS general counsel and other senior officials to figure out how to make an exception for a dog. All the while, he told colleagues, his mind kept returning to the fact that the same administration was using the CDC’s quarantine power to deport thousands of children at the border with Mexico.

Later that day, Brian Harrison, the HHS chief of staff and a former labradoodle breeder, announced the liberation of Socrates. Secretary Azar tweeted out the news with the hashtag #SaveSocrates.

Privately, McGowan fumed.

“He was sad, downtrodden and defeated,” a colleague said. “This was really the final straw for him: How we are going to let dogs in, but basically we’re going to require children to be carted off and out of the country? And all in the name of public health.”

McGowan resigned in August.

The following month, Caputo took a medical leave after he hosted a live video on his personal Facebook in which he accused “deep state scientists” of “sedition” and warned his followers to stock up on ammunition in anticipation of political upheaval. In that rant, which was reported by The New York Times, Caputo said CDC scientists had only changed out of their sweatpants to meet at coffee shops and plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next.”'

> It's a fairly typical place for a western country to be at this stage of the pandemic

I'm horrified you can waive it away as "fairly typical" for a western country when Texas has a deaths/1 million population 3 times that of Canada, 4 times that of Denmark and on and on.

Denmark has about half the Covid-19 deaths per capita of the next highest European country based on the figures I've found. They're very much not typical. Neither is Canada, though I haven't been able to figure out what gave them such good results early on since they didn't do anything that unusual and it really doesn't seem to have lasted (their new infection rate crossed that of the US and hit an all-time high recently). Denmark's the usual combination of being reasonably well distanced from Italy geographically and geopolitically, strict border closures starting in March 2020, and a certain amount of lockdown and social distancing mixed in - there's a handful of countries like that with reasonable results. (The other Nordic countries minus Sweden, New Zealand, and Australia spring to mind. Think there's a few others as well, but not many.)

Thank you, a little dose of practical perspective with numbers, instead of all-caps hysteria with descontextualizad mentions of thousands.

I second this - I also appreciate the numbers. Another way to look at this (29 million people in Texas, 50k deaths) is that 1 of every 580 people in Texas died of covid. Just a tiny bit better than the national average.

You realize that the stimulus check comes with a cost right? You almost sound like government can just give arbitrary money to citizens but isn't willing to do so.

The cost of not doing stimulus is much much higher than the cost of doing it, though.

You can absolutely give money to citizens. The government is FOR and BY the citizens. If the citizens agree to shutdown, they can agree to provide a means to continue society through the shutdown.

The notion that we can't do this, is the one i have problems with because its absurd.

You can do this, but it has consequences. Money is not inherently valuable. It's a medium we use to store and exchange value inherent to scarce goods and services which people demand. To be a stable representation of value, money must also be scarce. This is a fundamental concept of economy, not something decided on and enforced by government.

The money a government gives to citizens must come from somewhere. They could liquidate assets owned by the government, borrow it from another government, take it from entities who are subject to the government's authority (taxes), or - what I assume you're getting at - just make more of it.

That last one isn't as simple as it sounds because it doesn't increase the cumulative value of the currency. Printing dollars is like dividing a pizza into more and more slices. It doesn't increase the amount of pizza. Inflation is a very real problem that has annihilated economies.

Funny how none of that ever comes up when we're discussing bailing out corporations. Quantitative easing by itself was several trillions of dollars arbitrarily invented, let alone the various bank and corporate bailouts over the past decade. And don't forget that we literally allow banks and such to print money and stocks on demand (aka leverage) to allow them to make money.

In any case, value fiat money is not a product of rarity, it is a statement of the value of future tax receipts. Money encodes/is an exchange marker for work done or promises of work to be done.

It does come up with regards to bailouts. There are tons of people who are opposed to corporate bailouts and who worry about inflation and a ton of problems created by the zero interest rate policy etc.

Less than 6% of the stimulus funds went to pay people, most of the money went into tax savings for banks and big companies (that clearly hadn't stopped eating avocado toast and starbucks coffee and hadn't salted away money for emergencies /s)

We could have done a blanket shutdown for 1 month, paid everybody to stay home and it would have cost multiple order magnitudes less than the current nightmare approach, that not only still impacted the economy, also caused 100's of thousands of dead people. This was a preventable catastrophe, caused because corporations are better represented and more important to our politicians than actual citizens. Thanks Citizen's United for legalizing blatant corruptions /s

The US paid a lot more than the $1200, in the form of unemployment supplements.

$600 a week at the beginning of the pandemic through July and then $300 a week this year, in addition to a second $2000 payment that went out to more than furloughed or unemployed people.

How does it compare to France, Denmark and the UK though?

I dunno, I just updated the first paragraph to make it more clear that I was responding to the $1200 (I replaced "that" with "the $1200").

Pretty sure it's much more generous than the UK for everyone except the well-off. In many cases the US managed to pay more than 100% of people's previous salaries in unemployment, structured to be most generous compared to their previous job for those with the least pay before, whereas furlough for those lucky enough to get it was capped at 75% and unemployment for those unlucky enough to lose their jobs entirely was barely boosted over the stingy standard payments. Unfortunately, trusted US publications like the New York Times mislead their readers about this for nakedly partisan reasons, just like they did with every other part of the US pandemic response and how it compared to the rest of the world.

These numbers don't mean much on their own.

Sure, if you live with mom and pop and you got laid off from a job and had a place to fall back onto, yippee

If you live in pretty much any major city and you're the breadwinner then it doesn't cover rent/mortgage.

We froze foreclosures, so there are estimated millions pending. Unemployment is still in pre-pandemic numbers - all though improving.

I think our reliance on "job" to live is problematic when a virus doesn't care about the societal ramifications of a job.

I think we should talk more broader UBI programs and talk about what countries did that worked... do a huge retrospective and make things better for the future.

I don't think we need a UBI that makes it easy to live in a city where ~$3000 month ($2400 + normal unemployment) won't cover expenses including housing.

2400 a month is rent here in Austin - and not even expensive rent. Without income, those rentals will foreclose/be evicted. Are you saying future pandemic responses should imply much of society simply deserves to be destitute?

Unable to afford $2400 month housing in an expensive city isn't the same thing as destitute.

There's houses available in much of the country for $100,000 or less. I'm fine arguing that people can have the option to struggle paying high rent or move, we don't need to pay the high rent just because they prefer the place.

Those houses are $100k or less because the only jobs nearby don't pay enough to buy something more expensive.

What does that matter if the house is in good condition and has a sensible amount of room for a family?

> 2400 a month is rent here in Austin

Just no, not unless you live in a luxury dwelling or location. Here’s an example place I used to live long ago. Centrally located, next to the major highways, and not unsafe. It’s old and not fancy, but under $1000 and your living expenses can be much lower than that with a roommate. https://www.livechevychase.com/floorplans

Dude, I have a wife and 2 kids and my house is small and yes, it would cost 2400 a month to rent it, luckily i bought it before it tripled in value... i wouldn't buy it for 500k today...

(also, every single room but an efficiency is sold out and there is no pricing on their 3 bedrooms)

In Seattle, I know people who received the equivalent of $75k/year on unemployment from various government sources. That exceeds the median household income in the State, never mind individual income. This is on top of, in some cases, a generous severance.

That easily covered their mortgage and their lifestyle, even in this expensive city, and was in no way sustainable. They had no interest in looking for work while they were receiving those benefits, but now that the benefits are disappearing they've started looking for work again.

Conversely I know a young couple in Indiana who have no idea how they’re going to feed themselves each week. There are always examples of abuse to point to, but for many people the safety net is a wet paper bag at best.

There was no implication of abuse intended in what I wrote. The intent was temper the notion that everyone receiving unemployment benefits is on the brink of poverty. The reality varies widely. The topic requires more nuance.

>In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.

I didn't realize that being a rich country with a developed economy was a pre-requisite to being a representative democracy.

It's not... in fact, I'd say other democracies with less emphasis on wealth at all cost, do it much better.

Hard to take GP seriously. India can even raise funds from various sources (see: PM Cares) if needed, to provide for these needs. They just don't want to, much rather line their own pockets than feed the poor (who happen to be their voting bank, but are too uneducated to vote in their own interest).

>see: PM Cares

Size of PM Cares fund was estimated to be $1.23 billion dollars[1] (from May 2020, the most recent source I could find). The size of India's food subsidy program is over 2 trillion dollars.[2]

So, PM Cares fund is less that 0.1% of the amount Indian government already spends on food subsidies.

>too uneducated to vote

What's the point of education when you form your opinions with such laziness?

Sources:

[1] https://www.indiaspend.com/pm-cares-received-at-least-1-27-b...

[2] https://www.financialexpress.com/economy/increase-pds-price-...

Providing food is far from something only developped countries can do. Very poor countries can and have done so. All you have to provide is food, shelter, and maybe a very small baseline of income.

Which are the poor countries you have in mind? How long have they sustained that assistance?

India already has a very large and ambitious food subsidy program, which targets over 800 million beneficiaries and has cost running over 2 trillion dollars. The idea that Indian government can significantly expand its social security net in a year where it has had large unexpected out-of-budget expenditure thanks to covid and has simultaneously taken a huge hit in tax revenue due to businesses suffering due to lockdowns, seems, at least to me, based more in fantasy rather than economic reality. And then further to claim that India has failed as a democracy for that reason just seems childish hyperbole.

At a certain point you run out of money.

The US can print trillions of dollars in an emergency as a world reserve currency. Most countries cannot do this.

The idea that India could just pay 1.4 billion people not to work for a year doesn't seem like a realistic proposal.

On what premise? This kind of talk presumes economies and governments don't serve the will of the people.

I mean, lets be real, if they don't serve the will of the people then the economy and government is short term and lockdowns were never the problem, but a symptom...

Not every country has the privilege of having the world's reserve currency. Money printing never ends well for poor countries.

In a democracy, This isn't a privilege, its the will of the people.

Why frame it as money printing? Does everything that can help people have to be pejorative?

I think that the OP is pointing out that some democracies are freer to act than others. The USA has absolute latitude, especially after demonstrating that countries that might threaten that latitude (ie. anyone who cut the oil off up to 10 years ago - now irrelevant) will be destroyed. India does not have all that much latitude.

It's political, i get it... but its laughable they try and prove a point through downvotes... but such is hacker news, hide the reality they don't agree with :)

You can't print a chicken. Money is only the intermediary.

There are tons of chicken farmers in the world who love to exchange their chickens for the US dollars. However, the same farmers don't want to sell their chickens for Zimbabwian dollars. USD has the world reserve currency status, that's why MMT folks want to print money to spend on fiscal policy. Third world countries don't have this luxury.

The point isn't to do it for a year, but to do it for 2-3 weeks in a very strict manner. If you prepare for it, and then do it every time the spread starts going exponential, then you can keep the numbers incredibly low until vaccines are distributed.

That's a dream. Money don't feed people. Foods do. And human activity necessary to feed a billion people sitting at home will require another billion to do the production, distribution and organization in a timely manner.

And the whole point of lockdown was to prevent people from performing these movements.

I don't see a good solution here.

This is really not the case. You buy food from farmers, who can keep money, and you use existing government capacity to distribute it. It's been done before and can be done still.

But then the laborers who process the food have to go to work. And often work in close quarters in factories where it's easy to spread the virus.

A lot of food processing isn't strictly necessary. People can be expected to cook or live off existing stock for 2-3 weeks if they do not work.

Spend some time volunteering with local emergency preparedness teams and you'll get a better sense of just how much of the US food system is essential "just in time"

The more urban a place the more "just in time" everything is because the space is more valuable doing literally anything other than warehousing calories

Not with that attitude it's not.

It's not that they can't afford it - it's that they're unwilling to actually leverage the wealth of their country to do it. I seriously don't understand the thinking that resources are still so scarce that an entire country like India somehow can't afford to meet the basic needs of its people (let alone the US). If the resources exist you figure out how to get them to the people that need them. Not doing this is how you get unrest, a massive rise in crime and eventually coups, wars, etc. Democracy and capitalism are not givens - they are very much still experiments that can and do fail.

Redistributing wealth won't help if the store shelves are empty. People have to be out there working and making stuff or else we won't have any stuff.

Only around 2-8% of people in cities need to work to sustain everyone's livelihoods.

As for those who live off of agriculture, you can ensure basic self sufficiency.

Do you even live in the real world? Because your numbers are just totally disconnected from reality. In my city way more that 8% of people work in essential fields like food production and distribution, emergency services, utilities, transportation infrastructure, vehicle repair, home repair, healthcare, military, etc.

Food distribution and emergency services typically get taken over in good part by the military.

Necessary food production is generally outside of cities.

All Healthcare except for what is immediately necessary similarly is not needed, same for vehicle repair and so on.

Keep in mind, this is only for a very short period of time. You don't have to deploy anywhere near the population needed for a sustainable organization.

For the US for example, there are 55 million "essential workers". 11 million of those are in agriculture or restauration (so either outside of a city or dispensable). 10 million are in finance or residential/commercial facilities services, most of which is preemptible for a few weeks. 4.5 million are in governmental services which can largely either be done remotely or preempted for a few weeks. Realistically you're looking at 25 million or so when you cut down on everything that isn't necessary and have the military take over a lot of the work.

If you want to see what thay looks like, you can look at the Wuhan lockdowns and to a lesser extent various strict lockdowns in third world countries.

Then you tag certain works as "essential" and then eventually everyone argues that they are essential.

Every sovereign nation with resources should be able to handle emergencies. India is not a small nation without resources. At this point, it seems that people are shifting blame from an ineffective government as well as people's will to cooperate on some externality such as world reserve currency.

Did people read the FT article at all?

Shutting down an economy is well past any fathomable emergency.

If the economy doesn't serve the people, it deserves to be shutdown - especially in an emergency.

Precisely.

What you described is exactly what happened in China and Vietnam: one short strict lockdown while taking care of people's material necessities. Unsurprisingly, both countries have eliminated community transmission.

This is a naive reading of what has happened.

There may well be some cross immunity in some communities due to previous coronavirus circulations. And the numbers in China are not all that credible - one guy at my work had three of four grandparents die of "some winter cold" in March last year. It will be quite some time before the numbers in China become clear I think.

I think if China didn't manage coronavirus successfully we'd have seen numbers of deaths due to "some winter cold" so large that even communist party wouldn't be able to hide

Really? They did a pretty good job of hiding a host of vast reeducation centres....

Did they? You can rely on your reader to know that you're referring to Xinjiang.

At this point - but these centres were revealed to the world (by journalists who are now kicked from the country) fully built and also full of inmates.

> you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.

You are mistaking democracy with other virtues. income/food/capabilities do not come from thin air, it is eventually generated by people and under lockdowns when most economy is at a standstill this is incredibly difficult. So even the "redistribution" does not work that well. India is also a far poorer country so there is not much to distribute in first place.

> locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does.

What we need is some humility that we do not fully understand what others need and the only way to find it out is by giving people freedom. Poor people in India right now do not want anyone's alms. They are more interested into going out, doing what they want to do rather than just get food clothing and shelter. The previous lockdown did ensure that everyone had food clothing and shelter through government and private charity efforts but people were in general pretty upset.

I think we should stop assigning blame to democracy just because realities don't match up our expectations, partly because we are not infinitely smart to understand what other people want.

I think it's safe to assume if you're missing anything from the base of Maslow's hierarchy then those things are probably included in what you immediately need, let alone what you want.

This to me just reads as excuses based on how it is, not how it could have been.

Learned helplessness is what they call it.

That's extremely vague and untenable.

Besides, the lockdowns were completely unwarranted. Sure, at the beginning, no one seemed to know how dangerous this thing is, but we have learned quite a bit about it since and it does not merit the sweeping lockdowns in place. Locking down and protecting the vulnerable like those with comorbidities, absolutely, but not everyone. It is not that dangerous of a virus!

Sadly, this has proven to be a successful experiment in how media-driven FUD, sloppy reporting, and blatant misinformation can make people behave irrationally. We know the tallies are bogus because of the bad monetary incentives and methods used to determine whether someone's death counts as a COVID death, we know that something like a half a percent of the population is really affected, we know that the side effects of the lockdown are very concerning (rising suicide, undiagnosed cancers and other illnesses because people fear medical facilities). This is all pure political opportunism at this point.

You want to help the poor? Get rid of the lockdown. The longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to admit that there's nothing to fear (frankly, that ship has kind of sailed; people will ask "well, if it isn't that dangerous, why have we been under lockdown?"). You need a believable exit. (Enter the vaccine.)

Democracy is the system of elected representatives. You can elect a government that is completely opposed to welfare programs.

India has some of the hardest working people in the world, and it's a shame the way many have been treated by government programs. Government handouts have created a culture in which many of the poor are at the mercy of corrupt bureaucrats just to get by.

"What's that you say? Your rice allotment was 100 grams less than you're entitled to? Fuck you. Store is closed today. Hey everyone, thank smartass over here, nobody gets rice today."

This is government welfare here in India.

I was born poor. One american idea that does resonate with me after coming to USA is that a lot of poor people do not see themselves as poor. While their struggles are real they do not see themselves as losers but rather see themselves as strugglers who will eventually make it some day. They make life better for themselves and others. That was the case with my family. We lived in a house whose floor was basically painted with cowdung, roof leaked, we could not afford meat and we borrowed newspapers from others to read. Yet, not once we would call ourselves poor and demand that someone else take care of us. It would be insulting for our pride.

A lot of well off people in India and USA automatically think of poor people as losers or without agency. They then propose that government must help them. Guess what, other than a small fraction of poor people most DO NOT want that help. They would rather prefer to do what they want to do. Poor people do not want your food, clothing and shelter, they have their own desires. We can not possibly know what they are.

India is an extremely social country and lockdowns have much bigger costs for people. If people are angry and fed up and willing to risk their lives, I can understand. I do not think assurance of food or money per month will keep them indoors.

What we need is some humility to recognize that just because someone else has less money than we do, that does not reduce their self worth or gives us the right to know "what they need".

PS. Shortage of food was not a problem in India during last lockdown it is not a problem today either. Food Corporation of India has a record stockpile of rice right now.

There is a HUGE difference in accepting a dole because you're shut down for the survival of your species and can't work vs how you see yourself functioning in a society where you can work.

I do acknowledge the difference, what I am trying to highlight that perhaps dole is not what they want. Perhaps the poor people are not interested in staying indoors in return for dole and would rather risk their lives to seek things that value more than dole. It is not the lack of dole that is causing the failure of lockdowns.

It is the lack of dole that caused the failures of lockdowns in combination with a lack of systemic social safety nets to help support people. If you were unemployed, you lost your healthcare, if you lost your healthcare getting sick probably means losing your house/rent or getting behind, if you get behind none of those stimulus checks do anything for those that are behind because the system was never designed to support people through a pandemic.

You're trying to highlight something that doesn't exist.

"Survival of our species" is a bit extreme. Not to diminish the severity of our pandemic but it kills 1%. If we did nothing and just let everyone get it, 1% of us would die (not in any way advocating for that) our species would survive just fine. Perhaps you could just say "responding to a public health emergency"

> shut down for the survival of your species

Do you really believe the survival of our species is at stake?

There have been 1754 covid-19 deaths per million people in the USA since the start of the pandemic [0], a seemingly reliable number. That works out to 1 out of 570 people that have died of covid. Mostly older and less healthy folks.

Part of the problem may be that not everyone is that scared. Living in democracies we need to respect that.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

> That works out to 1 out of 570 people that have died of covid. Mostly older and less healthy folks.

Your assumption is that what the USA went through, with the shutdowns is the worst-case scenario. I posit that it is not - things could have been far worse in terms of death, as well as second- and third-order effects on the economy, jobs and food security.

You said "the survival of the species" was at stake. Are you telling me that you stand by that comment? Do you really think this coronavirus might have killed off our species?

There is zero science supporting this. In fact, to the contrary, experts from the beginning expected this to peter out on its own [0]:

> 2019-nCoV joins the four coronaviruses now circulating in people. “I can imagine a scenario where this becomes a fifth endemic human coronavirus,” ... “We don’t pay much attention to them because they’re so mundane”

> Odds: Moderate. “I think there is a reasonable probability that this becomes the fifth community-acquired coronavirus,” Adalja said, something he expanded on in his blog. Webby agreed: “I have a little bit of hope that, OK, we’ll put up with a couple of years of heightened [2019-nCoV] activity before settling down to something like the other four coronaviruses.”

> Odds: Pretty good. What we may be seeing “is the emergence of a new coronavirus … that could very well become another seasonal pathogen that causes pneumonia,”

Your statement about "survival of the species" seems outlandish, according the the science I read. Your above reply "things could have been worse" is not an adequate defensse of such an alarmist statement.

Do you have any references supporting your position? oit appears so far that you do not.

You should keep in mind that not everyone shares your paranoia and want to get on with as much of their lives as possible. We live in democracies and other people will rightfully object to you imposing your views on all of them without better justification.

[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

> You said "the survival of the species" was at stake.

That wasn't me saying that; I'm not gp. I was only objecting to your comment that implicitly assumed a linear effect, and therefore concludes that things wouldn't have been bad without shutdowns

>> That works out to 1 out of 570 people hat have died of covid.

I do not think the "survival of the species" was at stake, but our 2020 lifestyles were at stake. Things could have gotten much worse, in a non-linear, exponential manner.

My apologies! I didn't mean to mix you up with the original comment I was replying to. I did specifically object to the characterization of the pandemic as a threat to the surivial of the species. I'm glad you agree!

Worst case would be healthcare systems collapsing, and a majority of essential workers falling ill, dying, or simply refusing to go work. It would possibly cause severe supply chain disruptions, which in its turn could result in local food shortages, civil unrest and so on. If such a situation would be allowed to spiral out of control, it could very well result in a systemic collapse, especially on a local or regional level. On a global level, it's less likely.

Systemic collapse does not mean societal collapse or the end of humanity, or even civilization. The collapse will be a horrible affair and it might take centuries to get back on track if things get real bad. Humanity would still be around, though, and we're not threatened as a species.

I'm glad you agree that covid-19 is not a threat to our species!

Why did you bring up systemic collapse? You made some pretty broad statements. Things like food shortages and civil unrest happen all the time, for lots of reasons. There's Syria, Somalia, the former Soviet Union, the Arab Spring, everywhere a war is fought, etc. It wouldn't be surprising for this pandemic (and/or lockdowns) to tip some country over the edge, somewhere. But maybe not. Hasn't happened yet.

I think it's curious that you had to throw a new worst-case scenario out there. I hear you saying "ok, the species will survive, but we could, worst case, collapse, horrible, for centuries". What are you thinking? Do you think something like that might happen in a developed country? Or in India? Wouldn't hospitals just triage patients, letting the old and sick die? Aren't most health care workers already vaccinated? Is it reasonable to think that a disease that has killed less than 0.175% of the population (USA, 1 in 570), mostly older and/or sicker, could possibly cause the collapse of important supplies or cause food shortages?

Do you ever wonder why some people seem to have a tendency to dwell on worst case scenarios, even ones that are pretty marginal? I assume that it's because we are emotional creatures, and fear is a powerful emotion. Probably good for the survival of the species :-)

It was a counter-point to the "existential threat" argument.

> Do you think something like that might happen in a developed country?

Do I beleive it could happen? Yes, but it's quite unlikely, and it requires a series of fuck-ups from a lot of people. It's also more likely to happen in undeveloped countries:

> It wouldn't be surprising for this pandemic (and/or lockdowns) to tip some country over the edge, somewhere. But maybe not.

> Wouldn't hospitals just triage patients, letting the old and sick die?

I think you underestimate how pissed off people might get if the system they entrusted their relatives' care to suddenly decided to just let them manage on their own.

On a local level, things are messier - as you say, local governments fall every now and then and covid is just about as likely to trigger it as any other major issue.

I find it far more likely that it won't happen,though.

As for worst-case scenarios in general, I think it's simply a way for us to plan ahead. "Shit will happen. It might be rough. We'll manage because we though of it beforehand." And yes, it' probably good for the survival of the species. :D

It doesn't matter how I framed it... take it however you want. Here in texas, people were lined up for miles to buy guns because we were borderline on the edge of failing. People were stocking up food, toilet paper, supplies. We weren't talking about taking care of each other, we were focusing on gimmics we thought would help us survive what many expected to be collapse. We had a failed presidency, we had a failed response, millions lost their jobs, millions of people lost incomes...

I don't think people realize how bad it got and just how quickly we forget and forgive those who were in charge that led us down the path that almost led to certain failure.

So yeah, our species may have survived if you want to frame it as such to debate the words used more than the reality of what the words meant.

I intentionally chose the words I said because it was a disaster and to be honest, we still haven't really learned from it.

You intentionally chose the words you said, but it doesn't matter how you framed it?

Ok, maybe we should back up. I objected to your "survival of your species" characterization of the pandemic, but am happy to agree to leave that aside, some hyperbole in the heat of the moment I guess. I wasn't sure, because it appears there are people who feel that way. Like you said, people overreacted, buying guns, stockpiling, afraid to leave the house, etc. Some people are still overreacting, expecting the worst at every turn.

As the science and data continue to roll in we find that this is not as bad as was once feared. Lately I've been reading the recent articles/studies on how this is an airborne aerosol, which means the cloth masks everyone have been wearing may not have made much of a difference. The CDC now appears to be trying to talk people down, letting them know that surface transmission is not a significant factor, that we don't need to wear masks outside, etc. It's may be the case where find out in the end that the lockdowns were a waste of time and that aggressive contact tracing was the only thing that worked.

This thread got into talking about democracy and lockdowns. A lot lot of people don't think this is as big a disaster as you do. 1 out of 570 people dead, skewing older with comorbidities, doesn't strike many people as a disaster. Many people don't accept the premise that the lockdowns are worth it, and therefore don't want to spend the money supporting those same lockdowns like you suggested. They would rather live their lives as close to normal as practical. They don't feel the need to assign political blame for a pandemic that caught almost the entire planet by surprise. They have a vote, the same as you. They feel just as strongly as you. Difficult situation, eh?

Don't you need ration card to access PDS?

The whole thing is a sham. If you don't have ration card you can still buy it by paying a higher price to the 'dealer' who then secretly puts it under the account of someone else who is probably dead.

> I was born poor.

You can get out of being poor. You cannot get out of being dalit[0].

> While their struggles are real they do not see themselves as losers but rather see themselves as strugglers who will eventually make it some day.

Only about 20% of Indians can afford to have even aspirations. About 66% cannot. 18% struggle to even survive. Newspaper? They would eat it. [1] (data from 2016)

> They then propose that government must help them. Guess what, other than a small fraction of poor people most DO NOT want that help.

The relationship between the government and the people in India is very different from what you are probably used to. It's true that many people in India don't want the government's "help", but that's because this "help" is usually exploitation. They'd be lucky to be left alone. [2]

> If people are angry and fed up and willing to risk their lives

You have to pass a certain threshold of awareness to be categorized as "willing". Most of these people have no idea what the consequences of their actions are. Almost a third(!) of the women in India cannot even read or write. [3]

> What we need is some humility to recognize that just because someone else has less money than we do, that does not reduce their self worth or gives us the right to know "what they need".

Should the same litmus test apply to your post about the Indian condition?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit#Discrimination [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/482584/india-households-... [2] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/why-india-s-p... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India

None of that you have stated is even remotely relevant to the discussion at hand but appears like a bait for some kind of flamewar. I will not take this bait.

> Should the same litmus test apply to your post about the Indian condition?

Obviously. But my post is about not making assumptions about what poor people want and rather trust that they have an agency.

Now consider what you and the sibling comment say in the context of a representative democracy.

How many of the people that truly have no food to eat will go to vote?

Or, how easy are they to corrupt?

India is not even close to having a government that represents the people's interests. However, it does have a true "representative democracy" in the sense that the votes are real. The voters sure have been coerced and bribed, but at least the counting machinery works and is respected.

Not to diminish your experience, but you are an exception. Most poor people stay poor, no matter how hard they work.

And most poor people prefer free food over no food. You are right that most would prefer a dignified job and agency over their lives, but to say that people prefer to starve than to accept aid, or that it is just fine as a matter of policy to let people starve (or die of diarrhea as hundreds of indian children do each day as they don't have access to clean water) is just absurd. No one wants to watch their children die.

Again, i dont doubt your lived experience, but please do reflect on your views and whether they even remotely reflect reality.

His views reflect reality, they are probably less statistically likely. Any good political solution has to recognize the effects of agency and surroundings.

This is part of the myth of American exceptionalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism). We're #1, even when we're dead last.

Americans love getting free shit, and hate giving anything away. We love getting tax cuts & refunds, stimulus checks, welfare, food stamps. But when we're not eligible to receive it, we hate giving away food stamps, welfare. Everyone thinks we pay too much tax, and doesn't want the state to do anything. But then we complain that the government isn't solving all our problems with all the money we aren't paying in taxes. To avoid all the complaints from directly taxing everyone, we tax alcohol and tobacco (in addition to income), but we don't tax corporate profits or rich people, and have a small sales tax compared to the EU.

America actually has a bit of a crisis of food. Tens of millions of families go hungry every year in the US. Yet we export hundreds of billions of dollars worth of (mostly) feed grain and corn. It's not that we're too proud to take hand-outs, we'd just rather let our neighbors starve.

> ... who will eventually make it some day

I believe there is a term for this, "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"

Vastly depends on the country. In France, lots of efforts were made ( salary compensation so that people keep their jobs and get paid by the government, and companies aren't forced to fold; loans and loan guarantees for businesses; compensation for missed revenues for impacted companies; schools were kept open to give equal opportunities to children; moratorium on evictions; etc etc), with the president even saying multiple times "whatever it costs" ( the guy who was elected on a fiscal responsibility and reform platform ). And still people were left worse than before. It's really not easy, but governments really have to do their best.

> All the more reason everyone should mask up

Not just mask up, but do it with proper masks. Majority wear cloth masks in the country if at all they do because they were the ones which were available widely(affordable) during the first wave and that there were some data to suggest it's better than nothing.

But many of those masks have worn out after repeated washing, I'm having a hard time making people switch to proper masks as they are not comfortable with them and naturally mask prices are starting to skyrocket again.

Proper masks needs to be distributed through the PDS (Public Distribution System), During first wave cloth mask was distributed through that in my state.

Then of course there's this,

> Chin-mask

> On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it.

So this was shared by someone who claims to be an ICU doctor in Delhi - the prescriptions are not being written because they are medically necessary.

My family member with the lowest SpO2 is in the DRDO hospital is on Ivermectin + prednisone & a Dexa IV (& not remdesivir).

The rumour is that some doctor had his arm broken by a family member for not prescribing the remdesivir after the patient died.

So the doctors are writing prescriptions and asking the patients to source them, even if the hospital dispensary has the drug in storage, to avoid getting beaten up by the patients family.

This has created a complete black market for the drug, which vastly outstrips the demand and hopefully the doctors are probably just chucking whatever shady vial the family brings over instead of putting in a sick person.

While I do think it is true that people break norms, I'd say a large factor here has been the messaging and leaders behaving like the danger is past.

Leaders like the home minister, Amit Shah [1] and the health minister Harsh Vardhan [2] have been saying that we are in the end stage from Jan. Starting vaccinations is not the end game. We opened up for crowds for a cricket match (57k) [3] and kumbh mela [4] (actively promoted by the state and central govt), where the latter was expecting crowd in millions. (10 lakhs is 1 million). Covid protocol could really not be followed with that crowd [11]. We literally had an Assam minister saying that masks weren't needed earlier this month[6]. And of course election rallies with big crowds [5]. PM Modi was exulting about a huge crowd just a few days ago [12] Amit Shah was actually saying these are not related to the spikes [13]

I'd actually lay the blame on these:

- Inconsistent messaging on safety precautions.

- Vaccine shortage and related slow vaccination drives. India did not give advance orders and stockpile vaccines [8]

- Oxygen shortage. We already know oxygen was needed. The govt didn't follow through and build capacity for oxygen plants. We floated tenders 8 months into the pandemic and didn't follow through [9]

- We did not pay attention to and sequence variants to stay on top of things. [10]

I could go on... we are short various medicines, facilities; state govts of Gujarat, UP, MP, Bihar were actively under reporting by sometimes more than 10x [13]- if you don't acknowledge the problem, you can't fix the problem; not opening up vaccinations to everyone and not letting in vaccines that were already approved outside (both until very recently); not listening to folks who were trying to point these out...

Apologies for the long response. But yea, I'm shocked at how bad things are, and, while I think people can follow rules better, I'd squarely lay the blame for this on the govt.

[1] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/union-home-minister-amit-sha...

[2] https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/we-are-...

[3] https://www.thestadiumbusiness.com/2021/03/15/narendra-modi-...

[4] https://www.thequint.com/news/india/massive-crowd-gathers-fo...

[5] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/covid-has-a-...

[6] https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/assam-health-minister-himan...

[7] https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/dec/22/no-masks...

[8] https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/how-we-landed-in-covid-...

[9] https://scroll.in/article/992537/india-is-running-out-of-oxy...

[10] https://scroll.in/latest/990519/coronavirus-less-than-1-samp...

[11] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/maha-kumbh-m...

[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5jzuE866lo

[13] https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1384782949879517185 (may have to go through the twitter link to access ft article)

Not surprising. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/12/india-thousands-joi...

Really worried for my parents and other relatives. They are being as safe as possible but the virus is everywhere now and not sure if they will be able to avoid it. What a tragedy that people just didn't mask up and avoid gatherings when the vaccines were so close.

This is due to new variant B.1.167 that has triple mutation. The variant appeared last December, I think, but surprisingly not much analysis has been done on vaccine effectiveness. This variant spreads far more faster and very likely vaccines have lower efficacy, but still protective enough to escape respirators. I would think this is going to spread elsewhere soon and lower vaccinated areas going to suffer same fate in coming months.

Indian Government needs to do something about this. Especially that it is happening all over the country, the death rate has reached its all-time high. This stat line might not even be accurate as people are dying remotely far away to the point that Governments are unaware.

How many people close their windows and use air conditioning in India nowadays? Is it that season now?

I was wondering that, too. Also wondering how prevalent air conditioning is in rural areas.

Most don't. At most the ones in drier regions use cheaply-made desert coolers (that are effective, no doubt), but air conditioning systems are a sign of luxury in India.

That's what I figured. And it was one plausible explanation I had for how apparently India wasn't doing so badly before. But I guess it's not enough. Though I'm not sure if the desert cooling systems means closed or open windows.

(The other explanation was that the numbers weren't trustworthy, based on a the assessment of a friend living in India now.)

Desert coolers generally mean open windows

Non-paywall link: https://californianewstimes.com/it-is-much-worse-this-time-i...

It's not clear whether India got some new variant like we heard of UK variant?

It is sadly predictable that the pandemic would end up becoming a permanent source of havoc in less developed part of the world, even as it comes under control in the west. This will for certain be with us for many years to come and will further distort the difference between rich and poor. Not at least helped by the nationalism in the west in form of export controls and patents.

> less developed

What do you mean by "less developed" ? Those people have been with us on earth for the very same period of time as any other human. So they have been developing themselves culturally, economically, whatever-ally as much as any other human.

I think OP meant less developed countries and not less developed people

I can see the desire not to look down on others, but economic development isn’t measured in time as much as wealth accumulation. Wealth begets wealth too, so the wealthy countries today tend to be the winners of the industrial revolution (most of Western Europe and Japan which industrialized early).

It's not exactly under control in the west yet either. Mainland Europe seems to be going through a pretty serious third wave.

Third wave? The Netherlands never really left the second one.

Looking at https://coronadashboard.government.nl/landelijk/positief-get... i'd say the first wave didn't really happen in the Netherlands, there was a wave peaking on Oct 30th, next one Dec 19th and the current one is still growing after going through a low on Feb 9th 2021.

With the borders shut, all European countries are experiencing it quite differently. Here in Denmark we dodged the third wave and are now easing restrictions.

We have had a fourth wave hyped up here in Spain. Small ripple would be more accurate.

Canada is being ravaged by it right now. Some of the worst numbers since it began. We’re talking 60x the cases from October (BC). Not sure if it’s the reason why but after the 2nd wave started to burn out they opened up quite quickly. I think people got complacent.

Occasional source of havoc - yes. Permanent source of havoc - no.

Vaccinations have ramped up in ways no one has every seen in history. And lots of lessons were learnt during the first few waves from all the blundering that happened. Nothing is static and predictable about systems that learn and change from day to day. Stick that on your Fridge. And re-examine how your prediction is doing next month.

We are no where near having vacinated the whole world. And unless we change approach (from vaccine hoarding, nationalism, patents, export restriction) we likely wont get there.

Well, a source of havoc, maybe. But one among many, there is still Malaria, Tuberculosis, Dengue Fever, Ebola, HIV. All with far more significant consequences. That we are worrying as much about Corona as we do in the West is a consequence of those ailments being (mostly) irrelevant here.

This is inaccurate. COVID-19 has been far deadlier than any of those already-devastating existing diseases and conditions in places like India, South Africa, and Brazil.

In South Africa for instance, COVID-19 killed more people in 2020 than HIV/AIDS or TB.

That those diseases have a lower death-count today is a consequence of the havoc they have brought historically and of the current disruption they cause in isolating the infected, vaccinations, necessary medications and hospital beds, etc.

In all likelyhood COVID-19 will go the way of the spanish flu (with or without vaccination only changes the time it takes) and become less of a problem due to partial immunity in the population. Most children will get it once, after which any reinfection by a similar strain will be mostly harmless.

So COVID-19 will maybe continue to be a problem for 3 or 4 years, but after that we will still be stuck with HIV, TB and others, where the outlook is not so rosy.

Isn't HIV mostly a solved problem nowadays? Genuine question.

Only in more developed countries where your medical insurance pays the bills. And even there it can wreak havoc on the public health insurance system due to the excessive cost of keeping HIV-positives alive.

Generally, HIV is "solved" by a lifelong treatment with antiretrovirals. Those are not free of side-effects, very expensive and not available everywhere. In many places in less-developed countries, antiretrovirals are simply unaffordable for those affected. And even if they are affordable, the recurrent cost of the drugs keeps them in a lifelong state of poverty and dependency. Society as a whole may finance those drugs, but at the cost of other necessary things of course. Also, some countries try to produce those drugs themselves on the cheap, getting them into hot water with the western patent lobby and preventing trade agreements and the like, damaging their economy.

And the epidemic itself is still ongoing, sometimes even fueled by infected people no longer caring, due to the availability of antiretrovirals that render AIDS "harmless".

All in all, HIV is still spreading, is still not cured, treatment is problematic and it still wreaks havoc. Maybe only a little less.

HIV, malaria, and many other diseases endemic to the third world target people in the prime of life, wreaking havoc on families. By contrast, most (not all, but most) deaths from COVID are the elderly.

Any mention of this tends to bring on "how dare you say one life is more valuable than another" downvotes, but since this thread is considering economic impact, it's a relevant factor.

"By contrast, most (not all, but most) deaths from COVID are the elderly."

In the developed world. Are you sure that this is true in Africa?

Because if someone already has HIV or TBC, I can imagine Covid giving him the final push, even though the patient is only 35.

Personally I see a teenage suicide as a result of lockdown far more tragic than an 83 year old death from covid (that's the average age of Covid death in the UK. The average age of death in the UK is 82). 60+ years of life lost versus a maybe 2 or 3.

Even so, preliminary numbers where available seem to show the suicide rate to be falling. So in the loss-of-years calculation, all is quite fine actually...

https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2020/08/13/...

New rule for news consumption: stories that present poll results for a period without a baseline for comparison are trying to mislead you. What portion of people between 18-24 contemplate suicide in a given year? Turn to substance use to cope with stress?

I know that I lived my life from 18-24 without any global pandemic lockdowns and both "contemplated" suicide at different points and used substances to cope with stress. I'd assume many others did as well.

Given that we know suicides didn't go up in 2020 the way the fearmongers said they would (they went down), what are you arguing for?

To be pedantic, the remaining life expectancy if an 82 year old in UK in 2019 was 7.5 years.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunit...

And of course, cumulatively many more "life years" would be lost in a no-lockdown world.

But the real tragedy is you thinking stopping a real, deadly disease that affects millions of people isn't worth it because of a completely preventable death.

That's without taking into account other factors such as comorbidities.

Sebastian Rushworth did an interesting article on this, pointing out that it is likely wrong.

https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/29/how-many-years-of-...

How do you weigh thirty year olds that can't work or take care of their kids because they have chronic fatigue after Covid? About 10% of the milder cases still aren't fully recovered after six months. About 10% of those suffer from chronic fatigue.

Can you give me a citation on the "10% of the milder COVID cases still are not recovered after 6 months"? I haven't found any good studies on this, and the "milder" in your sentence implies that you not only found research, but you found research that breaks it down by infection severity.

My google fu is failing me when I search for it though, so I would very much appreciate a link.

I read it in the news here https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/longcovid-101.... (German unfortunately and no link to the original research...)

"Epidemiologische Studien zeigen, dass etwa zehn Prozent der ambulanten Patienten nach sechs Monaten unter Long Covid leiden. Von diesen Patienten sind wiederum zehn Prozent vom chronischen Fatigue-Syndrom betroffen, schätzen Wissenschaftler. "

At least the cited scientist is easy to Google, so you could ask her directly for the studies: https://solvecfs.org/carmen-scheibenbogen/

Stop with the suicide myth. The suicide rate actually decreased during the Covid pandemic. People are not killing themselves at greater rates because of lockdown.

For whoever downvoted this, here's a reference:

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-suicides-have-dec...

You're assuming developed world demographics in your answer, which isn't accurate for countries like South Africa with relatively young populations.

Fully one fifth of South Africa's COVID-19 deaths were in the 50-59 age bracket, which includes many key experienced and highly-skilled personnel.

Another ten percent were between 40 and 49.

Sure, 44% of those who died were 60+ but to assume that had less economic impact is also incorrect: In the most hard-hit areas many of the primary caregivers for children are in that age group as grandparents who were forced to care for their grandchildren after AIDS wiped out so many of their children. COVID-19 has now left many kids double-orphaned, first with the deaths of their parents from AIDS and now the deaths of their grandparents from COVID-19.

Your assertion lacks nuance

TB, AIDs and poor sanitation are killers, and more deadly.

but with the exception of a cholera outbreak, they are chronic. That is, take a long time.

Covid is acute and causes services to be overwhelmed, which causes higher mortality for everyone.

I live in a less developed part of the world - Vietnam - and the government and people have been incredibly successful in controlling the virus here. Aside from two short lockdowns of a couple of weeks, my life has barely been affected (except for the lack of tourists and the fact I can't travel outside the country). Local tourism and business seems to be booming. Meanwhile I hear all the stories from back home in Europe, and from the US... And my sympathies go out to everyone living though that. But I don't the development level of a country has much at all to do with how well it's handling this pandemic.

The only frustrating thing is how clearly it's been highlighted that the rich and powerful countries get all the vaccines and we'll only get them here once everyone in the west has been vaccinated three times over.

Please differentiate more. The US and UK don't share, but the EU does. The egoism of some countries hurt the idea of a free and equal world a lot these days...

No, the EU doesn't, unfortunately.

> EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the bloc will not share coronavirus vaccines with other countries until it has "a better production situation in the EU." This is reported by DW.

https://112.international/politics/eu-wont-share-covid-vacci...

> No, the EU doesn't, unfortunately.

The EU did. For a year. And now it doesn't, since the UK and USA do not.

> For a year

The first vaccine only came out about 4 months ago.

However, you are right - the EU has donated about 30 million doses, enough for 15 million people. It's not nothing, but not that much either.

It's not just about donations, it didn't block deliveries either.

One month ago:

> Overall, 77 million doses have been shipped from the European Union since early December, 88 million will have been distributed internally by the end of the week, and 62 million shots have been administered within the bloc, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/covid-vaccines-e...

The EU tried to play nice and it was screwed over by other countries and by AstraZeneca.

If you look at the numbers, the EU exported almost as many vaccines as it used, while its vaccination rate was half the UK/US one.

why would they give all their vaccine and forget about their own people

they did, then stopped to plan the production, so they can share more later, that makes 100% sense and seems to be the best strategy to vaccinate everyone safely

Saying "no they don't" is mostly a lie and is unfair to say, such a simplistic sentence that hides the real intentions

Absolutely not true. The UK Government paid for the AZ vaccine to be developed and then stipulated as part of the contract that it must be made available at cost to developing countries.

The EU on the other hand keeps seizing vaccines produced for other countries.

> The EU on the other hand keeps seizing vaccines produced for other countries.

Citation needed. I've not heard about this at all.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/eu-official-a...

That's one seizure, of a small number according to the source. The claim was 'keeps seizing'...

Why isn't a small number enough? The law abiding distributors would follow the ban, thus making further seizures unnecessary. Though to be honest the EU ban only targeted export to countries with better conditions (lower case rate or higher vaccination rate than Europe) and was only to last a few weeks, at least initially.

It was a ban to export mainly to UK which already had plenty of vaccines. And AZ wasn't delivering to EU what was promised.

If you promise to deliver you better do, or don't produce the product in there and ship it elsewhere.

And the way that the UK shares is by setting up production in other countries, which makes more sense than producing in the UK and shipping everywhere. But it makes it look like the UK is tight-fisted because the vaccines don't get exported.

One of the first AZ production sites was in India.

Vietnam and India aren't so comparable. In spite of both getting the label "developing country", India has more extreme poverty than Vietnam. Vietnam is also a more centralized, authoritarian state that is in a better position to enforce restrictions.

Of course. And the US had Trump leading it through the pandemic and a huge portion of the population who view mask wearing as a violation of fundamental rights. My point is that a country's status as "developing" doesn't seem to be the determining factor in how well they'll deal with it. Other factors are more important.

Like what? Respect for human rights? I mean, my brother is in Vietnam and some of the stuff they do there would be unconstitutional in the US.

Well, the right to keep and bear arms is constitutional in the US, so forgive me for discounting that statement.

It seems having right wing populists run the counties doesn't help much - see Trump, Bolsonaro, maybe to an extent Boris and Modi.

> The only frustrating thing is how clearly it's been highlighted that the rich and powerful countries get all the vaccines and we'll only get them here once everyone in the west has been vaccinated three times over.

One can only be ashamed about the state of things. There are NGOs which try to help, but this is clearly not enough. And it is dumb, too - we will not get rid of the virus until all countries work together and help each other. It is a global issue, and our leaders do not have half enough brain to understand that.

I mean, it’s not that they don’t understand this, it’s that they understand their electorate wants the vaccine first, and if they can’t get a vaccine while the news tells them their politicians sent vaccine supply to Vietnam they’ll vote you out of office. So you end up with half hearted things like this that seem designed to generate the least controversy: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/covid-vaccine-update-biden-t...

Basically handing money out to NGO’s so they generate headlines as helping and not the US government for the time being.

> The administration stressed that the globally-focused funds will have no impact on the U.S. domestic vaccination program.

Governments can't control a virus. East Asia seems to have existing immunity or a genetic factor that means they aren't getting hit anywhere near as badly as other parts of the world.

I live in Atlantic Canada and we absolutely controlled it. So did Australia and New Zealand.

Yes, mostly islands or places with low population density. The outlier is Vietnam.

Mainland countries of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand (though that's now changing). Much of Africa, nominally, though I suspect that's seriously underreported. Sevaral of these are densely populated.

Island territories are clearly easier to control movement to and from, but that is not the ony factor.

And, of course, China. Again, if reports are to be believed.

I think you should (mostly} believe reports from China - their lockdowns were unbelievably strict, much more even than here in Vietnam.

As for Africa, yeah, there's probably major undereporting.

The China numbers seem ... mostly consistent. There doesn't seem to be unexplained excess mortality, after the initial Wuhan lockdown, there are few reports of additional restrictions on mobility (outside the separate set of issues in Xinjiang associated with the Uyghur genocide). The case numbers remain remarkably low, given global experience and as the origin point of the pandemic. I'm keeping an open mind to the prospect that a more severe story may still emerge, though as of yet, that's not something I can point to specific evidence of.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a several-multiples underreporting, largely based on limitations of available diagnostic testing as of a year ago, but I'd doubt it's the 10x -- 20x (or far worse) underreporting seen elsewhere.

East and Southeast Asia generally (you report in another comment you're in Vietnam), along with Australia/New Zealand, have been the standout success stories in the Covid story so far. This runs strongly against early expectations and narratives, and has been pretty fascinating to watch.

I've seen and called out underreporting in Iran (last March--April) and Turkey (last October--November), previously, each of which saw case counts revised sharply upwards within days or weeks. In both cases based on deaths vs. cases, which is one of the more reliable indications of underreporting. I've also noted Sweden's very long lags (up to 2--3 weeks) in simply compiling case and deaths data, which tended to understate the severity of the runaway growth in the October--November period last year.

(Discussions of all of this in my Joindiaspora posts, these are hard to search.)

Deaths lagging cases by 14--21 days means that strong demonstration of underreporting via deaths data often only comes after the situation's gotten sharply out of hand. We're seeing cases of thirtyfold growth of cases in Thailand (over the course of three weeks) and India (since mid-Feburary). The problem with pandemics is that given increased transmission rates, cases can take off tremendously in a very short time period, something various denialists and critics seem to pointedly fail to grasp. (No, I'm not accusing you of that here, though there are clearly some matching that description posting in this thread.)

So very remote places that managed to close off contact with the outside world early.

No one closed off contact, quarantine is mandatory though. That only keeps it out though, most places have had outbreaks and had to rely on measures completely unrelated to their remoteness, like lockdowns and contact tracing.

???

You do know that East Asia has been hit several times by local epidemics (for example SARS) and that people have gotten used - based on previous government recommendations/mandates - to wear masks? That same culture used to people wearing masks is obviously helping now.

Governments can't completely control a virus, but they can definitely help curb its spread by taking effective measures. And one of that measures is effective communication, for example.

This is not just the people getting used to wearing mask. This is the government having an existing plan to actually combat a pandemic.

The response of most Western governments have been shambolic: here in the UK the government didn't start doing widespread randomised COVID tests until August, and even when they did the results covered such a big area that were practically useless.

For most of 2020 we simultaneously received news similar to "South Korea locks down this district of Seoul after a lot of people tested positive for COVID in a party last night" and "the UK government is considering a country-wide lockdown in the next few weeks because the amount of people being treated for COVID in hospitals". The difference in prevention infrastructure and planning were embarrassing.

We had pandemic preparedness guidelines, and none of them involved lockdowns. They go thrown away in blind panic.

There are only two Asian countries where mask wearing was common. South Korea and Japan. Hardly anywhere in Asia got hit hard. One theory is that there is a lot more contact with bats, trading them which act as a reservoir, and providing some level of immunity. Obesity rates will be another big factor. Masks show very little evidence of having any effect whatsoever.

>we'll only get them here once everyone in the west has been vaccinated three times over.

Shipment of AstraZenca to Vietnam has started already. Wikipedia says 60m doses ordered "Including 30 million donated by COVAX Facility. Produced by SK Bioscience (South Korea)"

Ordered and promised is not the same as delivered. So far I think it's about 800k doses delivered - enough for 0.5% of the population - and the EU has announced they are halting Covax for now.

Yeah but there are quite a lot scheduled, I think from S Korea which should bypass the EU. Also Vietnam signed up for the Russian vaccine. Not sure how that one's going.

Shouldn't countries that developed vaccines should take care of their citizens first?

That's one take, but not all endorse it.

"Which approach leads to the least dead people globally?" is another potential way of looking at things.

That's the greedy, shortsighted, tribal way of looking at things, sure.

India is actually one of the countries imposing export controls on vaccines in order to redirect them to domestic use, with the result that a lot of other developing countries don't have any at all...

>Not at least helped by the nationalism in the west in form of export controls and patents.

In India's case it was one of the first places to be licensed to make the AstraZenca vaccine, I think at no cost. The Serum Institute there, the world's largest vaccine producer, was the first place to start producing vaccine in quantity. I'm not sure you can really blame the west here. Though recently the US have been blocking supplies which I hope is a temporary glitch.

Lock down is needed in India for lot of the Morons in our country who were taking things so lightly after the first wave we all deserve the lock down so we can learn a hard lesson, and stupid people die of covid19.

The second wave is all because of the central & State Govt and people's foolishness & ignorance. Unfortunately its because of our stupidity its the people of the lower income class have to suffer the most, the daily wage miggrants & people who are contract employees. If only all the organizations took all the right steps we wouldnt have been in this situation. The entire govt mechanism failed from top to the grassroot level, local muncipalities did not bother and neither the people.

I hope at least this time, we all learn the lesson.

I expressed a similar opinion while discussing with my friends. Indians don't get a nuanced message. Given the sheer size of Indian (mostly uncivilized) population and its vast geography it's close to impossible to have a middle ground measure. The message from the top must be crystal clear and enforced with iron hammer. If the message/measure contains even an iota of nuance it'll get lost among 1.3B people. If that's not enough we have information pathways (Twitter/FB/WA) that are particularly optimized to spread misinformation at the speed of light.

Even when it was 100% evident that the second wave was fully on politicians conducted campaigning rallies, allowed religious gathering of millions, movie halls were running at 100% and so on. The time to contain was then; now it's all about damange control and pray.

I'm sure you're well-intentioned, but please don't call names in comments here, no matter how strongly you feel about a topic. It degrades discussion, and is against the site rules for that reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Modi regime in India procured 66 million Covishield/Covaxin units at an inflated price and exported them;

Paywall.

https://archive.is/VYm6A

It would be nice if the web somehow filtered out links that one had decided to not pay for.

No it wouldn't.

HN Guidelines are links should not be submitted if there is not a freely available version, or at least the wording is "It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds", which implies that.

It would be nice if OPs took more effort to post the non-paywalled alternative (in addition to the original) to avoid these discussions and complaints. Yes, I am aware complaining about paywalls is OT.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Seems like a worthwhile Chrome extension. Or to replace all paywall links with the internet archive link?

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

The situation is also horrible in Brazil (14M cases, 378k deaths, ICUs near full): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/brazil-alarming-high-num...

One can only wonder if it's simply a matter of time before variants break through vaccines in the US too.

I've heard there's an Indian variant that affects vaccinated people in the UK; it's not as clear cut though, this article seems a bit uncertain about it atm: https://news.sky.com/story/is-the-indian-covid-variant-more-...

Keep believing the covid hype. they have said this about most of the variants, but I see no evidence of them actually being more deadly.

Indian Council of Medical Research announced today that Covaxin is effective against several variants including B.1.617 (double mutant variant identified in certain regions of India and several other countries), B.1.1.7 (UK variant), B.1.1.28 (Brazil variant) and B.1.351 (Southern African variant).

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/icmr-says-covaxin-...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/covaxin-shows-78-o...

According to this Twitter person: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/138482553989517312...

>Covaxin is the inactivated virus-based COVID-19 vaccine being developed with Bharat Biotech and Covishield is the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine being manufactured locally by the Serum Institute of India under that name.

>So inactivated vaccines tend to have lower immunogenicity on average (when we look back on past vaccines). I would like to think if Covaxin neutralizes it, the others would likely do so as well. We will definitely need data but this is very promising

Seeing how the 'original' SARS-COV2-19 virus spread, if you are concerned about a variant, then likely it's already in your population.

The speed of the virus is much faster than the speed of the public health infrastructure. Maybe upping the tempo of our human controlled reaction is something we can focus on in this pandemic.

The question isn't whether the variant is in the population (of course we can assume it is), the question is whether it differs enough from the prior variant to break through past immunization at the population level.

"One can only wonder..."

You can do more than wonder! You can look at the facts and see no evidence that any variant to date can evade the existing vaccines to the point that they are no longer useful.

Eventually there will be a variant which spreads epidemically in even a fully vaccinated population. But such an complete escape mutation is likely to come at a cost to fitness for the virus so it will be less transmissible and virulent. And in vaccinated individuals they will still have cross-reactive immune responses.

The 1918 H1N1 pandemic just evolved into seasonal influenza (or co-evolved with the human immune system). In 1957 the H1N1 virus left the human race and was displaced by H2N2. It mutated in pigs for 50 years, then the H1 protein came back in the 2009 triple reassortment pandemic. That pandemic had minimal impact though because people who were exposed to H1N1 before 1957 still had partial immunity through cross reactive T-cells to the H1 envelope protein -- even after it had evolved in pigs for 50 years.

Immunity is very non-binary. There is "survivor island style immunity" which is sterilizing immunity that prevents an individual from being infected. But there's a lot of partial immunity that just takes the edge off the disease, even though the virus may still spread epidemically.

And vaccine escape is non-binary as well. Variants able to do that may displace other variants, but be unable to push R0 over 1 in a largely vaccinated population. The "South African" variant B1351 can break through Pfizer, but it does seem to be controllable.[1]

A booster shot has already been developed, and I expect we'll be able to win the arms race against this virus.

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v...

Saying B1351 "breaks through" is just like saying the original strain "breaks through" Pfizer. Pfizer isn't 100% efficacious on the original strain, nor is it 0%. Same with B1351. Luckily for us, new strains are closer to 100% than 0%.

We've most likely already won the arms race against this virus. I'll take a variant booster if I'm offered one, but in a population where 60%-70% of the population is vaccinated and a good chunk of the rest have natural immunity I doubt any of the existing variants can spread. And if it does spread it is only a matter of time before there's enough immunity to push R0 below zero for all the existing variants.

An actual immune-escaping variant is going to have to do more than just a few mutations and will have to substantially change along 20 or so different epitopes of the spike protein, which will almost certainly come at a cost to fitness.

It probably will eventually do that and it'll become endemic, but won't be anywhere near as transmissible or virulent as it has been.

Wearing mask might just delay getting the infection. I wore mask all the time, wfh and go out only for groceries, still got infected. And when the CM gets Covid a second time after vaccination anyone can get it even with mask or vaccination.

The point of wearing masks is mostly to prevent you from infecting others if you're already infected. They're somewhat effective at preventing infection but that's not what they're best at - if you're wearing a mask in a room with an unmasked, contagious case, you're still in danger.

Maybe they should advertise it like that. I and most i know are wearing thinking it would reduce our risk to exposure.

I thought masks will reduce the viral load and lessens the severity of infection

I though the same. Maybe it has reduced the severity. It seems 99% of infections in Bangalore are asymptomatic. Actual number of infections might be very large.

It was advertised like that. The mask deniers were louder.

India really needed to keep up consistent messaging about wearing masks, promote easy to understand infographics (for folks who cannot read)

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

The government, the lax attitude of the public and inconsistent messaging has lead to this situation. It is heart breaking to see so many lives lost needlessly where something as simple as wearing a mask effectively could have averted this disaster.

That's been the messaging around masks from the scientific community from the beginning, and also partly why they were hesitant to recommend universal masking early in the pandemic.

>If you’re already infected.

And if you’ve had it or been vaccinated?

Requisition (symptoatic or asymptomatic), or simply acquiring viral particals and re-distributing them, are both possible.

It's also far easier to establish (and verify) a "masks requried" policy (visual inspecition is sufficient) than a "masks or fully-completed vaccination schedule required" one.

The ultimate goal isn't protecting individual health but public health, and here, social measures including distancing, quarantine, masks, sanitation (though perhaps less so than first thought), etc., all reduce the probability of transmission through the population at large.

We're used to thinking of individual health. Public health is related, but is not the same thing. Logics and measures that are appropriate or sensible in the case of individual health may not be for public health. (And vice versa.)

Public health is an emergent phenomenon of individual health.

In today's news: "An unvaccinated worker set off an outbreak at a U.S. nursing home where most residents were immunized."

An unvaccinated health care worker set off a Covid-19 outbreak at a nursing home in Kentucky where the vast majority of residents had been vaccinated, leading to dozens of infections, including 22 cases among residents and employees who were already fully vaccinated, a new study reported Wednesday.

Most of those who were infected with the coronavirus despite being vaccinated did not develop symptoms or require hospitalization, but one vaccinated individual, who was a resident of the nursing home, died, according to the study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/health/vaccine-nursing-ho...

And what has that got to do with people like me whom have had the rona and not died? It doesn’t mention that the worker had and recovered from the rona, just that they were unvaccinated. Even the WHO have started to admit to immunity through exposure.

unfortunately it is not about the individual who can get corona and can recover from it. It is about stopping the spread into the community to prevent the vulnerable individuals from catching on to the virus and breaking the transmission chain.

I am certain most of the world population can get covid and recover, but that is no justification to allow it to spread uncontained and cause so many preventable deaths.

Yes, this.

The guideline is: your mask protects me, and my mask protects you. From what I read earlier, when COVID19 was new, the guideline is based on the physics of masks and airflow, and how masks reduce transmission of the virus via speaking, sneezing and coughing.

So, by the quick probably prejudiced knee-jerk downvotes for a factual statement, I can see that anti-science (or maybe even anti-minority community)? types on HN are alive and buzzing, in their cesspools. Sharing this subthread on Twitter, so more people can see the fun and filth.

Don't take it hard upon yourself, I think there's anti-mask activity here judging from the how all pro-mask or 'mask facts' comments have been down-voted(likely automated).

Perhaps @dang can verify it, But I don't want to impose as moderating HN is extraordinarily hard job as it is.

Likely. Thanks. I'm not taking it hard, though. Thoroughly enjoyed blasting that troll and donkey, the HN (mis)user called lolthishuman, though I only do it if someone else starts such petty nonsense, as anyone can see from my HN comment history. Cheers.

Update: Speaking of comment history, I just took a quick but good look at the history of user lolthishuman, the user who tried to troll me above, to analyze why anyone would do such dumb cheap shit.

As expected from someone with such silly comments (to me) and such a giveaway (to their mentality) losername, many of their previous comments on other threads were downvoted, and some heavily. That is very telling ... The most charitable assessment is that they probably don't have a good or maybe even any semblance of a life, outside of forums where they troll, anonymously, and weakly, at that.

You can increase your chances with a respirator. But finding a good quality one, certified with a proper standard (that doesn't just cover dust protection like KN95), verifying the certificate with certification company, and hoping it's still not a nice looking fake, one with some helping features that makes making the proper seal easier (like memory foam pad around the nose, or some rubber lining), best with a head band so that you can make it make seal better, is just way too hard, without spending a ton of money.

And that ton of money may not be worth it if you're young enough, and lucky.

I used 3 kinds so far, one was KN95 and just not sealing at all. Probably not much better than a typical "surgical mask", maybe even worse.

Other was marked "FFP3", but without a certification that I could find independently. Much better seal with memory foam around nose, and an ear bands that can be connected behind your had. That one at least felt useful. ;)

The last one is the most expensive so far, with an independently verifiable "FFP3" certificate, and a rubber lining for better seal with a proper headband. That one should be the best on paper. I have not used it yet.

Anyway, if you look at independent tests of random protection equipment that's sold on the market and people buy, sometimes it doesn't even meet the stated specs. That's not encouraging either.

I find navigating all this kinda tough, especially with some sellers proudly showing certificates which are obviously for something else than what they're selling, or blurring some information on the certificate, sometimes including the model information, lol.

(That is for the use case of actually protecting yourself from airborne particles in risky situations, not just "your mask, my mask" thing sibling posters write about)

Interesting, what kind of mask did you wear while going out for groceries?

Wearing a mask is method of reducing the risk of transmission. No one ever claimed it prevented transmission. Wearing a mask but still getting infected is not an abnormal or unexpected outcome.

People don't understand that the area under the curve will remain the same. Mask or no mask, the same percentage of people will be needed to reach herd immunity.

The only exception to this is vaccinations. They may give you immunity without being infected. (They are not without risk though.)

Not quite - the faster the rise in cases is, the more you overshoot the herd immunity threshold by.

As far as I can tell, we got lucky this time and the approved vaccines are close enough to "without risk" that you can round it off to "no risk" unless you are extremely risk-averse (if you drive 100km without thinking about your risk of dying in a car crash, you are not risk averse and probably shouldn't spend time worrying about risks from the vaccine).

Still requires that vaccines are available though, which is not a given worldwide yet.

Why would you post an article behind pay wall ?

You must be new here

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

But why is it much worse ? Because of the pandemic, or because of the lockdowns ?

How would the lockdowns have made it worse? Could they have produced the exponential growth in cases and deaths that are currently observed in the official data?

I quote qart: "Lockdowns hurt poor people very badly; they need to earn to survive."

The title of the piece is "‘It is much worse this time’: India’s devastating second wave". Given that the discussion is of the exponential increases in both cases and deaths, it seems clear that the "it" in the title refers to "the pandemic", not "life in general".

My response followed this interpretation, despite the wording of your questions - clearly I should have been more explicit: "How would the lockdowns have made the pandemic worse?"

I do not say that the lockdowns make the pandemic worse, I say that the lockdowns make life of people worse. The mass media are making a great confusion, between "pandemic" and "life in general", and so do people, and that's what I am specifically criticizing.

You are certainly right, the lockdowns do make the lives of most people worse, some significantly more so than others.

The pandemic, however, directly threatens people's lives. There have been 33,815 confirmed covid deaths in India since the start of the year, and 3 million around the world since the beginning of the pandemic. I think it is unrealistic to suggest that there have been anything remotely like that number attributable to lockdown over those timeframes.

One theory is about relative movement of old and young. Normal situation, young heathy people move around a lot more than the elderly, contract the virus get immune.

With lockdown everyone is restricted and old and young go to the supermarket and back. As such the elderly are exposed at a higher rate before any level of herd immunity is reached.

Not leading to deaths, but just increasing case numbers, that is good news.

How reliable are the numbers coming out of India? Test positivity rates of 15% would suggest under-reporting / under-testing.

What are you talking about ? A random sample with positivity rate of 20percent would indicate one in 5 has covid. Why are you posting such conspiratorial comments with a throwaway account ?

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly and we ban such accounts.

Please don't attack fellow users and please omit swipes like "What are you talking about" from your comments here. If another comment is wrong, it suffices to reply with accurate information. Actually it's much more credible that way. If you toss in gratuitous swipes, you discredit the accurate information you're (by hypothesis) adding, which is bad for the truth.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sure. Apologies.

It is under reported: https://scroll.in/article/992217/as-the-dead-pile-up-in-guja... https://thewire.in/government/ghaziabad-agra-jhansi-bareilly...

This is either to save the image of state or central govt.

Deaths have crossed 1700 per day, also a record high.

The CFR in Mumbai, so far, is less than half of the first wave. But due to the rapid rise in cases (elsewhere; Mumbai appears to have peaked on 7 Apr), there's a crunch in beds and especially oxygen.

That's always been the biggest fear with Covid, so that's not unexpected. Long ICU durations, lack of sufficient ICU spots and staff, high infection rate, low case fatality rate still means it can quickly overwhelm hospitals and lead to much higher rates of death overall.

People crying "it's just a flu" were always missing the point.

But there is another factor, only recently mentioned in Indian media.

The fear factor causes many of those with means to insist on hospitalization. This article talks about it in the context of celebs [1] but I've seen it among my relatives as well where healthy young adults with moderate/high Ct values are admitted on insistence of their parents or themselves.

I read similar reporting about self-arranged oxygen use as well.

[1]: https://www.timesnownews.com/mumbai/article/mumbai-film-star...

That's interesting, thanks. Makes me wonder how widespread it is, but when spots are scarce and every bed counts, it's awful all the same.

Also ties back into the idea that governments need to act earlier than might seem necessary.

Which is a bit odd, since outside a few elite private institutions, Indian hospitals are dire and the same media regularly carries horror stories of rooms full of corpses etc.

Just a bit of context, Poland, a nation of 38M, sees death count of 500-1000 per day during the last wave.

It's likely the real number is higher than 1700 for such a huge nation as India.

2023 deaths is the figure of April 20th.

Do we even know how many deaths it's leading to? From the article: "A Financial Times analysis also points to under-reporting of deaths. Local news reports for seven districts across the states of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar show that while at least 1,833 people are known to have died of Covid-19 in recent days, based mainly on cremations, only 228 have been officially reported. In the Jamnagar district in Gujarat, 100 people died of Covid-19 but only one Covid death was reported."

It's ignorant to maintain the position not dying from it is enough to not give a shit about it. It's still a crippling disease that can cause organ scarring and long-term illness, and letting it run free provides it with a breeding ground to provide new variants.

I mean the past year and a half have been a real life version of Plague Inc; the 'contagion' marker and mutations have been played with so far, the 'deadliness' factor may mutate next.

How can you say it causes long term damage when it has barely been around for a year?

Say when one gets pneumonia during covid can be quite sure that it will afflict long term issues on the lung functioning.

Some of us having serious lingering symptoms.

I was on blood thinners before. Since covid my blood clots far more quickly now. I can’t miss any doses of blood thinner or symptoms start up fast.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'"

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People do not get sick and die on the same day from Covid. Numbers of deaths lag by a few weeks. The worst is yet to come :(

Yes, that's what our politicians here in Germany also said. And now they don't get why people are mad at them, who could have known that the thing hospitals, the state epidemic institute and other experts warned about would actually happen, and its totally unfair to blame them for needless deaths!

It is putting people into a very precarious financial situation. I know more that a few people who have to borrow a lot of money when their loved ones ended up in hospital and the long term effects are unknown with people being put in the ICU with a 70% loss in lung function. And then being discharged either because they can no longer afford to pay or because they test negative for Covid but still have a host of heath issues.

Daily deaths are at a record high. Higher than mid last year

Deaths are clearly exponentially increasing:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

It's following a gompertz curve like every other country.

The progression of deaths [0] is patently nothing like a Gompertz curve. It is bounded, of course, which is probably your point, but we are currently in a growth phase that is well modelled by an exponential curve. The Gompertz adds nothing at this stage, and does not accurately represent the periods of slowing that have already been experienced, nor the subsequent accelerations.

That the population is finite is, I think we can all agree, well understood. It is, however, important to be clear about the dangers of exponential disease growth when only ~1% of a population currently has that disease and the CFR is ~1%. For any sizeable fraction of 1.3 billion that translates to a large number of people.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Am I reading that correctly? The exponential spike represents approximately 1.5 deaths in a million?

Correct, 2,023 people on the 20th April.

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