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Comment by rataata_jr | Hacker News Reader

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

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."

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.

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.

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

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.'"

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