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Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

40 points by jangid 5y ago

jimmyed 5y ago
The relationship between these two countries must be pretty awkward. The former colonizer is now a failing nation, while the colonized has the future.
- neilsense 5y ago
  With adults, not every conversation has to be about history either party can control, so the relationship usually looks towards the future.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I would hardly consider Britain a failed state compared to the utter poverty, religious violence, and sexual inequality tens of millions face daily there.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I have to agree, despite having a strongly negative outlook for the U.K. — there are massive gaps between the two nations, made up for only by the enormous absolute population of India. Things may change quickly and surprise me, but even my 90% estimate for the U.K. is Brexit-related incompetence (as opposed to COVID-related, so yes things can go sideways for new and exciting reasons at short notice) is that the U.K. as a whole ends up at least as strong as Wales is now, and Wales is doing about 13 times better by GDP than India. And yes, I know GDP isn’t everything, and I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet, 5% isn’t very likely, and the more likely internal conflicts within the U.K. are highly regional.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      > I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet If I had to guess, I'd say the conflict is much much likelier to come back post-Brexit. Now that we're out of the EU, the "open movement" hack made possible by mutual EU membership no longer works without knock-on effects (customs checks, blah blah). I can't see Boris Johnson falling on the sword to safekeep the peace in NI, so if the push comes to shove, NI is more likely to be left to fend for themselves.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        I’m guesstimating P(The Troubles | limited to just the range and belligerents as last time) ~= 0.75 The thing I’m saying is p ~= 0.05 is P(The Troubles | scaled up from NI to whole UK), which would be ~123,500 dead and ~1,662,500 injured. This is one of several reasons why I no longer live in the U.K.
- teoru23434 5y ago
  India and UK have essentially the same nominal GDP, while UK probably has ~ 1/20 the population. This despite not seeing none of the violent conflicts of East/SE Asia, either during the great war or after that. India consciously inherited the draconian colonial system of the past century, with all its inherent builtin cruelties, and has shown neither intent, nor any inclinations of changing this. It clearly serves the elite well to have this setup with a meek and famished population. Take one simple metric: the literacy remains < 80%. China has near 100%, despite the complexity of the writing system. India thinks the issue is with its native languages (that its people actually understand) and now plans to 'leap-frog' China by teaching people everything in English. India is set to create an entire generation of people who are skilled neither in their mother tongues, nor in the "progressive foreign language"; neither are they civilized in Indian traditions, nor in Western ones. A country with such mental handicap will go more in the way of sub-saharan Africa with all its meaningless violence. Once the candles of the old civilization are finally extinguished, I expect a lot more violence. If anything India will end up as another basket case, and require a lot more humanitarian aid.
  - Xplune13 5y ago
    I agree on one thing that teaching English as a primary language over native languages is a sad trend going on in India as it diminishes the culture in my opinion. But, where did you hear that "India thinks the issue is with its native languages"? I've never heard anything like that before your comment.
  - FraaJad 5y ago
    Bravo Sir. I must congratulate you on your bravery for creating an anonymous account just for this insightful comment.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      Not everyone wants their controversial opionions on record under their pseudo-"real life" identity.
  - screye 5y ago
cblconfederate 5y ago
Can't the chairs of state start acting like CEOs of their countries rather than like royals who need to fly 200 people just to have a chat? They can talk on zoom, all we need to know is "chairman of india spoke to chairman of uk and the following things changed:"
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  What makes you think they don‘t? Actual physical visits are to eg finalze deals, when high-bandwidth communication is necessary. And by high-bandwidth I mean body language, spontaneous n-to-n conversations between all participants, etc.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    i don't think decisions that affect millions should be based on body language
    - bongoman37 5y ago
      What should they be based on? Its kind of stupid to ask people to behave like Spock like value maximizing machines.
      - drdeadringer 5y ago
        While I see your point, I find commuting umpteen hours for a 5 minute conversation that could have been over the phone, over email, or over zoom-skype-jitsi rather soul-sucking. And Spock did have emotions.
      - cblconfederate 5y ago
        > like value maximizing machines. thats the job of a head of state
        ben_w 5y ago
        More like the Tal Shiar, if we’re using Trek references — politicians don’t try to deny emotions.
tim333 5y ago
It's surprising how much worse the covid situation has recently got in India. If you look at the cases graph https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ I'm not sure how it's gone from declining in Jan to super exponential in Mar/April?
- bongoman37 5y ago
  2 major festivals, Holi and Kumbh Mela (attended by over 2m people with no social distancing or anything), massive election rallies in multiple states. Poor vaccination drive. A double mutant variant of the virus that seems to be faster spreading. Medical system collapsing, almost everything that could go wrong is going wrong.
  - sumanthvepa 5y ago
    I live in India. Just got my first dose (Covishield -- which is the AstraZeneca derived vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute). The process was really smooth. Just went to the website, (I could have used the AarogySetup COVID app, but preferred not install it,) was given an appointment date. Turned up on the appointment date, stood in line (a longish line -- a 3 hour wait) and got my vaccine. Was made to wait for 30 mins post vaccination to check for anaphylactic shock then then sent home with a couple of fever pills (paracetamol I think). Was contacted two days later by a robocaller to get my feedback and the vaccine certificate was available for download immediately. The process was REALLY smooth. The thing is, its easy to sit in a tiny country like the UK and say the vaccination program is going well, India is vaccinating at rates similar to the rest of the world 3-4 million per day. But India is so huge that, at that rate it will take several years to vaccinate everybody. Harsh lockdowns sadly are even worse for poor people. They literally caused more deaths in the early days due to starvation (from not having the money to buy food) than the virus itself. It is complex to manage a vast and complex country like India. So glib, short comments on social media sites make good reading but are not reflective of the actual effectiveness of the government in power. And I say this as an ardent critic of the current Modi administration.
    - deleted 5y ago
xmdx 5y ago
Really sad what's going on over there.
nanna 5y ago
When Theresa May visited India in 2016 the conclusion was that Britain was becoming even less relevant to India given that Brexit meant the UK no longer gave India access to EU markets, and because May refused to increase the amount of Indian student visas.* So I'm struggling to see why Johnson would fair any better. * https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37950198 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37950198

40 points by jangid 5y ago

The relationship between these two countries must be pretty awkward. The former colonizer is now a failing nation, while the colonized has the future.

neilsense 5y ago
With adults, not every conversation has to be about history either party can control, so the relationship usually looks towards the future.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I would hardly consider Britain a failed state compared to the utter poverty, religious violence, and sexual inequality tens of millions face daily there.
- ben_w 5y ago
  I have to agree, despite having a strongly negative outlook for the U.K. — there are massive gaps between the two nations, made up for only by the enormous absolute population of India. Things may change quickly and surprise me, but even my 90% estimate for the U.K. is Brexit-related incompetence (as opposed to COVID-related, so yes things can go sideways for new and exciting reasons at short notice) is that the U.K. as a whole ends up at least as strong as Wales is now, and Wales is doing about 13 times better by GDP than India. And yes, I know GDP isn’t everything, and I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet, 5% isn’t very likely, and the more likely internal conflicts within the U.K. are highly regional.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    > I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet If I had to guess, I'd say the conflict is much much likelier to come back post-Brexit. Now that we're out of the EU, the "open movement" hack made possible by mutual EU membership no longer works without knock-on effects (customs checks, blah blah). I can't see Boris Johnson falling on the sword to safekeep the peace in NI, so if the push comes to shove, NI is more likely to be left to fend for themselves.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      I’m guesstimating P(The Troubles | limited to just the range and belligerents as last time) ~= 0.75 The thing I’m saying is p ~= 0.05 is P(The Troubles | scaled up from NI to whole UK), which would be ~123,500 dead and ~1,662,500 injured. This is one of several reasons why I no longer live in the U.K.
teoru23434 5y ago
India and UK have essentially the same nominal GDP, while UK probably has ~ 1/20 the population. This despite not seeing none of the violent conflicts of East/SE Asia, either during the great war or after that. India consciously inherited the draconian colonial system of the past century, with all its inherent builtin cruelties, and has shown neither intent, nor any inclinations of changing this. It clearly serves the elite well to have this setup with a meek and famished population. Take one simple metric: the literacy remains < 80%. China has near 100%, despite the complexity of the writing system. India thinks the issue is with its native languages (that its people actually understand) and now plans to 'leap-frog' China by teaching people everything in English. India is set to create an entire generation of people who are skilled neither in their mother tongues, nor in the "progressive foreign language"; neither are they civilized in Indian traditions, nor in Western ones. A country with such mental handicap will go more in the way of sub-saharan Africa with all its meaningless violence. Once the candles of the old civilization are finally extinguished, I expect a lot more violence. If anything India will end up as another basket case, and require a lot more humanitarian aid.
- Xplune13 5y ago
  I agree on one thing that teaching English as a primary language over native languages is a sad trend going on in India as it diminishes the culture in my opinion. But, where did you hear that "India thinks the issue is with its native languages"? I've never heard anything like that before your comment.
- FraaJad 5y ago
  Bravo Sir. I must congratulate you on your bravery for creating an anonymous account just for this insightful comment.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Not everyone wants their controversial opionions on record under their pseudo-"real life" identity.
- screye 5y ago

cblconfederate 5y ago

Can't the chairs of state start acting like CEOs of their countries rather than like royals who need to fly 200 people just to have a chat? They can talk on zoom, all we need to know is "chairman of india spoke to chairman of uk and the following things changed:"

axiosgunnar 5y ago
What makes you think they don‘t? Actual physical visits are to eg finalze deals, when high-bandwidth communication is necessary. And by high-bandwidth I mean body language, spontaneous n-to-n conversations between all participants, etc.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  i don't think decisions that affect millions should be based on body language
  - bongoman37 5y ago
    What should they be based on? Its kind of stupid to ask people to behave like Spock like value maximizing machines.
    - drdeadringer 5y ago
      While I see your point, I find commuting umpteen hours for a 5 minute conversation that could have been over the phone, over email, or over zoom-skype-jitsi rather soul-sucking. And Spock did have emotions.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      > like value maximizing machines. thats the job of a head of state
      - ben_w 5y ago
        More like the Tal Shiar, if we’re using Trek references — politicians don’t try to deny emotions.

tim333 5y ago

It's surprising how much worse the covid situation has recently got in India. If you look at the cases graph https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ I'm not sure how it's gone from declining in Jan to super exponential in Mar/April?

bongoman37 5y ago
2 major festivals, Holi and Kumbh Mela (attended by over 2m people with no social distancing or anything), massive election rallies in multiple states. Poor vaccination drive. A double mutant variant of the virus that seems to be faster spreading. Medical system collapsing, almost everything that could go wrong is going wrong.
- sumanthvepa 5y ago
  I live in India. Just got my first dose (Covishield -- which is the AstraZeneca derived vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute). The process was really smooth. Just went to the website, (I could have used the AarogySetup COVID app, but preferred not install it,) was given an appointment date. Turned up on the appointment date, stood in line (a longish line -- a 3 hour wait) and got my vaccine. Was made to wait for 30 mins post vaccination to check for anaphylactic shock then then sent home with a couple of fever pills (paracetamol I think). Was contacted two days later by a robocaller to get my feedback and the vaccine certificate was available for download immediately. The process was REALLY smooth. The thing is, its easy to sit in a tiny country like the UK and say the vaccination program is going well, India is vaccinating at rates similar to the rest of the world 3-4 million per day. But India is so huge that, at that rate it will take several years to vaccinate everybody. Harsh lockdowns sadly are even worse for poor people. They literally caused more deaths in the early days due to starvation (from not having the money to buy food) than the virus itself. It is complex to manage a vast and complex country like India. So glib, short comments on social media sites make good reading but are not reflective of the actual effectiveness of the government in power. And I say this as an ardent critic of the current Modi administration.
  - deleted 5y ago

xmdx 5y ago

Really sad what's going on over there.

nanna 5y ago

When Theresa May visited India in 2016 the conclusion was that Britain was becoming even less relevant to India given that Brexit meant the UK no longer gave India access to EU markets, and because May refused to increase the amount of Indian student visas.* So I'm struggling to see why Johnson would fair any better. * https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37950198 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37950198