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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

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.

kanche 5y ago
In some places by 20x! https://i.imgur.com/VJHL2VT.jpg https://i.imgur.com/VJHL2VT.jpg
- gruez 5y ago
  how do they know a cremation was for a covid-19 victim?
  - Exmoor 5y ago
    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-deaths-tracker https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
    - zamalek 5y ago
      > 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.
      - roywiggins 5y ago
        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).
      - sgt101 5y ago
        >>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.
      - cobookman 5y ago
        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.
      - truth_ 5y ago
        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.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        Exactly it an order of magnitude number that helps you assess the official numbers.
  - nmridul 5y ago
    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.
  - vishnugupta 5y ago
    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.
  - mathisonturing 5y ago
    The article says, "number of people being cremated at special Covid sites"
  - dartharva 5y ago
    COVID-19 victim bodies come in specialized vehicles with PPE-kit-wearing crews, at least as far as I have seen.
shas3 5y ago
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
- sgt101 5y ago
  Well, science is all about observations, the idea of people being forced into adhoc cremations on the street is quite an observation.
  - sg47 5y ago
    Is it due to space capacity or labor capacity?
    - sgt101 5y ago
      That is an really interesting question - if it's labour capacity then maybe there's a conflation due to cross infection.
    - _coveredInBees 5y ago
      Being India, it almost certainly isn't a labor capacity.
puranjay 5y ago
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.
- bongoman37 5y ago
  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.
  - puranjay 5y ago
    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.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    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?
    - baybal2 5y ago
      A potential future head of our satellite office in Hyderabad has just lost his father. Just 57
    - fragmede 5y ago
      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.
    - bongoman37 5y ago
      Delhi/Gujarat/UP are worse than other places. It also seems connections are trumping wealth right now.
saas_sam 5y ago
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.
- Tarsul 5y ago
  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.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    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.
    - vram22 5y ago
      The prep of setting up a pandemic task force that the previous US admin did was axed by Bumf.
      - vram22 5y ago
        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.
      - vram22 5y ago
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
sharikone 5y ago
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..
crossroadsguy 5y ago
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-the-truth-dainik-bhaskar-says-govt-data-on-covid-deaths-in-bhopal-is-a-lie https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/16/burning-pyres-telling...

kanche 5y ago

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

gruez 5y ago
how do they know a cremation was for a covid-19 victim?
- Exmoor 5y ago
  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-deaths-tracker https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
  - zamalek 5y ago
    > 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.
    - roywiggins 5y ago
      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).
    - sgt101 5y ago
      >>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.
    - cobookman 5y ago
      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.
    - truth_ 5y ago
      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.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Exactly it an order of magnitude number that helps you assess the official numbers.
- nmridul 5y ago
  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.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  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.
- mathisonturing 5y ago
  The article says, "number of people being cremated at special Covid sites"
- dartharva 5y ago
  COVID-19 victim bodies come in specialized vehicles with PPE-kit-wearing crews, at least as far as I have seen.

shas3 5y ago

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

sgt101 5y ago
Well, science is all about observations, the idea of people being forced into adhoc cremations on the street is quite an observation.
- sg47 5y ago
  Is it due to space capacity or labor capacity?
  - sgt101 5y ago
    That is an really interesting question - if it's labour capacity then maybe there's a conflation due to cross infection.
  - _coveredInBees 5y ago
    Being India, it almost certainly isn't a labor capacity.

puranjay 5y ago

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.

bongoman37 5y ago
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.
- puranjay 5y ago
  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.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  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?
  - baybal2 5y ago
    A potential future head of our satellite office in Hyderabad has just lost his father. Just 57
  - fragmede 5y ago
    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.
  - bongoman37 5y ago
    Delhi/Gujarat/UP are worse than other places. It also seems connections are trumping wealth right now.

saas_sam 5y ago

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.

Tarsul 5y ago
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.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  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.
  - vram22 5y ago
    The prep of setting up a pandemic task force that the previous US admin did was axed by Bumf.
    - vram22 5y ago
      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.
    - vram22 5y ago
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

sharikone 5y ago

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..

crossroadsguy 5y ago

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-the-truth-dainik-bhaskar-says-govt-data-on-covid-deaths-in-bhopal-is-a-lie https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/16/burning-pyres-telling...