18 ms·

India’s second wave of Covid-19 feels nothing like its first

288 points by divbzero 5y ago

xiphias2 5y ago
This is happening everywhere in the world (except a few countries where most people are vaccinated and/or tested heavily): people ran out of money, goverments failed to help them, and at this point it's worth to take the risk of getting COVID for much more people than to stay hungry and get homeless.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Alternative explanation. In japan people dont care anymore and we are hit by a new wave which is definitely looking like a new peak of infections. Add to that absolutely no border control and lazy authorities and thats a recipe for things getting out of control.
  - pudmaidai 5y ago
    What do you mean by “absolutely no border control”? As far as I know quarantine is required to enter Japan.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      Not for japanese nationals
  - Torkel 5y ago
    I entered Japan close to two weeks ago from Europe. Super strict and well managed border control. Passengers were supervised and escorted to a special quarantine hotel for the first three days of quarantine. After that they use an app on my phone to keep track of where I am. For 14 days I have to "check in" my location multiple times per day. The place with no border control i Europe. Not Japan.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      If only they did the same thing to Japanese nationals...
    - sirn 5y ago
      The 3 days quarantine is only for people arriving from a list of countries with a known mutated strain. It's much less strict if the passenger did not arrived from the listed countries ([1]; the one in the parenthesis, the table below is countries which PCR result is required). Officially the rule is to be quarantine in the designated place for 14 days and to report everyday. However, the loophole is the designated place also includes your home, and if you happen to use LINE, the daily report becomes just a button press in the app. Location tracking is only recommended, not required. (The Japanese document on location tracking is just to enable location history on Google Maps or enable Significant Location on iPhone[2]) [1]: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/covid19_qa_kanrenkigyou_00001.html#Q1-1 https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryo... Note the English version of this document is very outdated (Mar 26, 2020 for the English version vs. Mar 21, 2021 for the Japanese version.) See [3] for a more up-to-date one, although in a different format. [2]: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/000652555.pdf https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/000652555.pdf [3]: https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html The list is in Section 2, in the (Note 1), with the most horrendous formatting possible.
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    ... lucky there's no world sporting event that will congregate thousands of people from around the globe in Japan in a few weeks time. They should have cancelled the Olympics to at least 2022... I hope historians don't look back at sports ball being the catalyst of third/fourth waves and stronger/newer strains all across the globe in 2022.
    - cyrksoft 5y ago
      International spectators are not allowed at the Olympics this time. And there will be strict protocols for athletes. Not sure how this can cause such a massive new wave.
      - ekianjo 5y ago
        You think Japanese spectators are somehow immune to COViD?
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Which countries have this happening?
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    I'm from Hungary (currently the top on the official list of deaths/millions of people), where people were so scared, that the first wave was almost non-existant. Now it's the opposite, though at least people are getting vaccinated aggressively, they just don't wait enough for the vaccines to get into effect. Another example is my girlfriend who is from Colombia: people were very careful last year, but now there's a huge demonstration happening because of a proposed tax reform, which shows how desparate people are like, and how much it overwrites their fear of COVID. I'm sure that well see the results in the number of deaths in a month or two there.
    - tartoran 5y ago
      Are you just from or currently in Hungary? Is the situation there deteriorating?
      - xiphias2 5y ago
        I'm in Mexico, but going back to Hungary in a few weeks to try to get my COVID vaccine. There's a soccer match tomorrow (I mean Saturday) with Fradi, the favourite football team of the prime minister, that's why he opened up the country more. Many people just go with it, as they just want to get back to normal, even though the vaccines that people got are not protecting yet. His main goal is to open up even more to be able to organize EU soccer championship, that's why he's rushing ahead. Viktor Orban wanted to be a professional soccer player when he was a child, but he wasn't good enough, and now the whole country is suffering because of his childhood trauma.
      - randomchars 5y ago
        No. 40% of the population had at least 1 vaccine already. Death and infection rates are also declining.
      - 5y ago
- thweor234234 5y ago
  Lockdowns, at this point, are a plot to kill the poor, nothing more, nothing less.
ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
Also note that covid deaths are around 10-100x more than the official records. To be recorded as official death, the person should have tested positive and have died in a hospital. Home deaths are not recorded as covid. There are also reports from my acquaintances that deaths from private hospitals in grade 2/3 cities are not recorded as covid deaths nor are deaths even in government hospital where a test could not be performed before the death of the person. Two big reasons for this wave are 1) The kumbh mela with 5-12 million people gathering in a tiny spot. This was supposed to take place next year but was pulled forward to appease the religious hardcore. 2) Election rallies around the country.
- invertedreversi 5y ago
  Farmer protests are widely believed to be the biggest reason for the spread.
  - mlnj 5y ago
    Not the case. The farmer protests have been going on for months and it won't be much of a protest if they all went back home and spread the virus. Yet another attempt by the BJP IT Cell to divert the attention onto anybody but the BJP government.
    - tiuPapa 5y ago
      They had a rotation policy. They clearly say it in all their interviews, how they are maintaining constant presence in the protests by rotating members every 4 - 7 days. See interviews on channels like Youtube channels like ScoopWhoop Unscripted, that tried to bring the farmer's point of view to the forefront. Let's not kid ourselves, the virus doesn't discriminate based on whether the gathering is righteous or not. Each and every gathering is a super spreader, be it a protest, election rally or a religious gathering.
      - mlnj 5y ago
        The farmers protests are almost completely represented by people from 2 States. Even if they did go home and spread the infection the rate of spread is much lower in Punjab and Haryana. I want them to handle the crisis well and be safe but the narrative that 'Farmer protests destroy India with Covid' needs to be debunked.
ppf 5y ago
How did it take so long for India to have a second wave?
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Dynamics of the virus spread is quite interesting. 3Blue1Brown made a fascinating video about how an epidemic spreads: https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs
- baybal2 5y ago
  I'd say it's a third wave by now already
- spikels 5y ago
  I would like to know this too. Why didn’t it take off last year and why now? My prior is that the virus took time to evolve to be hyper-infectious in the local conditions. Fits timescale and may fit theoretical models (many suggest viruses become more infectious but less deadly - not sure if this is the case in India). Would be great to see good research on this but it will take many months. Early reports and analysis are likely to be wrong.
  - intended 5y ago
    Yes. In hindsight this type of analysis is obviously critical. Sadly it seems india only started focusing on improving sequencing in December 2020.
    - divbzero 5y ago
      The US too [1] has been slow to implement large-scale sequencing efforts. We have the technology to track the virus more closely [2] [3] but seem oddly unhurried to deploy it widely. [1]: https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/06/stem-the-pandemic-national-covid-19-genomic-sequencing-effort/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/06/stem-the-pandemic-nation... [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/wastewater-surveillance.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/wast... [3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33468686/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33468686/
shubhamjain 5y ago
The most puzzling thing about this wave is that even the young aren't being spared. From the start of the pandemic, I assumed it was patently clear that it's the old (>60 age) are vulnerable. What I am seeing in Delhi is people from all walks of life without any comorbidites succumbing to the disease - peoples in 30s, 40s, and even 20s. Granted death rate of younger people isn't absolute zero, but in India, it's happening way too often. Could it be because of lack of hospital care? Maybe, it would interesting to see death by age group for hospitalised patients. Unfortunately, there's no way to investigate this since I don't think there any publicly available data that shows deaths by age group.
- x3iv130f 5y ago
  Being infected isn't a binary thing. There is a big difference from swallowing 30 Coronavirus particles from touching your face to breathing in 300,000 from someone coughing in your face. If you're young the first is probably a mild cold while the latter is a trip to the ICU. Part of bringing the virus under control is reducing the amount of particles people are exposed to so they have a better chance of fighting off the virus.
  - ArtTimeInvestor 5y ago
    How do you know? It depends on how fast the virus population doubles. And how fast the immune system kicks in. If the virus population doubles every second then the person who swallowed 30 virus particles will be at 300,000 in just 14 seconds. If it doubles once per minute, it is 14 minutes. If it doubles once per hour, it is 14 hours. The question if that is a meaningful headstart depends on how fast the immune system reacts. And if it reacts faster to 300k viruses than to 30.
    - corty 5y ago
      It doesn't only react faster, it will react differently. Up to a reaction called "sepsis" that can kill you even without the virus doing anything anymore. Research points to most covid complications being such (there are lots more, the immune system is the worst kind of spaghetti code you can imagine) massive immune reactions gone haywire. I'm not saying you are right or wrong. I'm saying that immune reactions aren't linear, straightforward, harmless or predictable. And that "more virus" usually isn't better.
rzz3 5y ago
Is there a paywall bypass for this? I wish HN would ban links that require payment/registration.
- pabs3 5y ago
  No JS, no cookies works for the Economist, or you can use an extension for paywall bypass: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
- Clewza313 5y ago
  https://archive.is/2021.05.01-051853/https://www.economist.com/diary/2021/04/30/indias-second-wave-of-covid-19-feels-nothing-like-its-first https://archive.is/2021.05.01-051853/https://www.economist.c...
- spikels 5y ago
  For this and many sites that rely on JS for their paywall try putting remove-js.com/ in front of the URL like this: https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/diary/2021/04/30/indias-second-wave-of-covid-19-feels-nothing-like-its-first https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/diary/2021/0...
  - ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
    wow this is such a cool hack
  - GordonS 5y ago
    Doesn't work for me, I get an Access Denied page served by Cloudflare.
- sumedh 5y ago
  Do you also work for free? If you cannot pay, just dont read the article or use some workarounds.
- dang 5y ago
  If there's a workaround, it's allowed. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=paywalls%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
blueblisters 5y ago
The demand for oxygen in the National Capital Region and surrounding North Indian states brings up an important question - is respiratory distress worsened due to air pollution? I hope researchers are studying this because, if true, this could be a potential trigger to ramp up the need to tackle air pollution now rather than kicking the can down the road. I have a feeling air pollution is not that important politically because people haven't felt adverse health effects in the short term.
- publicola1990 5y ago
  It is possible, Delhi has one of the worst air qualities of major cities. It could be a factor in the disease progression in Delhi.
- op03 5y ago
  Mumbai has been hit quite badly too. I have a feeling everyone in the districts lands up in Indian cities during such events cause the district/block level health care facilities in India are a crap shoot. According to the sustainability dev goals India has 10 docs per 10k ppl. 30 per 10k if you include nurses and other support staff. What can anyone do with such numbers when the tsunami hits other than say send the patient to the nearest city with the most resources.
  - AmIDev 5y ago
    > I have a feeling everyone in the districts lands up in Indian cities during such events cause the district/block level health care facilities in India are a crap shoot. While this is true, the opposite is also happening, where people from Mumbai/Pune are being admitted to hospitals in smaller cities where beds might be available. Patients from Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and other neighbouring districts have been reported in my district.
- tarsinge 5y ago
  Good point. Last year when the north of Italy was particularly affected it was during a huge air pollution episode. At the time I had heard particulate pollution helps the virus circulate, but maybe it also worsen the symptoms.
qart 5y ago
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/we-are-all-responsible-for-indias-devastating-second-wave-7296327/ https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/we-are-all-respons... The author is a surgeon. He says things that many of us have been saying all along. Hopefully, his professional background will help wake some people up.
- egghese 5y ago
  Opinion columns are not scientific sources. To the article's credit recklessness from people are is the reason for the spike. But doesn't absolves a leadership that claimed to have concurred Covid-19 and have no clue about disaster management. Indians deserved better.
  - qart 5y ago
    There have been more than enough scientific sources published for the effectiveness of masks. I hope you still don't doubt that part. I will not cite them. People have been crowding and not wearing masks across the country. Do you want a scientific source for that? There may never be one. The Indians who step out of their homes are aware of this already. No government or healthcare system can keep up with people flouting the scientific recommendations on such a scale.
    - egghese 5y ago
      I was not disagreeing with the articles claim people flouting rules caused a spike. But the people or the country isn't by itself responsible. Rather a callous government that was indifferent to this pandemic is. It had an year to prepare. It did nothing more than PR works - If the health infrastructure could not take it, what was the reason for this narrative ? https://www.thequint.com/news/india/in-january-pm-modi-had-expressed-indias-victory-over-covid-19 https://www.thequint.com/news/india/in-january-pm-modi-had-e... - Did they not know about vaccine demand ? https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2021-01-20-india-pharmacy-of-the-world-starts-covid-vaccine-exports/ https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2021-01-20-india-phar... - Why did they take away the states ability to prepare ? https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/apr/09/as-per-new-circular-states-depend-on-centre-to-procure-covid-19-medical-equipment-2128010.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/apr/09/as-per-n...
alwayshasbeen 5y ago
Is there a study that tells if the current wave is related to Kumbh Mela that was celebrated extensively?
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  No there's no such study. There has been a lot of focus on election rallies and Kumbh Mela in press, but it seems to be mostly due to people turning the tragedy of the second wave into a political opportunity to attack Modi. But Kumbh Mela is one event, and elections are only taking place in a few states. The reality is that India was handling the pandemic quite well through a policy of highly localized containment, and general mobility among the populace was increasing in response to improved pandemic conditions and the trickling of vaccines (although India gave away tens of millions of vaccine doses to other nations and hurt its own drive as a result of that generosity). I suspect that the reality of this wave is that many factors contributed - increased general mobility, some large events, and likely new variants that aren't well understood yet and may spread more easily. Prior to that, everything and everyone being blamed right now is just speculative and opportunist.
  - mlnj 5y ago
    > But Kumbh Mela is one event, and elections are only taking place in a few states. Kumb mela gathers tens of millions of devotees at a single point in the most densely populated state in the sub continent. Just on April 14th 2021, more than 900,000 people taking a dip in the same river. The central government is the authority responsible to stop the event this year given the impending crisis, but only encouragement was seen from the ministers except that the event was cut short to 30 days instead of the many month ordeal it usually is. > There has been a lot of focus on election rallies and Kumbh Mela in press, but it seems to be mostly due to people turning the tragedy of the second wave into a political opportunity to attack Modi. > everything and everyone being blamed right now is just speculative and opportunist. This thread is a testament to the aggressive brigading to deflect all blame from the Central Government. Contrarians spewing random questions to avoid focus on anything being discussed. It has been a pattern for the past half a decade now. Nobody is denying that there are multiple factors and people responsible in the current crisis, but this line of excuses is a steady pattern of a concerted effort to deflect blame on the untarnishable image of a strongman Modi emanates. It happens on every crisis. every blunder Modi makes.
mandis 5y ago
Ground reality- * 400,000 new infections reported yesterday. Number of deaths is being suppressed- 10x more deaths than reported. Crematoriums everywhere are overflowing, yet only 3k deaths per day as per official record. * Basic resources like Oxygen, Meds (Favipiravir, Remdesivir, Monitors), Hospital beds keep running out in many cities and towns. Everything is on sale for 2-10x the official prices. For example, Remdesivir selling for Rs 20,000 ($300) instead of Rs 2,000. Ambulances charging Rs 25,000 for a half hour transport, instead of Rs 2,500. * Beds are a tragedy. People are dying in their cars (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/no-bed-in-4-noida-hospitals-33-year-old-dies-in-car/articleshow/82337348.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/no-bed-in-4-n...). Day rent for beds in nursing home corridors (yes, actual narrow corridors) are selling for an amount equal to the average monthly salary of a middle class citizen. * The government organized election rallies and religious gatherings and overruled the concerns of many educated voices over the last 2 months. Lockdown in election bound states was only announced yesterday, once all rallies and multi-phase election was finished. Votes/Power over lives, that's the mantra. One head of state went as far as to pass an order declaring anyone posting stories of O2 shortage will be prosecuted and arrested. (https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/covid-up-hospitals-defy-yogi-gag-bid-by-flagging-oxygen-shortage/cid/1814104 https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/covid-up-hospitals-defy...) * People have stepped up as the govt has abdicated responsibility, sharing resources on their stories and working all day to verify their availability by calling hospitals and crematoriums. However the scale of the tragedy is immense and people who could have been saved are dropping like flies. This wave is affecting 40, 50 year olds, without any comorbidities. Apparently the strain is a double mutant (mutation of the strain from UK), and now a triple variant is also being reported. * EDIT- Also for the sake of PR, the central govt sent more than half the vaccine produced abroad. Apparently the concept of stockpiling and reserves isn't common knowledge with the Indian political elite. So today we are at a situation where we are importing the vaccines we had exported, as we are desperately short on stocks and there is no relief in sight. Only 1.9% of India's population has received 2 doses of the vaccine. Long story short, many people will die.
- pessimist 5y ago
  Agree with almost everything. Health care is collapsing around us. 10x death-undercount nationwide is probably not accurate. Major states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala are reporting close to accurate numbers. 2-5x nationwide is likely, with places like UP, West Bengal and Gujarat undercounting by 5-10x.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/jJB4A https://archive.md/jJB4A
durovo 5y ago
This thread is full of people pointing fingers at: 1. Election rallies 2. Kumbh Mela 3. Farmer Protests (Yes, they are still going on) 4. The government's incompetence. And all of these are completely valid reasons. But does anyone living in the country really believe that these are the only reasons? There are still people who believe that Covid is a hoax. People who had not worn a mask for the last 6 months now wear paper thin masks in large crowds and expect to not get Covid. My neighbor contracted Covid recently, but they have not told anyone about it. All of their household help is still coming. Some of the family members still go out to meet others. This situation is really a reflection of the selfishness of the people. I have seen medium-sized business that cut salaries if employees take leaves due to covid. So these employees hide their symptoms and report to work. If you are doing any of these things, please self-reflect.
- benque 5y ago
  Yes. These are the major reasons not the "only" reasons. Sure, there will be a few percentage of people who are irresponsible, but we have to look at the big picture as well. Mass gatherings are far more responsible for the spread than a few people not wearing masks.
  - durovo 5y ago
    Absolutely, I am not trying to defend that stupidity here. Also, it was not a 'few' people not wearing masks. It has always been a few people wearing masks. And what qualifies as a mask for most people should really be questioned.
- alwayshasbeen 5y ago
  Well, if a country if full of people believing COVID is a hoax and wearing a mask is useless - what do you think you will get? You get exactly what's happening now.
  - mandis 5y ago
    wearing a mask wont do jackdiddly if you organize large gathering with 100,000 people.
vinay_ys 5y ago
One explanation I heard from a doctor recently is this: the younger population is infected/affected more this time because they have been infected and has been asymptomatic or mild all these months and with that the virus has mutated more amongst younger people. So the second wave is affecting the younger population much more intensely this time than before. I don't know how scientific this explanation is. My own gut thinking is that lockdown nowhere nearly as effective this time as last year. Even simple social mechanics that were in effect last year – like telcos changing their ring/busy tone to covid PSA message isn't there. People are not being reminded to take social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks precautions seriously. And people are not doing it as seriously as they did last time. This has been the reality for the months of March and April where it seem to have spread silently. The weather change between Feb-April (very windy, cold to dry heat conditions) could also be a factor. And now, it is too serious and now people may change their behavior but it is too late.
- Aachen 5y ago
  If that were true, we'd be seeing the mutation in sequencings. We all know India is doing pretty badly on that front, but it's also a huge huge population. It's rampant enough that it seems to me they'd have found at least some samples of what you're saying. As it is, B1.617 seems to be the most common there (though it seems hard to find absolute numbers a la [1]), not your friend's speculative mystery strain. Whether they are a doctor..; since what I heard from other doctors near the beginning of the pandemic, it seems they're no better equipped to deal with this than the rest of us and will speculate unscientifically just as much, except people parrot it more. [1] Table with sequencing results for the Netherlands. If someone knows where to find this for other counties, I'd be very interested! https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-covid-19/virus/varianten https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-covid-19/virus/varianten Bonus link: latest WHO update contains some info about variants (unfortunately not much, e.g. just saying a country has had a case of <insert variant> without any info on its prevalence there): https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update-on-covid-19---27-april-2021 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiologic...
  - ummonk 5y ago
cyberpsybin 5y ago
Probably due to opening of schools and colleges across country. That's why it's hitting young people harder.
mohanmcgeek 5y ago
Are we going to have a India second wave discussion every single day? How is this "hacker" "news" @dang .. it's only unnecessary political bickering about how bad the government is from a bunch of India haters. Same talking points imported from Twitter everyday.
- revendell_elf 5y ago
  You're downvoted so much that I can't even read the text anymore. Lol. Good luck trying to defend your country against Westerns who denied sharing their vaccine formulas with India and left it to rot.
  - blueberry8998 5y ago
    Where is the defense? Sprouting some crap is not defense.
    - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
      Maybe if you can't read the comment you should shut up
      - dang 5y ago
        You've been breaking the site guidelines badly. A comment like this is obviously completely unacceptable, and your account has also been using HN for political and/or nationalistic flamewar, which is not cool. We ban accounts that do that. I'm not going to ban you right now because you've posted good comments about other things in the not-too-distant past. Please stick to that and don't post any more flamewar comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    My comment reads this isn't "hacker" "news"
  - dang 5y ago
movid 5y ago
Absolute clusterfuck it is right now in India. And thank you international media for bringing this to light. This could've been averted if the government wasn't busy promoting quackery [1], pandering to astrologers and hardliners by organizing a massive religious festival in the middle of pandemic [2]. And they did fuck all to improve the medical/oxygen infrastructure for the past one year and are promoting fake news that puts the blame squarely on provincial governments. [6] Our supreme leader Modi was busy canvassing and praising crowds attending his rallies as recently as 17th April while the country was burning. [3] Modi's heir in the making who has the potential to make him look like a saint has recently threatened to file cases against people and seize their properties if they take their grievances to social media.[4] And even now, the government is more concerned about their image than controlling the situation. And the establishment's toadies are busy online(I see a lot of them here too) defending their dear leader even now with the same enthusiasm they show to credit him for anything positive. The people are to blame too ofcourse for relaxing but what can we expect when the leaders at helm proclaimed the pandemic is over. PS: I had to post this from a newly created account cuz I wouldn't want this to weigh against me when I apply for a passport. [5] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/56172784 https://www.bbc.com/news/56172784 [2] https://science.thewire.in/health/leaders-listened-to-astrologers-so-haridwar-mela-happened-after-11-years-not-12/ https://science.thewire.in/health/leaders-listened-to-astrol... [3] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/west-bengal-assembly-election-2021-prime-minister-narendra-modi-in-west-bengal-have-witnessed-such-a-rally-for-the-first-time-2416162 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/west-bengal-assembly-electio... [4] https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/yogi-adityanth-oxygen-supply-rumour-seize-property-27943 https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/yogi-adityanth-oxygen-... [5] https://thenextweb.com/news/this-indian-states-police-force-will-block-passport-applications-over-anti-national-social-media-posts https://thenextweb.com/news/this-indian-states-police-force-... [6] https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/no-centre-did-not-allocate-funds-for-oxygen-plants-to-states https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/no-centre-did-not-allo...
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/jJB4A https://archive.is/jJB4A
throwaway4good 5y ago
"If only 1.7m tests are being conducted per day, what can that 386,000 really mean? Is it that 0.0004% of the country has come down with the virus since yesterday, or that nearly 23% did? Obviously, the true number lies between those absurd extremes, but who knows where?" Why is there not a proper estimate on how big a part of the population is infected? And with which strains? Surely with a randomized, representative survey you could find this out, instead of all this speculation? It also would give authorities better grounds for their decisions.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > It also would give authorities better grounds for their decisions. The authorities need to do those studies or commission them. Instead, the authorities are busy politicising vaccine distributions (vote us in for free vaccines) [0] and polarising on religious fault lines. The country has gone to the wolves. [0] https://archive.is/dNYo4 https://archive.is/dNYo4
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  In general it is quite hard to get accurate representative samples if there is an unknown or high degree of variance between locations (are you scaling up the right samples to arrive at an accurate estimate). As for knowing which strains, that would certainly be useful but it requires significant sequencing infrastructure, which is not easy to scale up. The Washington Post noted (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/29/india-surge-variant-genetic-sequencing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/29/india-surge-...) that India is #102 among nations in sequencing per capita. It notes: > Sequencing takes a high level of infrastructure and funding. India, which spent very little per capita on health care before the pandemic, has not been able to quickly make the investments to scale up, said Gupta.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  If I understand your calculation, it seems like the lower bound is around 0.03%, not 0.0004%.
- blackoil 5y ago
  Tests are not randomly distributed, but estimates of actual cases is 4-10x. It also varies by state. Some states have very active tracing and testing. Some are actually trying to undermine tests, death count.
thweor234234 5y ago
Oh ffs, stop it with this fear porn already. The state got rid of a lot of the previous makeshift facilities from last year, and this is the reason for this sudden crunch. India's death's rate is ~10-20x lower than that in the US. Of course, you'll have the innumerate "conspiracy" idiots who claim 10x deaths, and you have the occident which is obsessed with the failures of non-Western countries to prove to itself of its self-worth. Then there are the Anglo leftovers of the British colonial administration who form the elite-ruling class of India. These morons have all the more reason to spread terror and doom about the native "heathens". Really makes you wonder why humanity is in this state, where every moron has turned into a apocalypse doomer. I suppose, instead of research into "Artificial" Intelligence, we need to consider ways to make Humans intelligent.
known 5y ago
People are 'morally' corrupt by birth due to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)
- divtiwari 5y ago
  Lol, now we attacking Hinduism for spreading of Corona? Expected something like this tbh. :)
  - revendell_elf 5y ago
    HN has racists too it seems.
  - dang 5y ago
    Religious or nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 5y ago
  We've warned you repeatedly not to use HN for political, national, or religious flamewar. Since your account has shifted into using HN primarily for that, I've banned it. I hate to ban an account that's been here since 2007, but what you're doing is clearly an abuse. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
known 5y ago
"He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave" --Sir William Drummond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi
0xmohit 5y ago
This sums it up: India’s devastating second wave was fuelled by a series of crowded events, including mass rallies addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi [0]. > Fuelling the catastrophe was a series of crowded events, like mass rallies by politicians such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, religious holidays and pilgrimages on the Ganges river. > As governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers, including Modi, touted victory over the virus, people relaxed their vigilance and stopped wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/4/29/indias-deadly-virus-surge-follows-crowded-events https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/4/29/indias-deadly-vi...
- revendell_elf 5y ago
  But those rallies were conducted in West Bangal and highest COVID cases are in Maharashtra. I'm definitely against these rallies but logic seems to fail us here, isn't it?
  - pas 5y ago
    Any Modi/BJP (or otherwise government permitted) rally anywhere sends the signal that people can be more lax.
    - revendell_elf 5y ago
      Even if they're in two opposite ends of India? Also, I don't want to take sides, but all other parties rallied during elections so why single out BJP? Once again, I'm strictly against these gatherings and I firmly believe that they should be banned without delay but this selective outrage is rather obvious that the agenda or the narrative is something else altogether.
      - pas 5y ago
        There very well could be a selective outrage, but I'm almost as far removed from this as possible. HN as a groupmind usually scolds the official government, because the assumption is that they have the most effective control over behavior of people. -- I simply said that Modi/BJP is responsible wherever they are. Of course the other parties are responsible too. And we can simply apply the Spiderman rule: more power, more responsibility. Modi is the PM, BJP is the ruling party. (And yes, of course in some states BJP's influence is lesser than some other party's. And there the responsibility of that particular party is greater.) On top of all this it also depends what was the rhetoric of the other parties. Were they also loudly claiming victory over the pandemic? Naturally Modi trapped himself into a bit of a corner with that. (Even if facists can usually disregard/bend reality, but we shall see how the electorate takes this dissonance.)
publicola1990 5y ago
It seems that Indian medical fraternity is placing too much faith in Remdesivir and Convalescent Plasma. In some way it is similar to the Ivermectin fad in South Africa for Covid treatment. These treatments are not recommended by WHO, but medical practitioners prescribing the same is leading to scarcity and blackmarketing of the same. As I see it there is total chaos in medical protocols for covid treatment, and this could be a significant driver in mortality in this wave in India.
kepler1 5y ago
I hate to bring up this point but I think it's not totally irrelevant. India in general has a problem with hygiene and public health being compromised out of offending people's political / religious sensibilities, inability to follow rules and impose requirements on people, inability to lay down the law consistently. There's just a little too much democracy in this country. Hygiene of people preparing food and in daily life (for many) -- not good. Regulatory oversight -- not good. Animals wandering the street, garbage thrown anywhere, pollution of water supplies for religious rituals -- not good. Agricultural fires allowed to burn for fear of clamping down on farmers -- not good. And you see people in government saying meaningless assurances that the wave of infection will pass -- not good.
Zenst 5y ago
One big factor that is different in India than this time last year would be economic. The incomes of your average person in India has declined due to the whole pandemic and can be seen here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111510/india-coronavirus-impact-on-household-income/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111510/india-coronaviru... That would in a country with many living day by day, be one difference over say this time last year, in which air-quality would of also been a factor as much as currently. Whilst not good, combined with a reduced nutritional intake, may of tipped the balance.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Also collapsing oxygen supply.. maybe simply with more stock and distribution capabilities the wave would have been less deadly.
  - Zenst 5y ago
    The oxygen supply shortage is due to demand and whilst does not explain the increase demand and certainly would play into the deaths, it wouldn't be at the scale we are seeing as it is the increase in cases and the oxygen supply shortage is a product of the knock on demand and not a causality in that demand. Yes it is a factor in increased deaths, but not the major factor, which is increased numbers of infected.
bluzeee 5y ago
It is very unfortunate that some are creating a false narrative about an entire country and is misusing this forum to spread false narrative. While even scientists are puzzled on the cause [0], a few commenters here for sure knows the causes conclusively India unlike U.S. and other western countries needs more careful analysis due to its diverse nature, larger informal economy and lack of proper data collection practices. Any simple attribution like the commenter is doing is simply false narrative 1. Anyone who has been tracking India covid cases closely knows, the most affected and contributing (72%) states for the second wave have been Maharastra and Kerala [0] 2. And, as second wave picked-up just 6 states contributed to 86.37% of new Covid-19 cases as per the data tracking [1] 3. Why did it spike in Maharastra ? Read [3] & [4] Importantly note the point on variant "This surge has started from Vidarbha, and it is hard to believe that mutant variants didn’t have a role to play" 4. Now, lets talk about variant found [4] "Two leading experts recently contended that a new coronavirus mutant strain was reportedly detected in Amravati, Yavatmal, and Akola, all in the Vidarbha region in the eastern part of the state" 5. Some comments talks about religious event which is kumbh mela which took happened in Haridwar, Uttarakhand state. Do you see the state in any of the listed states contributing to the raise ? No. Let's put today's status, is that state even in the top: 10 [5] 6. And do you know you need a permit and negative covid test report to participate in this religious event ? [6] 7. They also talk about Narendra modi rallies. Seriously ? He took rallies in the states where elections being conducted by Indian election commission, like all all other political parties he has to support his party. This is saying like Biden cannot take election rally while Trump goes on giving daily speeches. Importantly, do you see the state of Westbengal where election allies happened in the top ? 8. As Maharastra went into curfew, poor migrant labor mainly from Bihar and UP and people from other states rushed back home and there is no data how this might have affected 9. Did BJP declare victory over virus ? Yes. But there is no scientific or data based attribution of spike Or the some commenters indirect attribution of peoples laxity and not wearing masks to victory declaration is misguiding [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indias-massive-covid-surge-puzzles-scientists/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indias-massive-co... [1] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-updates-february-16-2021/article33847984.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-updates-f... [2] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/6-states-contributed-to-86-37-of-new-covid-19-cases-says-govt-101614497304795.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/6-states-contribut... [3] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-is-maharashtra-seeing-a-new-spike-in-covid-19-cases-7191973/ https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-is... [4] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maharashtra-hits-129-day-high-of-8807-fresh-cases/articleshow/81199045.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maharashtra-hits-1... [5] https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/new-indian-covid-variants-can-cause-re-infections-warns-aiims-chief-121022100228_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/ne... [6] https://www.covid19india.org/ https://www.covid19india.org/ [7] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kumbh-2021-limited-to-30-days-to-begin-on-april-1-2372990 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kumbh-2021-limited-to-30-day...
known 5y ago
God save Indians from Modi regime; He is charging 28% TAX on vaccine;
NicoJuicy 5y ago
A friend went to a presentation about covid. There they said that lead in the air ( eg. Car heavy cities) had a direct consequences on covid particles that get more and deeper into your body. So cases there would be more severe. ( It's 6 months ago that i heared it and didn't hear any research about it. It does make sense when India has it worse)
bsaul 5y ago
i've heard many people talk about the catastrophic situation in india, and yet i see numbers of 4k deaths a day. Which is a lot, but still way below what for example france had at the pic last year ( 1k a day, for a 60 millions people country). Is there something i'm missing ?
- sumedh 5y ago
  The 4k number is the official number which you cannot trust, it will be more than that, some comments here are saying its 2x - 5x the official number.
akudha 5y ago
I am seriously worried where this is going. People don’t seem to take precautions (masks etc), the government doesn’t seem to care (they seem more interested in suppressing data/news). Unless you’re rich, Indian healthcare isn’t great even in good times. It is just not equipped to handle this bad of a situation. This looks like chapter one of a giant disaster, only waiting to get even more worse
MarkMc 5y ago
Suppose I know of a number of people in India who have covid symptoms and difficulty breathing but cannot get treatment in any hospital due to overcrowding. As someone who lives in a Western country, what is the most effective way to help them? I could simply send them money, but they might use it to bribe hospital staff for treatment, or outbid other people for oxygen cannisters. They would benefit but other people would lose out. Maybe I should buy medicine in my home country and send it to them? Or maybe buy oxygen concentrator machines on Alibaba and have them shipped to India?
- elihu 5y ago
  Maybe one somewhat-helpful simple thing you could send them would be a pulse oximeter. If they need to get to a hospital and can't get in, it won't help them much, but it might in some cases be helpful to at least have a thing that at least tells them if they're getting better or worse. Another option is maybe send them a decent quality room air filter if they're in a city with heavy pollution, so it's one less thing for their lungs to deal with. It's kind of a tough question; I'm neither a doctor nor have I been around anyone who has gotten Covid, so I don't really know first-hand what's most helpful.
- jayp1418 5y ago
  Thanks mark for wonderful thought but money won't solve issues India facing. There are multiple problems. I think most important thing is to educate rural people about why they need to follow guidelines strictly. Many people refuses vaccines because they think it is elobrate plan to eliminate them. So education is the way govt.can move forward.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    The comment wasn't asking how to solve problems for all of India, but how to help some people he knows who are in India.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dehrmann 5y ago
geogra4 5y ago
I have had multiple Indian co-workers (from our Chennai office) test covid positive and get sick. Young healthy people.
FriendlyNormie 5y ago
You are so completely and utterly full of shit. You are just making a bunch of random guesses at some symptoms you had. Seriously shut the fuck up.
sunilg78 5y ago
Don't need to be panic and also don't create panic. We at tamilnadu India has solution via traditional siddha. Acalypha indica ( 7 leaves ) and pepper , to be boiled cup of water until one third. Once in three days. It's very clear that we destroyed our ozone and polluted , so it's nature turn to set it back. One such act is this Corona worldwide...... so let's get back to minimal life style and reduce consumption, stop polluting etc.
- rualca 5y ago
  Please tell me you forgot to add a sarcasm tag.
  - anaganisk 5y ago
    You have no idea bud, just because this is HN doesn't mean people dont believe in BS. He might be serious too, how else do you think Patanjali products have a good market in the cities otherwise.
lamontcg 5y ago
I still tend to think that this can most easily be explained by the fact that India hadn't been hit hard up until now and that a lot of people started to believe magical theories about how they were immune, and now we're just seeing the virus ripping through high population density cities and overwhelming the health care system. If you want to talk about variants, though, then there's a couple of things to consider. The first is that the "avirulence" theory that pathogens evolve to become less virulent over time was pretty decisively falsified in the 90s, so forget everything you think you know about that idea being true. There is a fairly well-studied tradeoff which has replaced that between transmission, virulence and in-host viral replication. That doesn't suggest the direction of evolution though. However, there have been studies of incomplete vaccination and immunity which suggests that it actually works to increase selection pressure for higher transmission variants and for virulence. This intuitively makes sense since as, say, half the population has immunity that increases the pressure on the virus to increase its fundamental transmissibility since an R0 of 3.0 will no longer be anywhere near as effective -- and the mechanism to do so is to just increase viral load and thereby increase virulence and kill more infected. And this may have been observed in 1918 with the more lethal later waves of the pandemic which affected younger people. That virus later evolved into seasonal influenza, probably as a result of widespread immunity producing pressure for immune escape variants which came at an overall cost to fitness by mutating all the epitopes on the surface proteins so that it could re-infect already immune individuals. That will probably happen here as well, there'll be a limit to how virulent and transmissibile this virus can get and it'll have to start making costlier immune escaping mutations eventually -- but in the short term I wouldn't be too surprised if we start to see a lot of dead younger people in third world nations that don't have as much access to vaccines going forward. But at any rate, none of this particularly matters. The lesson is still all the same which is to lockdown and avoid catching and spreading the virus until you have a chance to get vaccinated. Which is what it has been all along. People still try to argue with the virus and engage in magical thinking about how certain populations have magical immunity to it, but that continues to keep getting falsified. India most likely just got lucky that they didn't get hit early, then the prior wave they had was their "seeding" wave which was likely just tamped down by people voluntarily taking precautions. Then based on their success everyone dropped their guard and thought it would all be over in 2021 and the virus just took advantage of that. People in the US who are vaccine-hesitant should also consider that if they've managed to not catch it so far and develop any immunity that you really want to avoid rolling the dice with later versions of the virus. Also it should be noted that while the virus kills a lot more people over 80 that the doubling rate of fatalities is every 8 years of age while the doubling rate of hospitalization is only ever 15 years -- so a 40 year old person is 32 times less likely to die than an 80 year old, but they're only 6 times less likely to be hospitalized (although it falls off a cliff once people get under-20 and the very young are much less likely to be hospitalized). The way that American culture is so focused on our mortality to the exclusion of all other outcomes means that we're heavily discounting the possibility that we could survive the virus but be physically crippled by it. > "Virulence evolution and the trade-off hypothesis: history, current state of affairs and the future." > https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01658.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101... > "The Origin and Virulence of the 1918 “Spanish” Influenza Virus" > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/
FriendlyNormie 5y ago
Someone should cut your head off with a chainsaw. Lying cunt.
known 5y ago
Sedition charges should be filed on Modi for exporting 66 million Vaccines doses to other countries;

288 points by divbzero 5y ago

This is happening everywhere in the world (except a few countries where most people are vaccinated and/or tested heavily): people ran out of money, goverments failed to help them, and at this point it's worth to take the risk of getting COVID for much more people than to stay hungry and get homeless.

ekianjo 5y ago
Alternative explanation. In japan people dont care anymore and we are hit by a new wave which is definitely looking like a new peak of infections. Add to that absolutely no border control and lazy authorities and thats a recipe for things getting out of control.
- pudmaidai 5y ago
  What do you mean by “absolutely no border control”? As far as I know quarantine is required to enter Japan.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    Not for japanese nationals
- Torkel 5y ago
  I entered Japan close to two weeks ago from Europe. Super strict and well managed border control. Passengers were supervised and escorted to a special quarantine hotel for the first three days of quarantine. After that they use an app on my phone to keep track of where I am. For 14 days I have to "check in" my location multiple times per day. The place with no border control i Europe. Not Japan.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    If only they did the same thing to Japanese nationals...
  - sirn 5y ago
    The 3 days quarantine is only for people arriving from a list of countries with a known mutated strain. It's much less strict if the passenger did not arrived from the listed countries ([1]; the one in the parenthesis, the table below is countries which PCR result is required). Officially the rule is to be quarantine in the designated place for 14 days and to report everyday. However, the loophole is the designated place also includes your home, and if you happen to use LINE, the daily report becomes just a button press in the app. Location tracking is only recommended, not required. (The Japanese document on location tracking is just to enable location history on Google Maps or enable Significant Location on iPhone[2]) [1]: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/covid19_qa_kanrenkigyou_00001.html#Q1-1 https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryo... Note the English version of this document is very outdated (Mar 26, 2020 for the English version vs. Mar 21, 2021 for the Japanese version.) See [3] for a more up-to-date one, although in a different format. [2]: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/000652555.pdf https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/000652555.pdf [3]: https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html The list is in Section 2, in the (Note 1), with the most horrendous formatting possible.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  ... lucky there's no world sporting event that will congregate thousands of people from around the globe in Japan in a few weeks time. They should have cancelled the Olympics to at least 2022... I hope historians don't look back at sports ball being the catalyst of third/fourth waves and stronger/newer strains all across the globe in 2022.
  - cyrksoft 5y ago
    International spectators are not allowed at the Olympics this time. And there will be strict protocols for athletes. Not sure how this can cause such a massive new wave.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      You think Japanese spectators are somehow immune to COViD?
lostlogin 5y ago
Which countries have this happening?
- xiphias2 5y ago
  I'm from Hungary (currently the top on the official list of deaths/millions of people), where people were so scared, that the first wave was almost non-existant. Now it's the opposite, though at least people are getting vaccinated aggressively, they just don't wait enough for the vaccines to get into effect. Another example is my girlfriend who is from Colombia: people were very careful last year, but now there's a huge demonstration happening because of a proposed tax reform, which shows how desparate people are like, and how much it overwrites their fear of COVID. I'm sure that well see the results in the number of deaths in a month or two there.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    Are you just from or currently in Hungary? Is the situation there deteriorating?
    - xiphias2 5y ago
      I'm in Mexico, but going back to Hungary in a few weeks to try to get my COVID vaccine. There's a soccer match tomorrow (I mean Saturday) with Fradi, the favourite football team of the prime minister, that's why he opened up the country more. Many people just go with it, as they just want to get back to normal, even though the vaccines that people got are not protecting yet. His main goal is to open up even more to be able to organize EU soccer championship, that's why he's rushing ahead. Viktor Orban wanted to be a professional soccer player when he was a child, but he wasn't good enough, and now the whole country is suffering because of his childhood trauma.
    - randomchars 5y ago
      No. 40% of the population had at least 1 vaccine already. Death and infection rates are also declining.
    - 5y ago
thweor234234 5y ago
Lockdowns, at this point, are a plot to kill the poor, nothing more, nothing less.

ganeshkrishnan 5y ago

Also note that covid deaths are around 10-100x more than the official records. To be recorded as official death, the person should have tested positive and have died in a hospital. Home deaths are not recorded as covid. There are also reports from my acquaintances that deaths from private hospitals in grade 2/3 cities are not recorded as covid deaths nor are deaths even in government hospital where a test could not be performed before the death of the person. Two big reasons for this wave are 1) The kumbh mela with 5-12 million people gathering in a tiny spot. This was supposed to take place next year but was pulled forward to appease the religious hardcore. 2) Election rallies around the country.

invertedreversi 5y ago
Farmer protests are widely believed to be the biggest reason for the spread.
- mlnj 5y ago
  Not the case. The farmer protests have been going on for months and it won't be much of a protest if they all went back home and spread the virus. Yet another attempt by the BJP IT Cell to divert the attention onto anybody but the BJP government.
  - tiuPapa 5y ago
    They had a rotation policy. They clearly say it in all their interviews, how they are maintaining constant presence in the protests by rotating members every 4 - 7 days. See interviews on channels like Youtube channels like ScoopWhoop Unscripted, that tried to bring the farmer's point of view to the forefront. Let's not kid ourselves, the virus doesn't discriminate based on whether the gathering is righteous or not. Each and every gathering is a super spreader, be it a protest, election rally or a religious gathering.
    - mlnj 5y ago
      The farmers protests are almost completely represented by people from 2 States. Even if they did go home and spread the infection the rate of spread is much lower in Punjab and Haryana. I want them to handle the crisis well and be safe but the narrative that 'Farmer protests destroy India with Covid' needs to be debunked.

ppf 5y ago

How did it take so long for India to have a second wave?

systemvoltage 5y ago
Dynamics of the virus spread is quite interesting. 3Blue1Brown made a fascinating video about how an epidemic spreads: https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs
baybal2 5y ago
I'd say it's a third wave by now already
spikels 5y ago
I would like to know this too. Why didn’t it take off last year and why now? My prior is that the virus took time to evolve to be hyper-infectious in the local conditions. Fits timescale and may fit theoretical models (many suggest viruses become more infectious but less deadly - not sure if this is the case in India). Would be great to see good research on this but it will take many months. Early reports and analysis are likely to be wrong.
- intended 5y ago
  Yes. In hindsight this type of analysis is obviously critical. Sadly it seems india only started focusing on improving sequencing in December 2020.
  - divbzero 5y ago
    The US too [1] has been slow to implement large-scale sequencing efforts. We have the technology to track the virus more closely [2] [3] but seem oddly unhurried to deploy it widely. [1]: https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/06/stem-the-pandemic-national-covid-19-genomic-sequencing-effort/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/06/stem-the-pandemic-nation... [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/wastewater-surveillance.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/wast... [3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33468686/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33468686/

shubhamjain 5y ago

The most puzzling thing about this wave is that even the young aren't being spared. From the start of the pandemic, I assumed it was patently clear that it's the old (>60 age) are vulnerable. What I am seeing in Delhi is people from all walks of life without any comorbidites succumbing to the disease - peoples in 30s, 40s, and even 20s. Granted death rate of younger people isn't absolute zero, but in India, it's happening way too often. Could it be because of lack of hospital care? Maybe, it would interesting to see death by age group for hospitalised patients. Unfortunately, there's no way to investigate this since I don't think there any publicly available data that shows deaths by age group.

x3iv130f 5y ago
Being infected isn't a binary thing. There is a big difference from swallowing 30 Coronavirus particles from touching your face to breathing in 300,000 from someone coughing in your face. If you're young the first is probably a mild cold while the latter is a trip to the ICU. Part of bringing the virus under control is reducing the amount of particles people are exposed to so they have a better chance of fighting off the virus.
- ArtTimeInvestor 5y ago
  How do you know? It depends on how fast the virus population doubles. And how fast the immune system kicks in. If the virus population doubles every second then the person who swallowed 30 virus particles will be at 300,000 in just 14 seconds. If it doubles once per minute, it is 14 minutes. If it doubles once per hour, it is 14 hours. The question if that is a meaningful headstart depends on how fast the immune system reacts. And if it reacts faster to 300k viruses than to 30.
  - corty 5y ago
    It doesn't only react faster, it will react differently. Up to a reaction called "sepsis" that can kill you even without the virus doing anything anymore. Research points to most covid complications being such (there are lots more, the immune system is the worst kind of spaghetti code you can imagine) massive immune reactions gone haywire. I'm not saying you are right or wrong. I'm saying that immune reactions aren't linear, straightforward, harmless or predictable. And that "more virus" usually isn't better.

rzz3 5y ago

Is there a paywall bypass for this? I wish HN would ban links that require payment/registration.

pabs3 5y ago
No JS, no cookies works for the Economist, or you can use an extension for paywall bypass: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
Clewza313 5y ago
https://archive.is/2021.05.01-051853/https://www.economist.com/diary/2021/04/30/indias-second-wave-of-covid-19-feels-nothing-like-its-first https://archive.is/2021.05.01-051853/https://www.economist.c...
spikels 5y ago
For this and many sites that rely on JS for their paywall try putting remove-js.com/ in front of the URL like this: https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/diary/2021/04/30/indias-second-wave-of-covid-19-feels-nothing-like-its-first https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/diary/2021/0...
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  wow this is such a cool hack
- GordonS 5y ago
  Doesn't work for me, I get an Access Denied page served by Cloudflare.
sumedh 5y ago
Do you also work for free? If you cannot pay, just dont read the article or use some workarounds.
dang 5y ago
If there's a workaround, it's allowed. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=paywalls%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

blueblisters 5y ago

The demand for oxygen in the National Capital Region and surrounding North Indian states brings up an important question - is respiratory distress worsened due to air pollution? I hope researchers are studying this because, if true, this could be a potential trigger to ramp up the need to tackle air pollution now rather than kicking the can down the road. I have a feeling air pollution is not that important politically because people haven't felt adverse health effects in the short term.

publicola1990 5y ago
It is possible, Delhi has one of the worst air qualities of major cities. It could be a factor in the disease progression in Delhi.
op03 5y ago
Mumbai has been hit quite badly too. I have a feeling everyone in the districts lands up in Indian cities during such events cause the district/block level health care facilities in India are a crap shoot. According to the sustainability dev goals India has 10 docs per 10k ppl. 30 per 10k if you include nurses and other support staff. What can anyone do with such numbers when the tsunami hits other than say send the patient to the nearest city with the most resources.
- AmIDev 5y ago
  > I have a feeling everyone in the districts lands up in Indian cities during such events cause the district/block level health care facilities in India are a crap shoot. While this is true, the opposite is also happening, where people from Mumbai/Pune are being admitted to hospitals in smaller cities where beds might be available. Patients from Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and other neighbouring districts have been reported in my district.
tarsinge 5y ago
Good point. Last year when the north of Italy was particularly affected it was during a huge air pollution episode. At the time I had heard particulate pollution helps the virus circulate, but maybe it also worsen the symptoms.

qart 5y ago

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/we-are-all-responsible-for-indias-devastating-second-wave-7296327/ https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/we-are-all-respons... The author is a surgeon. He says things that many of us have been saying all along. Hopefully, his professional background will help wake some people up.

egghese 5y ago
Opinion columns are not scientific sources. To the article's credit recklessness from people are is the reason for the spike. But doesn't absolves a leadership that claimed to have concurred Covid-19 and have no clue about disaster management. Indians deserved better.
- qart 5y ago
  There have been more than enough scientific sources published for the effectiveness of masks. I hope you still don't doubt that part. I will not cite them. People have been crowding and not wearing masks across the country. Do you want a scientific source for that? There may never be one. The Indians who step out of their homes are aware of this already. No government or healthcare system can keep up with people flouting the scientific recommendations on such a scale.
  - egghese 5y ago
    I was not disagreeing with the articles claim people flouting rules caused a spike. But the people or the country isn't by itself responsible. Rather a callous government that was indifferent to this pandemic is. It had an year to prepare. It did nothing more than PR works - If the health infrastructure could not take it, what was the reason for this narrative ? https://www.thequint.com/news/india/in-january-pm-modi-had-expressed-indias-victory-over-covid-19 https://www.thequint.com/news/india/in-january-pm-modi-had-e... - Did they not know about vaccine demand ? https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2021-01-20-india-pharmacy-of-the-world-starts-covid-vaccine-exports/ https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2021-01-20-india-phar... - Why did they take away the states ability to prepare ? https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/apr/09/as-per-new-circular-states-depend-on-centre-to-procure-covid-19-medical-equipment-2128010.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/apr/09/as-per-n...

alwayshasbeen 5y ago

Is there a study that tells if the current wave is related to Kumbh Mela that was celebrated extensively?

throwawaysea 5y ago
No there's no such study. There has been a lot of focus on election rallies and Kumbh Mela in press, but it seems to be mostly due to people turning the tragedy of the second wave into a political opportunity to attack Modi. But Kumbh Mela is one event, and elections are only taking place in a few states. The reality is that India was handling the pandemic quite well through a policy of highly localized containment, and general mobility among the populace was increasing in response to improved pandemic conditions and the trickling of vaccines (although India gave away tens of millions of vaccine doses to other nations and hurt its own drive as a result of that generosity). I suspect that the reality of this wave is that many factors contributed - increased general mobility, some large events, and likely new variants that aren't well understood yet and may spread more easily. Prior to that, everything and everyone being blamed right now is just speculative and opportunist.
- mlnj 5y ago
  > But Kumbh Mela is one event, and elections are only taking place in a few states. Kumb mela gathers tens of millions of devotees at a single point in the most densely populated state in the sub continent. Just on April 14th 2021, more than 900,000 people taking a dip in the same river. The central government is the authority responsible to stop the event this year given the impending crisis, but only encouragement was seen from the ministers except that the event was cut short to 30 days instead of the many month ordeal it usually is. > There has been a lot of focus on election rallies and Kumbh Mela in press, but it seems to be mostly due to people turning the tragedy of the second wave into a political opportunity to attack Modi. > everything and everyone being blamed right now is just speculative and opportunist. This thread is a testament to the aggressive brigading to deflect all blame from the Central Government. Contrarians spewing random questions to avoid focus on anything being discussed. It has been a pattern for the past half a decade now. Nobody is denying that there are multiple factors and people responsible in the current crisis, but this line of excuses is a steady pattern of a concerted effort to deflect blame on the untarnishable image of a strongman Modi emanates. It happens on every crisis. every blunder Modi makes.

mandis 5y ago

Ground reality- * 400,000 new infections reported yesterday. Number of deaths is being suppressed- 10x more deaths than reported. Crematoriums everywhere are overflowing, yet only 3k deaths per day as per official record. * Basic resources like Oxygen, Meds (Favipiravir, Remdesivir, Monitors), Hospital beds keep running out in many cities and towns. Everything is on sale for 2-10x the official prices. For example, Remdesivir selling for Rs 20,000 ($300) instead of Rs 2,000. Ambulances charging Rs 25,000 for a half hour transport, instead of Rs 2,500. * Beds are a tragedy. People are dying in their cars (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/no-bed-in-4-noida-hospitals-33-year-old-dies-in-car/articleshow/82337348.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/no-bed-in-4-n...). Day rent for beds in nursing home corridors (yes, actual narrow corridors) are selling for an amount equal to the average monthly salary of a middle class citizen. * The government organized election rallies and religious gatherings and overruled the concerns of many educated voices over the last 2 months. Lockdown in election bound states was only announced yesterday, once all rallies and multi-phase election was finished. Votes/Power over lives, that's the mantra. One head of state went as far as to pass an order declaring anyone posting stories of O2 shortage will be prosecuted and arrested. (https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/covid-up-hospitals-defy-yogi-gag-bid-by-flagging-oxygen-shortage/cid/1814104 https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/covid-up-hospitals-defy...) * People have stepped up as the govt has abdicated responsibility, sharing resources on their stories and working all day to verify their availability by calling hospitals and crematoriums. However the scale of the tragedy is immense and people who could have been saved are dropping like flies. This wave is affecting 40, 50 year olds, without any comorbidities. Apparently the strain is a double mutant (mutation of the strain from UK), and now a triple variant is also being reported. * EDIT- Also for the sake of PR, the central govt sent more than half the vaccine produced abroad. Apparently the concept of stockpiling and reserves isn't common knowledge with the Indian political elite. So today we are at a situation where we are importing the vaccines we had exported, as we are desperately short on stocks and there is no relief in sight. Only 1.9% of India's population has received 2 doses of the vaccine. Long story short, many people will die.

pessimist 5y ago
Agree with almost everything. Health care is collapsing around us. 10x death-undercount nationwide is probably not accurate. Major states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala are reporting close to accurate numbers. 2-5x nationwide is likely, with places like UP, West Bengal and Gujarat undercounting by 5-10x.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.md/jJB4A https://archive.md/jJB4A

durovo 5y ago

This thread is full of people pointing fingers at: 1. Election rallies 2. Kumbh Mela 3. Farmer Protests (Yes, they are still going on) 4. The government's incompetence. And all of these are completely valid reasons. But does anyone living in the country really believe that these are the only reasons? There are still people who believe that Covid is a hoax. People who had not worn a mask for the last 6 months now wear paper thin masks in large crowds and expect to not get Covid. My neighbor contracted Covid recently, but they have not told anyone about it. All of their household help is still coming. Some of the family members still go out to meet others. This situation is really a reflection of the selfishness of the people. I have seen medium-sized business that cut salaries if employees take leaves due to covid. So these employees hide their symptoms and report to work. If you are doing any of these things, please self-reflect.

benque 5y ago
Yes. These are the major reasons not the "only" reasons. Sure, there will be a few percentage of people who are irresponsible, but we have to look at the big picture as well. Mass gatherings are far more responsible for the spread than a few people not wearing masks.
- durovo 5y ago
  Absolutely, I am not trying to defend that stupidity here. Also, it was not a 'few' people not wearing masks. It has always been a few people wearing masks. And what qualifies as a mask for most people should really be questioned.
alwayshasbeen 5y ago
Well, if a country if full of people believing COVID is a hoax and wearing a mask is useless - what do you think you will get? You get exactly what's happening now.
- mandis 5y ago
  wearing a mask wont do jackdiddly if you organize large gathering with 100,000 people.

vinay_ys 5y ago

One explanation I heard from a doctor recently is this: the younger population is infected/affected more this time because they have been infected and has been asymptomatic or mild all these months and with that the virus has mutated more amongst younger people. So the second wave is affecting the younger population much more intensely this time than before. I don't know how scientific this explanation is. My own gut thinking is that lockdown nowhere nearly as effective this time as last year. Even simple social mechanics that were in effect last year – like telcos changing their ring/busy tone to covid PSA message isn't there. People are not being reminded to take social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks precautions seriously. And people are not doing it as seriously as they did last time. This has been the reality for the months of March and April where it seem to have spread silently. The weather change between Feb-April (very windy, cold to dry heat conditions) could also be a factor. And now, it is too serious and now people may change their behavior but it is too late.

Aachen 5y ago
If that were true, we'd be seeing the mutation in sequencings. We all know India is doing pretty badly on that front, but it's also a huge huge population. It's rampant enough that it seems to me they'd have found at least some samples of what you're saying. As it is, B1.617 seems to be the most common there (though it seems hard to find absolute numbers a la [1]), not your friend's speculative mystery strain. Whether they are a doctor..; since what I heard from other doctors near the beginning of the pandemic, it seems they're no better equipped to deal with this than the rest of us and will speculate unscientifically just as much, except people parrot it more. [1] Table with sequencing results for the Netherlands. If someone knows where to find this for other counties, I'd be very interested! https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-covid-19/virus/varianten https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-covid-19/virus/varianten Bonus link: latest WHO update contains some info about variants (unfortunately not much, e.g. just saying a country has had a case of <insert variant> without any info on its prevalence there): https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update-on-covid-19---27-april-2021 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiologic...
- ummonk 5y ago

cyberpsybin 5y ago

Probably due to opening of schools and colleges across country. That's why it's hitting young people harder.

mohanmcgeek 5y ago

Are we going to have a India second wave discussion every single day? How is this "hacker" "news" @dang .. it's only unnecessary political bickering about how bad the government is from a bunch of India haters. Same talking points imported from Twitter everyday.

revendell_elf 5y ago
You're downvoted so much that I can't even read the text anymore. Lol. Good luck trying to defend your country against Westerns who denied sharing their vaccine formulas with India and left it to rot.
- blueberry8998 5y ago
  Where is the defense? Sprouting some crap is not defense.
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    Maybe if you can't read the comment you should shut up
    - dang 5y ago
      You've been breaking the site guidelines badly. A comment like this is obviously completely unacceptable, and your account has also been using HN for political and/or nationalistic flamewar, which is not cool. We ban accounts that do that. I'm not going to ban you right now because you've posted good comments about other things in the not-too-distant past. Please stick to that and don't post any more flamewar comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  My comment reads this isn't "hacker" "news"
- dang 5y ago

movid 5y ago

Absolute clusterfuck it is right now in India. And thank you international media for bringing this to light. This could've been averted if the government wasn't busy promoting quackery [1], pandering to astrologers and hardliners by organizing a massive religious festival in the middle of pandemic [2]. And they did fuck all to improve the medical/oxygen infrastructure for the past one year and are promoting fake news that puts the blame squarely on provincial governments. [6] Our supreme leader Modi was busy canvassing and praising crowds attending his rallies as recently as 17th April while the country was burning. [3] Modi's heir in the making who has the potential to make him look like a saint has recently threatened to file cases against people and seize their properties if they take their grievances to social media.[4] And even now, the government is more concerned about their image than controlling the situation. And the establishment's toadies are busy online(I see a lot of them here too) defending their dear leader even now with the same enthusiasm they show to credit him for anything positive. The people are to blame too ofcourse for relaxing but what can we expect when the leaders at helm proclaimed the pandemic is over. PS: I had to post this from a newly created account cuz I wouldn't want this to weigh against me when I apply for a passport. [5] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/56172784 https://www.bbc.com/news/56172784 [2] https://science.thewire.in/health/leaders-listened-to-astrologers-so-haridwar-mela-happened-after-11-years-not-12/ https://science.thewire.in/health/leaders-listened-to-astrol... [3] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/west-bengal-assembly-election-2021-prime-minister-narendra-modi-in-west-bengal-have-witnessed-such-a-rally-for-the-first-time-2416162 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/west-bengal-assembly-electio... [4] https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/yogi-adityanth-oxygen-supply-rumour-seize-property-27943 https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/yogi-adityanth-oxygen-... [5] https://thenextweb.com/news/this-indian-states-police-force-will-block-passport-applications-over-anti-national-social-media-posts https://thenextweb.com/news/this-indian-states-police-force-... [6] https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/no-centre-did-not-allocate-funds-for-oxygen-plants-to-states https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/no-centre-did-not-allo...

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/jJB4A https://archive.is/jJB4A

throwaway4good 5y ago

"If only 1.7m tests are being conducted per day, what can that 386,000 really mean? Is it that 0.0004% of the country has come down with the virus since yesterday, or that nearly 23% did? Obviously, the true number lies between those absurd extremes, but who knows where?" Why is there not a proper estimate on how big a part of the population is infected? And with which strains? Surely with a randomized, representative survey you could find this out, instead of all this speculation? It also would give authorities better grounds for their decisions.

ignoramous 5y ago
> It also would give authorities better grounds for their decisions. The authorities need to do those studies or commission them. Instead, the authorities are busy politicising vaccine distributions (vote us in for free vaccines) [0] and polarising on religious fault lines. The country has gone to the wolves. [0] https://archive.is/dNYo4 https://archive.is/dNYo4
throwawaysea 5y ago
In general it is quite hard to get accurate representative samples if there is an unknown or high degree of variance between locations (are you scaling up the right samples to arrive at an accurate estimate). As for knowing which strains, that would certainly be useful but it requires significant sequencing infrastructure, which is not easy to scale up. The Washington Post noted (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/29/india-surge-variant-genetic-sequencing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/29/india-surge-...) that India is #102 among nations in sequencing per capita. It notes: > Sequencing takes a high level of infrastructure and funding. India, which spent very little per capita on health care before the pandemic, has not been able to quickly make the investments to scale up, said Gupta.
sokoloff 5y ago
If I understand your calculation, it seems like the lower bound is around 0.03%, not 0.0004%.
blackoil 5y ago
Tests are not randomly distributed, but estimates of actual cases is 4-10x. It also varies by state. Some states have very active tracing and testing. Some are actually trying to undermine tests, death count.

thweor234234 5y ago

Oh ffs, stop it with this fear porn already. The state got rid of a lot of the previous makeshift facilities from last year, and this is the reason for this sudden crunch. India's death's rate is ~10-20x lower than that in the US. Of course, you'll have the innumerate "conspiracy" idiots who claim 10x deaths, and you have the occident which is obsessed with the failures of non-Western countries to prove to itself of its self-worth. Then there are the Anglo leftovers of the British colonial administration who form the elite-ruling class of India. These morons have all the more reason to spread terror and doom about the native "heathens". Really makes you wonder why humanity is in this state, where every moron has turned into a apocalypse doomer. I suppose, instead of research into "Artificial" Intelligence, we need to consider ways to make Humans intelligent.

known 5y ago

People are 'morally' corrupt by birth due to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)

divtiwari 5y ago
Lol, now we attacking Hinduism for spreading of Corona? Expected something like this tbh. :)
- revendell_elf 5y ago
  HN has racists too it seems.
- dang 5y ago
  Religious or nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 5y ago
We've warned you repeatedly not to use HN for political, national, or religious flamewar. Since your account has shifted into using HN primarily for that, I've banned it. I hate to ban an account that's been here since 2007, but what you're doing is clearly an abuse. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

known 5y ago

"He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave" --Sir William Drummond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi

0xmohit 5y ago

This sums it up: India’s devastating second wave was fuelled by a series of crowded events, including mass rallies addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi [0]. > Fuelling the catastrophe was a series of crowded events, like mass rallies by politicians such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, religious holidays and pilgrimages on the Ganges river. > As governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers, including Modi, touted victory over the virus, people relaxed their vigilance and stopped wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/4/29/indias-deadly-virus-surge-follows-crowded-events https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/4/29/indias-deadly-vi...

revendell_elf 5y ago
But those rallies were conducted in West Bangal and highest COVID cases are in Maharashtra. I'm definitely against these rallies but logic seems to fail us here, isn't it?
- pas 5y ago
  Any Modi/BJP (or otherwise government permitted) rally anywhere sends the signal that people can be more lax.
  - revendell_elf 5y ago
    Even if they're in two opposite ends of India? Also, I don't want to take sides, but all other parties rallied during elections so why single out BJP? Once again, I'm strictly against these gatherings and I firmly believe that they should be banned without delay but this selective outrage is rather obvious that the agenda or the narrative is something else altogether.
    - pas 5y ago
      There very well could be a selective outrage, but I'm almost as far removed from this as possible. HN as a groupmind usually scolds the official government, because the assumption is that they have the most effective control over behavior of people. -- I simply said that Modi/BJP is responsible wherever they are. Of course the other parties are responsible too. And we can simply apply the Spiderman rule: more power, more responsibility. Modi is the PM, BJP is the ruling party. (And yes, of course in some states BJP's influence is lesser than some other party's. And there the responsibility of that particular party is greater.) On top of all this it also depends what was the rhetoric of the other parties. Were they also loudly claiming victory over the pandemic? Naturally Modi trapped himself into a bit of a corner with that. (Even if facists can usually disregard/bend reality, but we shall see how the electorate takes this dissonance.)

publicola1990 5y ago

It seems that Indian medical fraternity is placing too much faith in Remdesivir and Convalescent Plasma. In some way it is similar to the Ivermectin fad in South Africa for Covid treatment. These treatments are not recommended by WHO, but medical practitioners prescribing the same is leading to scarcity and blackmarketing of the same. As I see it there is total chaos in medical protocols for covid treatment, and this could be a significant driver in mortality in this wave in India.

kepler1 5y ago

I hate to bring up this point but I think it's not totally irrelevant. India in general has a problem with hygiene and public health being compromised out of offending people's political / religious sensibilities, inability to follow rules and impose requirements on people, inability to lay down the law consistently. There's just a little too much democracy in this country. Hygiene of people preparing food and in daily life (for many) -- not good. Regulatory oversight -- not good. Animals wandering the street, garbage thrown anywhere, pollution of water supplies for religious rituals -- not good. Agricultural fires allowed to burn for fear of clamping down on farmers -- not good. And you see people in government saying meaningless assurances that the wave of infection will pass -- not good.

Zenst 5y ago

One big factor that is different in India than this time last year would be economic. The incomes of your average person in India has declined due to the whole pandemic and can be seen here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111510/india-coronavirus-impact-on-household-income/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111510/india-coronaviru... That would in a country with many living day by day, be one difference over say this time last year, in which air-quality would of also been a factor as much as currently. Whilst not good, combined with a reduced nutritional intake, may of tipped the balance.

agumonkey 5y ago
Also collapsing oxygen supply.. maybe simply with more stock and distribution capabilities the wave would have been less deadly.
- Zenst 5y ago
  The oxygen supply shortage is due to demand and whilst does not explain the increase demand and certainly would play into the deaths, it wouldn't be at the scale we are seeing as it is the increase in cases and the oxygen supply shortage is a product of the knock on demand and not a causality in that demand. Yes it is a factor in increased deaths, but not the major factor, which is increased numbers of infected.

bluzeee 5y ago

It is very unfortunate that some are creating a false narrative about an entire country and is misusing this forum to spread false narrative. While even scientists are puzzled on the cause [0], a few commenters here for sure knows the causes conclusively India unlike U.S. and other western countries needs more careful analysis due to its diverse nature, larger informal economy and lack of proper data collection practices. Any simple attribution like the commenter is doing is simply false narrative 1. Anyone who has been tracking India covid cases closely knows, the most affected and contributing (72%) states for the second wave have been Maharastra and Kerala [0] 2. And, as second wave picked-up just 6 states contributed to 86.37% of new Covid-19 cases as per the data tracking [1] 3. Why did it spike in Maharastra ? Read [3] & [4] Importantly note the point on variant "This surge has started from Vidarbha, and it is hard to believe that mutant variants didn’t have a role to play" 4. Now, lets talk about variant found [4] "Two leading experts recently contended that a new coronavirus mutant strain was reportedly detected in Amravati, Yavatmal, and Akola, all in the Vidarbha region in the eastern part of the state" 5. Some comments talks about religious event which is kumbh mela which took happened in Haridwar, Uttarakhand state. Do you see the state in any of the listed states contributing to the raise ? No. Let's put today's status, is that state even in the top: 10 [5] 6. And do you know you need a permit and negative covid test report to participate in this religious event ? [6] 7. They also talk about Narendra modi rallies. Seriously ? He took rallies in the states where elections being conducted by Indian election commission, like all all other political parties he has to support his party. This is saying like Biden cannot take election rally while Trump goes on giving daily speeches. Importantly, do you see the state of Westbengal where election allies happened in the top ? 8. As Maharastra went into curfew, poor migrant labor mainly from Bihar and UP and people from other states rushed back home and there is no data how this might have affected 9. Did BJP declare victory over virus ? Yes. But there is no scientific or data based attribution of spike Or the some commenters indirect attribution of peoples laxity and not wearing masks to victory declaration is misguiding [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indias-massive-covid-surge-puzzles-scientists/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indias-massive-co... [1] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-updates-february-16-2021/article33847984.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-updates-f... [2] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/6-states-contributed-to-86-37-of-new-covid-19-cases-says-govt-101614497304795.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/6-states-contribut... [3] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-is-maharashtra-seeing-a-new-spike-in-covid-19-cases-7191973/ https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-is... [4] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maharashtra-hits-129-day-high-of-8807-fresh-cases/articleshow/81199045.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maharashtra-hits-1... [5] https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/new-indian-covid-variants-can-cause-re-infections-warns-aiims-chief-121022100228_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/ne... [6] https://www.covid19india.org/ https://www.covid19india.org/ [7] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kumbh-2021-limited-to-30-days-to-begin-on-april-1-2372990 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kumbh-2021-limited-to-30-day...

known 5y ago

God save Indians from Modi regime; He is charging 28% TAX on vaccine;

NicoJuicy 5y ago

A friend went to a presentation about covid. There they said that lead in the air ( eg. Car heavy cities) had a direct consequences on covid particles that get more and deeper into your body. So cases there would be more severe. ( It's 6 months ago that i heared it and didn't hear any research about it. It does make sense when India has it worse)

bsaul 5y ago

i've heard many people talk about the catastrophic situation in india, and yet i see numbers of 4k deaths a day. Which is a lot, but still way below what for example france had at the pic last year ( 1k a day, for a 60 millions people country). Is there something i'm missing ?

sumedh 5y ago
The 4k number is the official number which you cannot trust, it will be more than that, some comments here are saying its 2x - 5x the official number.

akudha 5y ago

I am seriously worried where this is going. People don’t seem to take precautions (masks etc), the government doesn’t seem to care (they seem more interested in suppressing data/news). Unless you’re rich, Indian healthcare isn’t great even in good times. It is just not equipped to handle this bad of a situation. This looks like chapter one of a giant disaster, only waiting to get even more worse

MarkMc 5y ago

Suppose I know of a number of people in India who have covid symptoms and difficulty breathing but cannot get treatment in any hospital due to overcrowding. As someone who lives in a Western country, what is the most effective way to help them? I could simply send them money, but they might use it to bribe hospital staff for treatment, or outbid other people for oxygen cannisters. They would benefit but other people would lose out. Maybe I should buy medicine in my home country and send it to them? Or maybe buy oxygen concentrator machines on Alibaba and have them shipped to India?

elihu 5y ago
Maybe one somewhat-helpful simple thing you could send them would be a pulse oximeter. If they need to get to a hospital and can't get in, it won't help them much, but it might in some cases be helpful to at least have a thing that at least tells them if they're getting better or worse. Another option is maybe send them a decent quality room air filter if they're in a city with heavy pollution, so it's one less thing for their lungs to deal with. It's kind of a tough question; I'm neither a doctor nor have I been around anyone who has gotten Covid, so I don't really know first-hand what's most helpful.
jayp1418 5y ago
Thanks mark for wonderful thought but money won't solve issues India facing. There are multiple problems. I think most important thing is to educate rural people about why they need to follow guidelines strictly. Many people refuses vaccines because they think it is elobrate plan to eliminate them. So education is the way govt.can move forward.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  The comment wasn't asking how to solve problems for all of India, but how to help some people he knows who are in India.
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dehrmann 5y ago

geogra4 5y ago

I have had multiple Indian co-workers (from our Chennai office) test covid positive and get sick. Young healthy people.

FriendlyNormie 5y ago

You are so completely and utterly full of shit. You are just making a bunch of random guesses at some symptoms you had. Seriously shut the fuck up.

sunilg78 5y ago

Don't need to be panic and also don't create panic. We at tamilnadu India has solution via traditional siddha. Acalypha indica ( 7 leaves ) and pepper , to be boiled cup of water until one third. Once in three days. It's very clear that we destroyed our ozone and polluted , so it's nature turn to set it back. One such act is this Corona worldwide...... so let's get back to minimal life style and reduce consumption, stop polluting etc.

rualca 5y ago
Please tell me you forgot to add a sarcasm tag.
- anaganisk 5y ago
  You have no idea bud, just because this is HN doesn't mean people dont believe in BS. He might be serious too, how else do you think Patanjali products have a good market in the cities otherwise.

lamontcg 5y ago

I still tend to think that this can most easily be explained by the fact that India hadn't been hit hard up until now and that a lot of people started to believe magical theories about how they were immune, and now we're just seeing the virus ripping through high population density cities and overwhelming the health care system. If you want to talk about variants, though, then there's a couple of things to consider. The first is that the "avirulence" theory that pathogens evolve to become less virulent over time was pretty decisively falsified in the 90s, so forget everything you think you know about that idea being true. There is a fairly well-studied tradeoff which has replaced that between transmission, virulence and in-host viral replication. That doesn't suggest the direction of evolution though. However, there have been studies of incomplete vaccination and immunity which suggests that it actually works to increase selection pressure for higher transmission variants and for virulence. This intuitively makes sense since as, say, half the population has immunity that increases the pressure on the virus to increase its fundamental transmissibility since an R0 of 3.0 will no longer be anywhere near as effective -- and the mechanism to do so is to just increase viral load and thereby increase virulence and kill more infected. And this may have been observed in 1918 with the more lethal later waves of the pandemic which affected younger people. That virus later evolved into seasonal influenza, probably as a result of widespread immunity producing pressure for immune escape variants which came at an overall cost to fitness by mutating all the epitopes on the surface proteins so that it could re-infect already immune individuals. That will probably happen here as well, there'll be a limit to how virulent and transmissibile this virus can get and it'll have to start making costlier immune escaping mutations eventually -- but in the short term I wouldn't be too surprised if we start to see a lot of dead younger people in third world nations that don't have as much access to vaccines going forward. But at any rate, none of this particularly matters. The lesson is still all the same which is to lockdown and avoid catching and spreading the virus until you have a chance to get vaccinated. Which is what it has been all along. People still try to argue with the virus and engage in magical thinking about how certain populations have magical immunity to it, but that continues to keep getting falsified. India most likely just got lucky that they didn't get hit early, then the prior wave they had was their "seeding" wave which was likely just tamped down by people voluntarily taking precautions. Then based on their success everyone dropped their guard and thought it would all be over in 2021 and the virus just took advantage of that. People in the US who are vaccine-hesitant should also consider that if they've managed to not catch it so far and develop any immunity that you really want to avoid rolling the dice with later versions of the virus. Also it should be noted that while the virus kills a lot more people over 80 that the doubling rate of fatalities is every 8 years of age while the doubling rate of hospitalization is only ever 15 years -- so a 40 year old person is 32 times less likely to die than an 80 year old, but they're only 6 times less likely to be hospitalized (although it falls off a cliff once people get under-20 and the very young are much less likely to be hospitalized). The way that American culture is so focused on our mortality to the exclusion of all other outcomes means that we're heavily discounting the possibility that we could survive the virus but be physically crippled by it. > "Virulence evolution and the trade-off hypothesis: history, current state of affairs and the future." > https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01658.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101... > "The Origin and Virulence of the 1918 “Spanish” Influenza Virus" > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/

FriendlyNormie 5y ago

Someone should cut your head off with a chainsaw. Lying cunt.

known 5y ago

Sedition charges should be filed on Modi for exporting 66 million Vaccines doses to other countries;