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Covid-19: India excess deaths cross four million, says study

80 points by monkey_monkey 5y ago

tsjq 5y ago
Attribute all excess deaths as Covid deaths? And there's a supreme court order to give money to these families. Tough times for the govt
- andybak 5y ago
  > Attribute all excess deaths as Covid deaths? "Excess deaths are a measure of how many more people are dying than would be expected compared to the previous few years. Although it is difficult to say how many of these deaths have been caused by Covid-19, they are a measure of the overall impact of the pandemic."
  - makomk 5y ago
    Especially in India, it's likely that a good chunk of those deaths are the result of attempts to aggressively stop the virus without thinking about the costs of doing so. They're really not in a good place to attempt any kind of lockdown given how their economy and food supply chains are, and yet they ended up attempting it anyway with ugly results.
    - Ayesh 5y ago
      I think it was more of a half baked lock down that caused the economy to get worse, and yet hardly see any improvement at curbing the pandemic. Countries like Vietnam were very protective, and took very immediate actions. They faced both the first two waves quickly, and recovered fairly well for the region.
    - fny 5y ago
      Can you estimate a percentage? Even if say 50% of deaths were due to lockdowns, do you really think that free movement would have not contributed to an equal or greater increase? As a further counterpoint, I'll use Norway and Sweden as examples. Sweden did not implement a lockdown, yet had a 10x worse per capita death count than Norway. If anything, this suggests that you'd need around 70-90% of the excess deaths to be attributed to something other than COVID, which feels like a heavy bar to clear.
      - makomk 5y ago
        Honestly, I'm not sure how you'd even be able to measure that. India doesn't seem to be doing so great at recording the cause of death, given that only a tenth of these were counted as Covid deaths and it's unlikely to be that low, plus you'd expect a lot of starvation-related deaths to show up as people dying from diseases that shouldn't otherwise be fatal...
      - jordanbeiber 5y ago
        Other things besides lockdown is obviously at play considering Sweden being smack in the middle of the statistics. Ahead and behind countries with law mandated lockdowns. Many pieces to this puzzle - generational living, skin tone and diet for example.
      - trhway 5y ago
        >Sweden did not implement a lockdown, yet had a 10x worse per capita death count than Norway. the situation is much more complicated. Looking at excess deaths https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countries-in-2020/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countr... one can see that in Sweden despite high rate of death, the excess rate is very low compare to countries with comparable Covid death rates. The Norway and Finland are among the few exceptional countries who had negative excess rates.
    - lwn 5y ago
      This is my perception aswell. India doesn't have the infrastructure and social well-fare systems needed to support a population in lockdown. Because of quarantine restrictions many householders were not able to provide food for their families.
      - wesleywt 5y ago
        How many died from starvation? Or is it something you feel happened.
        lwn 5y ago
        I've based my comment on observations from relatives living in Maharashtra. Getting estimates seems impossible to me, because India doesn't record cause of death very well (if deceased person itself is even recorded)
    - hetman 5y ago
      What lock down related mechanisms do you propose could be responsible for 4 million deaths? Working with more concrete examples might help determine how likely this scenario is.
    - wesleywt 5y ago
      Do you have evidence for your claim?
    - tsjq 5y ago
      yeah, here comes the anti-BJP brigade
- jasoncalamine 5y ago
  Each dead persons family will get 4 lakh rupees, thats around $5000. Unbelievable. Why should the govt pay everyone who died? In a country that’s already poor and starved of cash. India economy has already been eroded with lockdowns and huge expenses on vaccines being given out for free, and now you have to pay those who died too.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    > In a country that’s already poor and starved of cash. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50965778 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50965778 India has announced plans for a third lunar mission, months after its last one crash landed on the Moon's surface.
    - naruvimama 5y ago
      There is an ROI to India's space mission. The US has homeless problems too, but doesn't stop it from spending on the space program.
    - ngc248 5y ago
      Resources need to be spent on all things no ..... not just on the poor, but even on things which may payoff in the future. Another point is, you can never alleviate poverty by just giving the poor money
    - KumarAseem 5y ago
      The cost of space missions done by ISRO is extremely low. Even if you cancel all the space missions, the money saved will be in pennies and the loss of tech know how will be enormous. The wastage of finances is in other areas. Full page advertisements by govt departments on nonsensical things. Useless litigations. Implementing big changes to laws and systems without proper discussions and studies. Awarding contracts to entities whose track record is a bad one. And so on. India has become a morally poor nation and 90% of the citizens do not try to see and understand the big picture. They have on interest in spending time to learn what is happening in their nation and see what is happening in other nations and then question why we are doing things in proven wrong ways. Indians believe more in what is circulated on whatsapp and facebook than if you get a bunch of Nobel winners to explain the truth.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  > Attribute all excess deaths as Covid deaths? Unless you have an alternative explanation, it's a fairly reasonable assumption. In fact it's arguably more reliable in aggregate than trying to positively identify the cause of death for each victim, given the magnitude of the number. That wouldn't work for smaller effects though.
ngc248 5y ago
BS headlines everywhere. Straight from the study: https://cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias-all-cause-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic https://cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias-all... "Estimating COVID-deaths with statistical confidence may prove elusive. But all estimates suggest that the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count of 400,000;" But no one is adding this disclaimer, everyone is just parroting the 4 million number. Another thing to ponder, if this amount of people had died, do foreigners really think Indian people would have sat silently? There may be underreporting or missing stats, but I doubt if it is a 10x difference.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- spiffistan 5y ago
  An order of magnitude above 400000 is 4 million.
  - gibba999 5y ago
    3 million and 5 million are also an order-of-magnitude above 400,000, as are quite a few other numbers.
    - shrikant 5y ago
      OP has conveniently left out a few lines just before their quoted bit: > We report excess mortality estimates from three different data sources from the pandemic’s start through June 2021. First, extrapolation of state-level civil registration from seven states suggests 3.4 million excess deaths. Second, applying international estimates of age-specific infection fatality rates (IFR) to Indian seroprevalence data implies a higher toll of around 4 million. Third, our analysis of the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey, a longitudinal panel of over 800,000 individuals across all states, yields an estimate of 4.9 million excess deaths. If their (or your) complaint is with these actual methods of estimation, then pick on those, but the assumption that the study authors just want to Jedi mind-trick you into 10x'ing the official Covid deaths number is flawed.
switch007 5y ago
A suspiciously timed article, just after we ease restrictions. The same scare stories about India happened in March, when we heard the plan to begin easing lockdown restrictions.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  When has government willingly returned freedoms taken under the guise of "emergency measures" ?
  - switch007 5y ago
    Well in fairness the UK gov did roll back some laws, but they’re certainly keeping some and riding this pandemic to write some even worse ones. Terrorism has been put to bed, and now it’s viruses’ turn I guess.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      I propose next a lockdown / travel ban to save the climate?
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Last I checked, the US still have income tax https://mises.org/library/origin-income-tax https://mises.org/library/origin-income-tax
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      Careful, that domain is shadowbanned from submissions at HN...
    - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
      My friend jokethrowaway, mises.org will trigger a lot of people. You have been warned, lol.
    - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
sadmann1 5y ago
Yes yes lockdowns again just get it over with. At least we're making a ton of money implementing Europe's new social score through the vaccination pass
isaacremuant 5y ago
Is ivermectin still evil and misinformation too? Is upcoming september discrimination as proposed by Boris on "freedom Day" good? It's getting really tiresome to see propaganda day in and day out. Most people aren't afraid. Politicians, by their actions, aren't afraid. This is all about keeping the fear cycle going and blaming people again for the failings of corrupt governments.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Ivermectin remains unproven; it's not an antiviral, it's a nerve poison for invertebrates.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Are there opportunistic invertebrates that might move into an infected person's lungs or sinuses that could explain reports of it working, if there are such reports?
    - alexisread 5y ago
      I hear too much talk from politicians on a daily basis, if it works, I'm in ;)
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-supporting-ivermectin-as-covid-treatment-withdrawn-over-ethical-concerns https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-s... > The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    I have yet to see one large trial confirming or refuting the efficacy of Ivermectin. As long as that doesn't exist, the efficacy of Ivermectin is undecided. I'm highly skeptical myself, but the existince of one poorly executed study is completely irrelevant, as is the assocation with "right wingers".
ceilingcorner 5y ago
Excess deaths may come from the restrictions that were placed upon businesses, not from COVID itself. Especially in a place with many food-insecure people like India. Edit: since people downvote anything that goes against their narrative, here’s a link. > “For eight days, there was not a single grain in our house to eat and my sister became very weak during this time,” reflects Pooja Kumari, 15. > “We were all worried about her deteriorating condition but due to our lack of money, we could neither feed her or get her treated at any nearby hospital.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/first-coronavirus-now-starvation-hunger-stalks-millions-indians/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
- cunthorpe 5y ago
  I don't doubt death from starvation is a possibility, but probably not the majority cause.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > I don't doubt death from starvation is a possibility, but probably not the majority cause. There is quite a possibility it is.
    - laumars 5y ago
      A lot of the remoter and poor regions grow their own crops. What they lack is - education (understanding how to slow the spread the virus with many not even wearing a mask when looking after family members who are ill) - money (to pay for any medical care needed to treat COVID victims) And in the poorer but non-remote areas you have population density and hygiene issues. I’m not saying there aren’t going to be cases where famine is an issue. But it’s certainly not the majority killer — COVID is an effective enough killer on its own if it’s not handled carefully.
      - baybal2 5y ago
        India is much less of an agricultural economy than how it appears to people in the West. People may be living in villages, but fully reliant on city jobs for income to feed themselves. I doubt even a distant relative will lend a hand to a starving person in India. The society is extremely stratified. People just a step away on the income ladder live completely separate lives.
dequor 5y ago
I'm sure it does. I would still like a link to the study. I always wondered why is it so hard to actually link to the study in question.
- monkey_monkey 5y ago
  https://www.cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias-all-cause-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias...
- OJFord 5y ago
  Because the author hasn't seen the actual study, they've just rehashed something from Reuters/AP/similar and fleshed it out a bit with some more 'India facts'. Also because, although I agree with you, 99.9+% of BBC visitors don't care and won't click it, and some high proportion of the remainder won't have access to more than the abstract, another will immediately bounce because they clicked accidentally or didn't realise studies had lots of boring words and weren't YouTube videos of exciting lab experiments with white coats, etc.
jansan 5y ago
I think the method used in the study is completely flawed. It used case fatality rates from other countries (probably including the ridiculously high first wave numbers) to derive the deaths in India from the number oif infections. Did they even care to check for a small region if their results are plausible at all?
- dougmwne 5y ago
  That's extremely flawed considering India's average age.
  - detaro 5y ago
    it's using age-group specific data.
    - mulvya 5y ago
      The study they're using as reference for IFR (Levin) estimates 0.6% for the US. The IFR for the US as of end of Mar 2021 is ~0.5%. More importantly, their rate estimate does not taken into account obesity. US is at ~36%; India is at ~4%. As per Global Diabetes Atlas, estimated (not just diagnosed) prevalence of DM for US is ~9.3% and for India, ~5.5%. The translation of IFR needs to take into account of these factors, but they don't.
      - baybal2 5y ago
        India has a gigant diabetes epidemic. Per capita, India has more diabetes than much more wealthy countries. This is the kind if a country it is. People may be dying from obeseti in the city, and starvation in the village just 100km apart.
Karupan 5y ago
While I don’t doubt that the actual deaths from covid is far higher than what’s officially reported, I find the attempts to come up with a multiplier amusing. India has never had high quality data to use as a baseline, even those reported from cities. Besides as others have pointed out, the actual cause of death reported isn’t necessarily accurate either. Which is why we see “studies” predicting the actual number to be anywhere from 3x to 10x.
- srean 5y ago
  Not having causes of death reported, or rather purposely obfuscated, is precisely the value of these excess-over-baseline mortality studies. The science and maths of these things are quite well understood and one can give Bayesian credible bounds, or frequentist prediction interval bounds for these quantities. I also have no doubt that those close to the government will no doubt try everything possible to deny, dispute and discredit these numbers because it does not show a pretty picture.
- grecy 5y ago
  What you're saying doesn't make any logical sense. We have data of how many people died (from all causes) for every year from around 1960 to now, getting more accurate as time went on. Certainly for 2000 until now the numbers are very dependable. We can graph it, see abnormalities, and have very accurate estimates of how many people are expected to die next year in any given country. Suddenly, for the first time in many, many decades, the estimates from 2019 about 2020 were wildly low. In virtually every country in the world more people died than would have ever been predicted, and suddenly decades and decades of accurate estimations are out the window. Again in 2021 the deaths are way up. How can you possibly explain so many "extra" or "unpredictable" deaths after decades of numbers that perfectly matched estimates based on previous years?
  - eldaisfish 5y ago
    I don't think you understand how unreliable or easily fudged indian data is. Just during the pandemic, there are good reports of individual indian cities reporting more COVID infections than entire states with the population of a Germany or Brazil. https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/07/16/chintan-patel-vivek-kaul-covid-big-data-investigation-second-wave https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/07/16/chintan-patel-vivek-k... Indian data on deaths is so bad that deaths not being registered is par for the course. Your entire comment is built on the flawed assumption that data from dysfunctional countries like India is directly comparable to data from the west. It is not. A single death going unrecorded is highly unusual in the west. In India, not only do most indians die outside the hospital system but between 2 - 7 % of deaths are simply not recorded.
weeweww32 5y ago
lmao
throwaway102022 5y ago
Also, "68% of Indians have Covid-19 antibodies" [1] Really unscientific calculation: The death rate is estimatedly (4 million) / (0.67 * indian population) * 100 which makes the death rate 0.4%. [1]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/68-of-indians-have-covid-19-antibodies-1/3rd-vulnerable/articleshow/84599731.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/68-of-indians-have...
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Seropositivity surveys have a tendency to fall apart. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-not-to-do-an-antibody-survey-for-sars-cov-2-67488 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-not-to-do-an-... > In mid-April [of 2020], an eye-catching statistic appeared in the news: the number of people who’d been infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the California county of Santa Clara was 50 to 85 times higher than thought. While just 956 cases of COVID-19 had been officially recorded by April 1, the true number of infections was between 48,000 and 81,000, outlets reported. > These elevated numbers were reassuring, some outlets noted, because they suggest that most SARS-CoV-2 infections are milder than feared—a point seized on by conservative political commentators and some of the study’s own coauthors as support for the view that restrictive lockdown measures are an overreaction. Didn't pan out.
  - throwaway102022 5y ago
    It's true, however that same article has previous tests too: May-June 2020: 0.7% Aug-Sep 2020: 7.1% Jan 2021: 24.1% July 2021: 67.6% Which makes me think it's better, as it clearly ticks going upwards over time.
villgax 5y ago
Simple way to get better estimates is to see YoY gross deaths across states & then subtract it for the 2020/2021 numbers. That way even if they are not tagged correctly you can still arrive at a better estimate.
- srean 5y ago
  That's the general idea but some care is needed to account for any trends and to account for the natural variance in the numbers. For example the 2019 numbers subtracted from 2018 numbers wouldnt be zero. There will be some systematic trends, seasonal variations and some unexplained fluctuations. This requires some model fitting that uses not only past mortality data but also the usual macroeconomic data. Once you are at a point where you see that there are no systematic pattern in the error between the predicted number and the actual numbers, that this error is equally likely to be an over-estimate as an under estimate, then you would be in a position to use the model.
Aldipower 5y ago
Just to bring this in a relative context. This is a fatality rate of 0.28 %. Seems to be higher than in other countries. Germany for example has a rate of 0.11%. I have no clue which the factors between India and Germany are or what these numbers are saying. But just spitting a number of 4 million (little less the population of Denmark) into the room, says even less to me.
- srean 5y ago
  Fatality numbers in India during the first wave was lower, the government was prepared and had taken preventive measures. For the second wave India's infrastructure was overwhelmed, because the ruling party was busy throwing 'mission accomplished' media parties, election campaigns and allowing religious congregation attended by millions without any efficacious protection against the virus, rather the dumb belief that the holy water will flush it all away and cure. Add to it the spread of the narrative that cow urine and cow dung, whether you wallow in it or drink or eat it, its going to protect you from Covid, a narrative that's very dear to the ruling party, and pushed by their members in parliament and members in legislative assemblies. The consequences were hardly surprising.
himanshuy 5y ago
Sad to see how many comments are trying to downplay the number of deaths. Did we forget that these were real people not a number? Or how many families lost their loved ones? Is it time to compare the "fatality rate" with other countries?
- bhaavan 5y ago
  This article was specifically a claim about the number of deaths.
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  I think many people are trying to determine policy decisions. Do you shut down a country, causing starvation and lack of medical care OR do you attempt business as usual with masks? People are going to die, the question is how to limit it, and who gets priority.
- srean 5y ago
  It shouldnt surprise you, the governments next election is at stake, should their astronomic screw up become more widely known and appreciated. That's as high stake as it gets for the ruling party. So no wonder that the ruling party and those that are close to their agenda will take every steps possible to discredit the numbers. The tobacco industry did and does the same to studies that demonstrated the harmful effects of cigarette via statistical studies. Galileo was discredited by the church ... This is how the game is played
srean 5y ago
The tobacco industry tried everything possible to discredit the studies showing how harmful smoking cigarette is. We will be seeing the exact same response from the government, the ruling party and those that are close to its agenda. Galileo barely escaped alive from the Church. Dont be surprised by what you see here.
ekianjo 5y ago
> Taken together, the researchers found that excess deaths were estimated to be in the range of 3.4 million to 4.7 million Gotta give points to BBC for being just as good as any tabloid out there: the headline says "crossed 4 millions" as if it were a fact, while it's obviously a range and the lowest estimation is BELOW 4 millions.
kjaftaedi 5y ago
Study can be found here: https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/three-new-estimates-indias-all-cause-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic.pdf https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/three-new-estimate...
271828182846 5y ago
Regular mortality in India is about 7.5 per 1000 inhabitants. That's about 9.8 million deaths per year in India. Population of India is about 1.3 billion. Just to bring numbers into perspective. It actually just shows that Covid is far from as dangerous as it is made out to be. Many people in India live under 3rd world conditions in extremely crowded slums and towns. They have barely any medical infrastructure. The air quality in the bigger towns is abysmal. If the exponential growths panic would be justified we'd have to see a way higher excess morbidity! The truth is there is no exponential growth in reality because any growth hits an upper limit at some point. The western media wants to make us believe that no such upper limit exists or is so high that we can just assume exp growth. In fact all countries show dynamics indicating a rather low upper limit at which point growth ceases to be exponential and instead starts to either stagnate or decrease.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > It actually just shows that Covid is far from as dangerous as it is made out to be. This doesn't really follow from your numbers. If it did indeed kill 4M people, that's a nearly 50% annual increase in mortality for India, largely within a few months, despite restrictions and mitigations.

80 points by monkey_monkey 5y ago

tsjq 5y ago

Attribute all excess deaths as Covid deaths? And there's a supreme court order to give money to these families. Tough times for the govt

andybak 5y ago
> Attribute all excess deaths as Covid deaths? "Excess deaths are a measure of how many more people are dying than would be expected compared to the previous few years. Although it is difficult to say how many of these deaths have been caused by Covid-19, they are a measure of the overall impact of the pandemic."
- makomk 5y ago
  Especially in India, it's likely that a good chunk of those deaths are the result of attempts to aggressively stop the virus without thinking about the costs of doing so. They're really not in a good place to attempt any kind of lockdown given how their economy and food supply chains are, and yet they ended up attempting it anyway with ugly results.
  - Ayesh 5y ago
    I think it was more of a half baked lock down that caused the economy to get worse, and yet hardly see any improvement at curbing the pandemic. Countries like Vietnam were very protective, and took very immediate actions. They faced both the first two waves quickly, and recovered fairly well for the region.
  - fny 5y ago
    Can you estimate a percentage? Even if say 50% of deaths were due to lockdowns, do you really think that free movement would have not contributed to an equal or greater increase? As a further counterpoint, I'll use Norway and Sweden as examples. Sweden did not implement a lockdown, yet had a 10x worse per capita death count than Norway. If anything, this suggests that you'd need around 70-90% of the excess deaths to be attributed to something other than COVID, which feels like a heavy bar to clear.
    - makomk 5y ago
      Honestly, I'm not sure how you'd even be able to measure that. India doesn't seem to be doing so great at recording the cause of death, given that only a tenth of these were counted as Covid deaths and it's unlikely to be that low, plus you'd expect a lot of starvation-related deaths to show up as people dying from diseases that shouldn't otherwise be fatal...
    - jordanbeiber 5y ago
      Other things besides lockdown is obviously at play considering Sweden being smack in the middle of the statistics. Ahead and behind countries with law mandated lockdowns. Many pieces to this puzzle - generational living, skin tone and diet for example.
    - trhway 5y ago
      >Sweden did not implement a lockdown, yet had a 10x worse per capita death count than Norway. the situation is much more complicated. Looking at excess deaths https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countries-in-2020/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countr... one can see that in Sweden despite high rate of death, the excess rate is very low compare to countries with comparable Covid death rates. The Norway and Finland are among the few exceptional countries who had negative excess rates.
  - lwn 5y ago
    This is my perception aswell. India doesn't have the infrastructure and social well-fare systems needed to support a population in lockdown. Because of quarantine restrictions many householders were not able to provide food for their families.
    - wesleywt 5y ago
      How many died from starvation? Or is it something you feel happened.
      - lwn 5y ago
        I've based my comment on observations from relatives living in Maharashtra. Getting estimates seems impossible to me, because India doesn't record cause of death very well (if deceased person itself is even recorded)
  - hetman 5y ago
    What lock down related mechanisms do you propose could be responsible for 4 million deaths? Working with more concrete examples might help determine how likely this scenario is.
  - wesleywt 5y ago
    Do you have evidence for your claim?
  - tsjq 5y ago
    yeah, here comes the anti-BJP brigade
jasoncalamine 5y ago
Each dead persons family will get 4 lakh rupees, thats around $5000. Unbelievable. Why should the govt pay everyone who died? In a country that’s already poor and starved of cash. India economy has already been eroded with lockdowns and huge expenses on vaccines being given out for free, and now you have to pay those who died too.
- iso1631 5y ago
  > In a country that’s already poor and starved of cash. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50965778 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50965778 India has announced plans for a third lunar mission, months after its last one crash landed on the Moon's surface.
  - naruvimama 5y ago
    There is an ROI to India's space mission. The US has homeless problems too, but doesn't stop it from spending on the space program.
  - ngc248 5y ago
    Resources need to be spent on all things no ..... not just on the poor, but even on things which may payoff in the future. Another point is, you can never alleviate poverty by just giving the poor money
  - KumarAseem 5y ago
    The cost of space missions done by ISRO is extremely low. Even if you cancel all the space missions, the money saved will be in pennies and the loss of tech know how will be enormous. The wastage of finances is in other areas. Full page advertisements by govt departments on nonsensical things. Useless litigations. Implementing big changes to laws and systems without proper discussions and studies. Awarding contracts to entities whose track record is a bad one. And so on. India has become a morally poor nation and 90% of the citizens do not try to see and understand the big picture. They have on interest in spending time to learn what is happening in their nation and see what is happening in other nations and then question why we are doing things in proven wrong ways. Indians believe more in what is circulated on whatsapp and facebook than if you get a bunch of Nobel winners to explain the truth.
himinlomax 5y ago
> Attribute all excess deaths as Covid deaths? Unless you have an alternative explanation, it's a fairly reasonable assumption. In fact it's arguably more reliable in aggregate than trying to positively identify the cause of death for each victim, given the magnitude of the number. That wouldn't work for smaller effects though.

ngc248 5y ago

BS headlines everywhere. Straight from the study: https://cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias-all-cause-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic https://cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias-all... "Estimating COVID-deaths with statistical confidence may prove elusive. But all estimates suggest that the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count of 400,000;" But no one is adding this disclaimer, everyone is just parroting the 4 million number. Another thing to ponder, if this amount of people had died, do foreigners really think Indian people would have sat silently? There may be underreporting or missing stats, but I doubt if it is a 10x difference.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
spiffistan 5y ago
An order of magnitude above 400000 is 4 million.
- gibba999 5y ago
  3 million and 5 million are also an order-of-magnitude above 400,000, as are quite a few other numbers.
  - shrikant 5y ago
    OP has conveniently left out a few lines just before their quoted bit: > We report excess mortality estimates from three different data sources from the pandemic’s start through June 2021. First, extrapolation of state-level civil registration from seven states suggests 3.4 million excess deaths. Second, applying international estimates of age-specific infection fatality rates (IFR) to Indian seroprevalence data implies a higher toll of around 4 million. Third, our analysis of the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey, a longitudinal panel of over 800,000 individuals across all states, yields an estimate of 4.9 million excess deaths. If their (or your) complaint is with these actual methods of estimation, then pick on those, but the assumption that the study authors just want to Jedi mind-trick you into 10x'ing the official Covid deaths number is flawed.

switch007 5y ago

A suspiciously timed article, just after we ease restrictions. The same scare stories about India happened in March, when we heard the plan to begin easing lockdown restrictions.

aww_dang 5y ago
When has government willingly returned freedoms taken under the guise of "emergency measures" ?
- switch007 5y ago
  Well in fairness the UK gov did roll back some laws, but they’re certainly keeping some and riding this pandemic to write some even worse ones. Terrorism has been put to bed, and now it’s viruses’ turn I guess.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    I propose next a lockdown / travel ban to save the climate?
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Last I checked, the US still have income tax https://mises.org/library/origin-income-tax https://mises.org/library/origin-income-tax
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    Careful, that domain is shadowbanned from submissions at HN...
  - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
    My friend jokethrowaway, mises.org will trigger a lot of people. You have been warned, lol.
  - dennis_jeeves 5y ago

sadmann1 5y ago

Yes yes lockdowns again just get it over with. At least we're making a ton of money implementing Europe's new social score through the vaccination pass

isaacremuant 5y ago

Is ivermectin still evil and misinformation too? Is upcoming september discrimination as proposed by Boris on "freedom Day" good? It's getting really tiresome to see propaganda day in and day out. Most people aren't afraid. Politicians, by their actions, aren't afraid. This is all about keeping the fear cycle going and blaming people again for the failings of corrupt governments.

pjc50 5y ago
Ivermectin remains unproven; it's not an antiviral, it's a nerve poison for invertebrates.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Are there opportunistic invertebrates that might move into an infected person's lungs or sinuses that could explain reports of it working, if there are such reports?
  - alexisread 5y ago
    I hear too much talk from politicians on a daily basis, if it works, I'm in ;)
ceejayoz 5y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-supporting-ivermectin-as-covid-treatment-withdrawn-over-ethical-concerns https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-s... > The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”.
- incrudible 5y ago
  I have yet to see one large trial confirming or refuting the efficacy of Ivermectin. As long as that doesn't exist, the efficacy of Ivermectin is undecided. I'm highly skeptical myself, but the existince of one poorly executed study is completely irrelevant, as is the assocation with "right wingers".

ceilingcorner 5y ago

Excess deaths may come from the restrictions that were placed upon businesses, not from COVID itself. Especially in a place with many food-insecure people like India. Edit: since people downvote anything that goes against their narrative, here’s a link. > “For eight days, there was not a single grain in our house to eat and my sister became very weak during this time,” reflects Pooja Kumari, 15. > “We were all worried about her deteriorating condition but due to our lack of money, we could neither feed her or get her treated at any nearby hospital.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/first-coronavirus-now-starvation-hunger-stalks-millions-indians/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

cunthorpe 5y ago
I don't doubt death from starvation is a possibility, but probably not the majority cause.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > I don't doubt death from starvation is a possibility, but probably not the majority cause. There is quite a possibility it is.
  - laumars 5y ago
    A lot of the remoter and poor regions grow their own crops. What they lack is - education (understanding how to slow the spread the virus with many not even wearing a mask when looking after family members who are ill) - money (to pay for any medical care needed to treat COVID victims) And in the poorer but non-remote areas you have population density and hygiene issues. I’m not saying there aren’t going to be cases where famine is an issue. But it’s certainly not the majority killer — COVID is an effective enough killer on its own if it’s not handled carefully.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      India is much less of an agricultural economy than how it appears to people in the West. People may be living in villages, but fully reliant on city jobs for income to feed themselves. I doubt even a distant relative will lend a hand to a starving person in India. The society is extremely stratified. People just a step away on the income ladder live completely separate lives.

dequor 5y ago

I'm sure it does. I would still like a link to the study. I always wondered why is it so hard to actually link to the study in question.

monkey_monkey 5y ago
https://www.cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias-all-cause-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias...
OJFord 5y ago
Because the author hasn't seen the actual study, they've just rehashed something from Reuters/AP/similar and fleshed it out a bit with some more 'India facts'. Also because, although I agree with you, 99.9+% of BBC visitors don't care and won't click it, and some high proportion of the remainder won't have access to more than the abstract, another will immediately bounce because they clicked accidentally or didn't realise studies had lots of boring words and weren't YouTube videos of exciting lab experiments with white coats, etc.

jansan 5y ago

I think the method used in the study is completely flawed. It used case fatality rates from other countries (probably including the ridiculously high first wave numbers) to derive the deaths in India from the number oif infections. Did they even care to check for a small region if their results are plausible at all?

dougmwne 5y ago
That's extremely flawed considering India's average age.
- detaro 5y ago
  it's using age-group specific data.
  - mulvya 5y ago
    The study they're using as reference for IFR (Levin) estimates 0.6% for the US. The IFR for the US as of end of Mar 2021 is ~0.5%. More importantly, their rate estimate does not taken into account obesity. US is at ~36%; India is at ~4%. As per Global Diabetes Atlas, estimated (not just diagnosed) prevalence of DM for US is ~9.3% and for India, ~5.5%. The translation of IFR needs to take into account of these factors, but they don't.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      India has a gigant diabetes epidemic. Per capita, India has more diabetes than much more wealthy countries. This is the kind if a country it is. People may be dying from obeseti in the city, and starvation in the village just 100km apart.

Karupan 5y ago

While I don’t doubt that the actual deaths from covid is far higher than what’s officially reported, I find the attempts to come up with a multiplier amusing. India has never had high quality data to use as a baseline, even those reported from cities. Besides as others have pointed out, the actual cause of death reported isn’t necessarily accurate either. Which is why we see “studies” predicting the actual number to be anywhere from 3x to 10x.

srean 5y ago
Not having causes of death reported, or rather purposely obfuscated, is precisely the value of these excess-over-baseline mortality studies. The science and maths of these things are quite well understood and one can give Bayesian credible bounds, or frequentist prediction interval bounds for these quantities. I also have no doubt that those close to the government will no doubt try everything possible to deny, dispute and discredit these numbers because it does not show a pretty picture.
grecy 5y ago
What you're saying doesn't make any logical sense. We have data of how many people died (from all causes) for every year from around 1960 to now, getting more accurate as time went on. Certainly for 2000 until now the numbers are very dependable. We can graph it, see abnormalities, and have very accurate estimates of how many people are expected to die next year in any given country. Suddenly, for the first time in many, many decades, the estimates from 2019 about 2020 were wildly low. In virtually every country in the world more people died than would have ever been predicted, and suddenly decades and decades of accurate estimations are out the window. Again in 2021 the deaths are way up. How can you possibly explain so many "extra" or "unpredictable" deaths after decades of numbers that perfectly matched estimates based on previous years?
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  I don't think you understand how unreliable or easily fudged indian data is. Just during the pandemic, there are good reports of individual indian cities reporting more COVID infections than entire states with the population of a Germany or Brazil. https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/07/16/chintan-patel-vivek-kaul-covid-big-data-investigation-second-wave https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/07/16/chintan-patel-vivek-k... Indian data on deaths is so bad that deaths not being registered is par for the course. Your entire comment is built on the flawed assumption that data from dysfunctional countries like India is directly comparable to data from the west. It is not. A single death going unrecorded is highly unusual in the west. In India, not only do most indians die outside the hospital system but between 2 - 7 % of deaths are simply not recorded.

weeweww32 5y ago

lmao

throwaway102022 5y ago

Also, "68% of Indians have Covid-19 antibodies" [1] Really unscientific calculation: The death rate is estimatedly (4 million) / (0.67 * indian population) * 100 which makes the death rate 0.4%. [1]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/68-of-indians-have-covid-19-antibodies-1/3rd-vulnerable/articleshow/84599731.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/68-of-indians-have...

ceejayoz 5y ago
Seropositivity surveys have a tendency to fall apart. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-not-to-do-an-antibody-survey-for-sars-cov-2-67488 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-not-to-do-an-... > In mid-April [of 2020], an eye-catching statistic appeared in the news: the number of people who’d been infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the California county of Santa Clara was 50 to 85 times higher than thought. While just 956 cases of COVID-19 had been officially recorded by April 1, the true number of infections was between 48,000 and 81,000, outlets reported. > These elevated numbers were reassuring, some outlets noted, because they suggest that most SARS-CoV-2 infections are milder than feared—a point seized on by conservative political commentators and some of the study’s own coauthors as support for the view that restrictive lockdown measures are an overreaction. Didn't pan out.
- throwaway102022 5y ago
  It's true, however that same article has previous tests too: May-June 2020: 0.7% Aug-Sep 2020: 7.1% Jan 2021: 24.1% July 2021: 67.6% Which makes me think it's better, as it clearly ticks going upwards over time.

villgax 5y ago

Simple way to get better estimates is to see YoY gross deaths across states & then subtract it for the 2020/2021 numbers. That way even if they are not tagged correctly you can still arrive at a better estimate.

srean 5y ago
That's the general idea but some care is needed to account for any trends and to account for the natural variance in the numbers. For example the 2019 numbers subtracted from 2018 numbers wouldnt be zero. There will be some systematic trends, seasonal variations and some unexplained fluctuations. This requires some model fitting that uses not only past mortality data but also the usual macroeconomic data. Once you are at a point where you see that there are no systematic pattern in the error between the predicted number and the actual numbers, that this error is equally likely to be an over-estimate as an under estimate, then you would be in a position to use the model.

Aldipower 5y ago

Just to bring this in a relative context. This is a fatality rate of 0.28 %. Seems to be higher than in other countries. Germany for example has a rate of 0.11%. I have no clue which the factors between India and Germany are or what these numbers are saying. But just spitting a number of 4 million (little less the population of Denmark) into the room, says even less to me.

srean 5y ago
Fatality numbers in India during the first wave was lower, the government was prepared and had taken preventive measures. For the second wave India's infrastructure was overwhelmed, because the ruling party was busy throwing 'mission accomplished' media parties, election campaigns and allowing religious congregation attended by millions without any efficacious protection against the virus, rather the dumb belief that the holy water will flush it all away and cure. Add to it the spread of the narrative that cow urine and cow dung, whether you wallow in it or drink or eat it, its going to protect you from Covid, a narrative that's very dear to the ruling party, and pushed by their members in parliament and members in legislative assemblies. The consequences were hardly surprising.

himanshuy 5y ago

Sad to see how many comments are trying to downplay the number of deaths. Did we forget that these were real people not a number? Or how many families lost their loved ones? Is it time to compare the "fatality rate" with other countries?

bhaavan 5y ago
This article was specifically a claim about the number of deaths.
deregulateMed 5y ago
I think many people are trying to determine policy decisions. Do you shut down a country, causing starvation and lack of medical care OR do you attempt business as usual with masks? People are going to die, the question is how to limit it, and who gets priority.
srean 5y ago
It shouldnt surprise you, the governments next election is at stake, should their astronomic screw up become more widely known and appreciated. That's as high stake as it gets for the ruling party. So no wonder that the ruling party and those that are close to their agenda will take every steps possible to discredit the numbers. The tobacco industry did and does the same to studies that demonstrated the harmful effects of cigarette via statistical studies. Galileo was discredited by the church ... This is how the game is played

srean 5y ago

The tobacco industry tried everything possible to discredit the studies showing how harmful smoking cigarette is. We will be seeing the exact same response from the government, the ruling party and those that are close to its agenda. Galileo barely escaped alive from the Church. Dont be surprised by what you see here.

ekianjo 5y ago

> Taken together, the researchers found that excess deaths were estimated to be in the range of 3.4 million to 4.7 million Gotta give points to BBC for being just as good as any tabloid out there: the headline says "crossed 4 millions" as if it were a fact, while it's obviously a range and the lowest estimation is BELOW 4 millions.

kjaftaedi 5y ago

Study can be found here: https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/three-new-estimates-indias-all-cause-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic.pdf https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/three-new-estimate...

271828182846 5y ago

Regular mortality in India is about 7.5 per 1000 inhabitants. That's about 9.8 million deaths per year in India. Population of India is about 1.3 billion. Just to bring numbers into perspective. It actually just shows that Covid is far from as dangerous as it is made out to be. Many people in India live under 3rd world conditions in extremely crowded slums and towns. They have barely any medical infrastructure. The air quality in the bigger towns is abysmal. If the exponential growths panic would be justified we'd have to see a way higher excess morbidity! The truth is there is no exponential growth in reality because any growth hits an upper limit at some point. The western media wants to make us believe that no such upper limit exists or is so high that we can just assume exp growth. In fact all countries show dynamics indicating a rather low upper limit at which point growth ceases to be exponential and instead starts to either stagnate or decrease.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> It actually just shows that Covid is far from as dangerous as it is made out to be. This doesn't really follow from your numbers. If it did indeed kill 4M people, that's a nearly 50% annual increase in mortality for India, largely within a few months, despite restrictions and mitigations.