6 ms·

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

by tsjq 5y ago

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.

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

by 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.