Death count is also very much under reported.[1] I am not able to find the reference but only testing count is reliable, positive case and death counts are highly under reported.
[1] 4th plot. https://www.ft.com/content/683914a3-134f-40b6-989b-21e0ba1dc...
[1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1384782949879517185.html
I also suspect that, in general, Indian people are exposed to more pathogens on a daily basis compared to developed countries. It might be due to factors such as lax regulation in food and restaurant sectors (street food is highly popular among the young and old, and its generally not too hygienic).
There might be more faster and stronger immunological responses due to this increased exposure.
For all we know, a worse one swept through the population 3000 years ago and inferred some genetic immunity. Or they have cross immunity from recent infections.
It’s weird this never gets talked about, considering how all of the countries near China did quite well (relatively).
Credit goes to successive governments from various parties, who have largely not politicized the issue.
It also helps that the previous and current generation have seen the effects of non-vaccination, like polio afflicted ones.
In general, the population goes by the word of the medical establishment and there are no nonsensical opposing voices.
What is happening in USA is puzzling to me. Just goes to show that you can have all the wealth, infrastructure, research and qualified personnel in the world and still be beholden to crackpot ideas and conspiracy theories.
Many people thought covid was not a big deal from because how easy the first wave went through. The vaccine slots were mostly free till a month back when the crunch started.
Sandwiches (yummy ones in Pune) are not deep fried or even properly roasted.
Samosas / Mirchi / Jalebi are made and kept out in containers for hours together, until they are cold.
[1] https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/trends/over-21-indians-a...
Top comment here suggests that india did really good with lockdowns first time around. They just got too confident?
I think population size is incredibly underappreciated. It's hard to comprehend large numbers.
More to the point, 1.3 billion people. On par with China. Those are the two most populous nations in the world. Third place is the United States. With 334 million people, which is 1/4th in size compared to India or China.
To put that in perspective: the world population today is 7.7 billion. Those 3 countries together constitute about 37% of the global population.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/world/#peop...
273.000 cases on april 18th, that's 0.021% of India's population.
To be clear: I do not intend to diminish the amount of suffering. 273k a day is an insane number of people who require specialized healthcare.
India is also a microcosmos unto itself. It's an incredibly complex and diverse society due to it's sheer size. That's also something which is underappreciated if you live across the world. Even in this day and age, it's worth being aware of the fact that news from India tends to be condensed in a few terse paragraphs published on, predominantly western, ephemeral online outlets. In the process, the complexity of India is easily lost.
Why is that important? Because many readers of the news will tend to compare that to their own frame of reference.
When people argue about the accuracy of numbers from PCR testing, hospital admissions, deaths,... it's easy to forget that this pertains to a 1.3 billion people across a diverse continent, having conditions which aren't at all equal regardless of where you travel.
My point here is this: the vastness and the complexity of the continent compared with a rapidly unfolding event make it hard to observe and comprehend what is going on.
This isn't a new issue. It was, and to an extent still is, an issue when one tries to assess the exact impact of the Spanish Flu in India:
The number of deaths caused by Spanish Flu in India is an estimate as well ranging from 12 million to 17-18 million on Wikipedia. And that's during a time when the population was vastly lower then it is today: the 1921 census states recorded a population of 318 million.
What historians do have asserted is the social and political impact of the pandemic on the Indian sentiment regarding the then colonial rule, and, in the long run, triggered a long rally towards independence. Even though exact data are hard to come by.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic_in_India https://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/old_report/cen...
Even in this day and age, the fact that everyone - scientists, data experts, policy makers - are puzzled and wildly speculating about what's going on in India is also a reflection of the limited capabilities of modern technology as well. Even in an era of digitization it's still extremely hard to gather data from a complex, rapidly involving context and being able to ask relevant questions which will yield to a more accurate explanation.
Rather then enless speculating about the exactness of data, the big question for Indian policy makers on all administrative and governmental levels would be: how to respond? how to save lives? how to protect the country's infrastructure? And how to do all that in a flexible, transparent, effective manner which can capture / cater to the complexity of the Indian nation.
Not sure what the implied IFR of your scenario is, but FWIW John Ioannidis has the global IFR at .15%. Furthermore SARS-2 is so incredibly age stratified wrt risk (something we conveniently ignore in public health mandates) that non-1st-world countries can have incredibly low death rates since fewer people survive to old age (and there is relatively less prevalence of diseases of modernity). Whereas the data I’ve seen for the increases in global poverty, child starvation, missed medical appointments and missed [non-COVID] vaccinations is staggering. Yet another cost of a one-size-fits-all approach taken across the globe.
Take a look through a dataset of COVID deaths and you’ll notice something that gets lip service but isn’t talked about nearly enough:
https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/widgets/3trz-enys
Diseases of modernity.
Not a credible source.
...Hmm, weird, my posteriors didn’t change at all.
Ioannidis may have had some very interesting ideas, but his data analysis on COVID has simply been shown to be incorrect.
Furthermore you are assuming that the excess deaths are solely attributable to COVID-19. The truth is not even close.
Ioandis' original study was in Santa Clara County, CA, where they estimated 0.17%. I don't see how New Jersey, for example, materially differs in a relevant way in terms of population statistics from Santa Clara.
I would also note that New Jersey STILL has a high COVID case rate, even with 47% of the population vaccinated. They did not achieve herd immunity with their 0.3% death rate, because far less than 100% of the population has gotten COVID, so the IFR is very obviously significantly higher than 0.3%.
They made a prediction, the prediction was wrong. It's clearly motivated reasoning, because the authors on these studies have had policy prescriptions since the very beginning that depend on COVID not being very dangerous.
Unfortunately reality is not required to adhere to a particular set of political views, and arguing with a virus is not effective.
I doubt it emerged early enough for this to be specifically relevant to the study in question, but something like the more-transmissible-but-less-deadly California variant would be a pretty big differentiator between California and New Jersey.
Yea clearly a science-minded person wouldn't be able to find a plethora of different variables between populations on opposite sides of the country.
Let's just assume they're homogeneous. /s
The man is a total and complete embarrassment.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-happened-to-j...
In my home, during the first wave, all family members caught fever. All of us took an antiviral medicine. We were already isolated, in the peak of lockdown. Took all precautions and avoided contact with anyone else. The doctor who we consulted, our regular family doctor, did not recommend for testing and in any case, testing was not easily accessible.
I suspect a lot of such instances are there and the real infection numbers might be around 3 times the reported figures.
If that is true, what is remarkable is the low death rate.