So up to 350,000 people died just yesterday. And over the last ten days, up to 3 million people died?
While deaths are certainly underreported, it isn't helpful in a pandemic to throw random figures around.
In my district of Kolhapur in Maharashtra, the district officials report 30-40 deaths per day, while official numbers stay at 1-3. That means the state is under reporting by 10x to 40x. And this is still counting only those people who, 1. died in hospital after being tested +ve for covid 2. did not have any comorbidity, as then they'd be classified under that comorbidity, however ridiculous it might seem(e.g. person dying of diabetes when infected by covid)
So actual numbers are likely to be much higher, given that all beds were full already last week itself.
Note that this is an opposition ruled state. Situation is even worse in BJP ruled states, where for example, 1. Tests are done only for few hours a day. 2. People are being charged with spreading misinformation for asking for oxygen cylinders on social media. 3. Deaths are being under reported heavily. 4. crematoriums are not accessible to reporters.
I happen to live in Bangalore (BJP ruled). There's certainly no evidence of 10-40x underreporting of deaths happening here. I don't doubt at all that they're underreported though; but to a smaller extent.
Do you have any links?
Here are some reports about Gujarat[1][2]
[1] https://scroll.in/article/992217/as-the-dead-pile-up-in-guja... [2] https://caravanmagazine.in/health/how-gujarat-is-undercounti...
About Covid not being listed as cause of death in cremation houses - this is a definite problem in North India. Southern states do not suffer from this social stigma. Cause of death is being properly mentioned here.
Sources are crematorium staff describing how many additional bodies they have to burn and epidemiologists.
The lack of cremation facilities are reported throughout the country. It is not just about one region or the other. The under-reporting is reported in most places. The lack of tests in places like Kolkata shows that people even after showing symptoms can't get tested. All these point to the official government numbers being a fraction of the actual numbers.
In an environment where the government is under-reporting and the news reports are the only ones showing the ground reality we can only speculate the actual number for the whole country. We may never do. Until that we can only opine and point to the evidence we have.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/pushed-to-the...
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/indias-crematoriums-...
https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/at-delhi-cr...
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/104th-in-the...
This is not in line with only 3500 people dying all over the country. This is in line with the range the above comment mentions. My anecdote of people dying my inner circle is not political. Neither is my opinion that the official numbers are to be not trusted given the evidence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-coronavi...
It's like my parents' restaurant, you can get busier and busier without there being a wall. When you "hit capacity" you find you're doing many things that you weren't normally doing, like being open a lot longer, asking for longer shifts from staff, rationing things that you wouldn't normally ration.
Can't be the case throughout the country in all affected districts and all densely populated states.
You see reports of crematoriums running 24/7 and still not able to fulfill the demand for cremations and find it reasonable to land on any other conclusion but people are dying. I think I've presented enough.
Extraordinary claims (such as up to 3 million deaths in ten days) require extraordinary evidence. My response, if you notice, was specifically about that claim. And I also did not fail to mention that deaths are underreported.
And it definitely suggests that the amount of under-reporting varies by area, so it's even more unfair for you to multiply the entire country's number by 100 as your goalpost.
There are however, other reports you can quote:
- The Print (not govt-leaning) "If you claim India’s Covid death toll is 2x govt figure, it’s understandable. But not 10x" [1]
- NYTimes: Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has been following India closely. “From all the modeling we’ve done, we believe the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported.” [2]
In short, I strongly feel throwing numbers around without basis simply widens the chasm.
[1]: https://theprint.in/opinion/if-you-claim-indias-covid-death-...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-coronavi...
Have a look at this article to get a sense of the scale of the problem.
https://www.article-14.com/post/bjp-states-hiding-covid-19-d...
There is large scale, govt backed effort to not report in a few states for ex UP which is most populous - govt was directing labs not to take samples. and no admission to hospital as corona patient until you provide RTPcr test id(this is from a friend who's in the state capital and father's in the hospital now). Death rates 10x official counts overall wouldn't be surprising at all.
There were 200,000 cases and 1,200 deaths yesterday as per official reports.
Unofficially yes, more than 10,000 people died. Not sure where you got the 350k numbers from
Not strictly COVID-related, but this was the first I'd heard of this and it sounded surprising to me, so I looked it up. I picked an older version of the Wikipedia article (from Nov 2019, just to rule out recent changes that may have been made because of COVID-19) and it (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kumbh_Mela&oldid=...) says:
> The weeks over which the festival is observed cycles at each site approximately once every 12 years[note 1] based on the Hindu luni-solar calendar and the relative astrological positions of Jupiter, sun and moon.
where [note 1] gives as reference a 2008 book that says:
> About once a century the Kumbha Mela returns to a site after eleven years. Jupiter’s orbit is actually 11.86 years, so after each twelve-year cycle it moves a little further into the sign, which the eleventh year celebration corrects.
Another 2019 book cited in the article is more clear, and its second chapter explicitly mentions 2021 for Haridwar:
> The Mela is organized when a specific astronomical combination (kumbha yoga) of the Moon, the Sun, and Jupiter occurs in specific zodiac signs. The Moon takes around one month (27.32 days) to orbit the earth during which it transits through the 12 signs. The Sun transits through the 12 signs in around one year (365.2425 days), the time taken by the earth to orbit the Sun. Finally, Jupiter transits through the 12 signs in nearly 12 years (11.8618 years), the time taken by it to orbit the Sun. The transit period of Jupiter being the longest—12 times that of the Sun and around 159 times that of the moon—the kumbha yoga for a location repeats when Jupiter enters the same sign again. This is why the Kumbha Mela is held once every 12 years at a given venue, as a general rule.
> The seventh Mela after six melas held in 72 years (each held 12 years after the previous one) is held 11 years after the sixth Mela, giving us seven melas in 83 years. The reason is that Jupiter completes seven transits of the zodiac in nearly 83 years (11.8618 × 7 = 83.0326), and moves to the next sign in the 84th year. This is why the Haridwar Kumbha was held in 1938 after 1927 and the Prayaga Kumbha was held in 1977 after 1966. The last Kumbha in Haridwar was in 2010 (1938 + 72), but the next one will be in 2021 (1938 + 83 = 2010 + 11).
I wonder where the idea of "was supposed to take place next year" comes from: my guess is that someone extrapolated the approximate "takes place every 12 years" and just naively added 12 to the previous year (2010) at the same location. These festivals are based on the assumption that a certain conjunction in the sky indicates a sacred time, to be marked by bathing in holy rivers etc. One can of course reject this notion entirely (and with it the festival itself), but it doesn't make much sense to treat the festival like a sports event or conference that can be moved around. The government of India can no more change the date of the Kumbh Mela than, say, the government of Italy change the date of Easter. All a government can do is restrict people's movements, etc. The accusation that crowds were allowed to gather obviously makes sense; not so much the accusation that the date was changed. (Incidentally, Wikipedia has multiple articles on the date of Easter: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Easter_controvers... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Date_of_Easter&ol... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reform_of_the_dat... .)
It's unfortunate that even in these times, propaganda (from both sides) has completely taken over rational analysis.
I still see public ignoring safety norms like nothing has happened.
As for people running for hospitals, a primary reason (as per a doctor who treated my dad for Covid) is that people are ignoring symptoms for days (over a week at times) after which virus does enough damage that only option they're left with is getting oxygen assistance.
>As for people running for hospitals, a primary reason (as per a doctor who treated my dad for Covid) is that people are ignoring symptoms for days (over a week at times) after which virus does enough damage that only option they're left with is getting oxygen assistance.
Hospitals will give the same protocol as people are following at home. In fact add the empathetic environment of home with proper food (compared to the sheer lack of care in any hospital right now), and people are recovering faster at home. Yes, there are many cases though where people had serious damage and they neglected to go early. Just saying this issue is complicated and I can understand why someone would hesitate to go to a hospital with 99F fever and slight bodyache.
And none these vultures in the media will talk about it because it does not fit their agenda.
I noticed a slow but steady rise in cases in Maharashtra since mid-February. A few reports suggested something was brewing in the Nagpur/Vidharbha region. No one paid any attention to it because of the war between the State and Center on the police corruption/extortion issue.
Soon, cases started appearing in Kerala and Punjab. Only THEN did other states start reporting cases in massive numbers. Did religious events and election rallies have an impact? Of course. But that came weeks later.
If you are looking for super spreader events its more likely the large election gatherings caused a spike.
Blaming a protest that was taking place even months before looks like propaganda.
To answer your question, people were gathering for events other than rallies
"Today, Covid cases are declining rapidly in India ... 18 percent of the world's population is in India, a country that saved mankind from a big disaster by saving its citizens from the pandemic."
He sad " We need to follow 3 steps: Keep politics out of the COVID-19 vaccination drive, Trust the science behind COVID-19 Vaccines, and ensure our near & dear ones get vaccinated on time."
Yet another attempt by the BJP IT Cell to divert the attention onto anybody but the BJP government.
Bringing this point up sacrifices a chance to save india from future pain just to win political talking points to protect the culpable.
Cases lag events by 14 days. The spike was this year, the protests started last year. The cases didn’t even begin in those states that sent the most protesters. The current strain developed in Maharashtra.
The Govt and all Indians I spoke to throughout the year were complete unaware of how they had dodged a bullet.
Instead of being grateful and figuring out how to prevent it from ever happening again, our govt went ahead and said “we are invincible.”.
This is a behavior we cannot ever afford again.
If we didn’t know why we had such a mild first wave, we should have done everything to understand why and to take preventive measures.
However the crucial need is for an event to actually spread the virus. Or more precisely, spread the variant that is currently adapted to india.
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.
Literally what I said.
Sadly though, the protests continue even today, and I have not heard of any response from the govt.
Please take your one sided narrative elsewhere.
Protests would have shown 14 day lagged incrEase in cases in Punjab and Harayana, where the bulk of attendees came from. Those cases were not seen.
This idea is incongruous with information we have.
On the other hand The central govt has been declaring mission accomplished since last year.
I wouldn’t blame people for thinking that their respected leader was telling them the truth and acting accordingly.
Risk taking behavior is related to how the people on top act, especially in India which is today, a far more centralized nation.
Farmer protests happened during December-feb, while COVID surge started in March.
Govt. is just blaming farmers for everything, instead of kumbh mela, lowering restrictions and election rallies
Bangalore i think now has the highest case in India. Kumbh mela or elections did not cause that spike or the spike all around India.
This means in places where there is shortage of pyres, deaths must be at least 3x the earlier one.
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.