What's happening in India is a culmination of immense population density, dismissing and ignoring of recommendations by the government, dissemination of propaganda, massive incompetence, etc etc

It's not a binary choice. There is a huge amount of room between the two. I believe you know that, so think about whether your comment was made in good faith.

The situation in India is the result of all the things you mentioned + recklessness of people. You have to see it first hand that how reckless people acted in large cities. They were acting like this covid thing doesn't even exist and that is one crucial point.

Pretty sure if you’d allowed or even encouraged unmitigated spread of the virus, you’d also get the same or similar recession, though perhaps slightly later.

Of course. If going out and working and consuming is dangerous, many people will not do it, even if there is no lockdown. More people will just be extremely careful. And there is some direct cost to the sickeness and death.

This was published well over a year ago.

https://news.mit.edu/2020/pandemic-health-response-economic-...

if Indian numbers have to be trusted they are really not that bad, some European countries had even worse numbers per capita

people sometimes forget the size of Indian population and just look at nominal numbers instead per capita numbers, considering how poor is India and how bad is Indian healthcare these numbers comparable wiuth Europe are actually pretty low

I don’t think anyone trusts the Indian government numbers; they are downplaying, lying, and just overwhelmed. It will take a long time probably before before we get a real accounting for deaths, but everything I’ve read points to at least 5x - 10x the official numbers.

You’ll eventually get your answer though to the question of “what if we didn’t do lockdowns and just let it run” - I don’t think it will be pretty.

All the news articles I've seen mention that actual numbers are perhaps 10x or more the reported numbers due to lack of testing and overwhelmed healthcare.

Those European countries have markedly different age pyramids than India