I am sorry for the losses you and your friends have experienced. I came here to provide a contrarian view just so that the readers here do not get a skewed view of what is going on.
I agree with you that the actual deaths are at least 10X and possibly 100X more than the official numbers. But nobody in my family has been tested positive with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19 or any other illness in the last 2 years. I know many friends and colleagues too whose entire families have been safe in this pandemic. There are a few who have lost a family member to COVID-19. Some of them got infected and recovered. But most of the people in my circle and their families are safe.
My immediate family could quarantine because we are relatively well off. We can order online and most of our jobs are tech as well.
Other friends and families including doctors can't afford to stay locked down. The first wave was withering down, life was returning back to normal. All modi had to do was to sit down and shut up. But he thought his getting elected was more important so he organized election rallies and let the kumbh mela happen with 12 million people gathering.
Even by worst estimates ~50% of population has been infected, so not surprising to find families which are not infected.
Ganeshkrishnan said he didn't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives. He didn't say such families didn't exist, just that he didn't know any. It is valuable to provide information that such families do exist.
In terms of number of cases the worst affected are Karnataka and Maharashtra[0] which had neither Kumbh Mela nor election rallies. Neither did other badly affected states like Delhi. Kumbh Mela in fact started when the "second wave" was already well entrenched.
Also, long after Kumbh Mela was truncated and the election rallies got over - and even at the height of the second wave - people were still blowing social distancing norms to smithereens at farmers rallies [1] and Ramzan/Eid celebrations[2].
0. https://www.covid19india.org/
1. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/covid-norms-go-for-...
2. https://theprint.in/health/covid-protocols-up-in-the-air-in-...
If you have data to back up the 10-100x claim, please share it.
There has been undercounting in most countries and India having largely poor infra you would expect it to be higher there. The data has been analysed by a lot of experts and most are putting the real count between 2-3x. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1390536686635978752?s=...
>> I am quite sure you can do without spreading FUD here though.
With due respect, our entire country is experiencing fear, uncertainty and certainly despair. Giving voice to it is not unreasonable.
And a significant portion of the families especially low income families don't even get death certificates. There were people that died and their fatality will never be recorded anywhere anytime.
I totally respect and understand that. It is just that hyperbolic figures just lead to flame wars and I would rather not have it here. That's why I asked them to back it up with statistical analysis they are relying on.
Do you have any other source other than the blog you linked? I remember from Wikipedia source discussions, that the site is not a good source for news reporting, so I am going to skip opening their article.
Other reports from cremations in multiple cities have been approximately similar. https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1384782984138694658?...
You're right that it isn't 10x everywhere. India as a whole is probably 3-5x, but the point that it is 10-100x in the very worst areas is also true. Some places in UP and Bihar are reporting no COVID deaths at all. People are dying of 'cough and fever'
Finally, at a pan India level, while the government refuses to count deaths accurately, it has done sero-surveys. Those have consistently shown antibodies in 25-60% of the population (before this new wave) with the higher figures reported from poorer denser areas.
As of now, even after the new wave, official figures say about 2% of our population has been infected.
From this very article: "He said officially 196 people had died from the virus in Kanpur between 16 April and 5 May, but the data from seven crematoriums showed nearly 8,000 cremations."
Here is another analysis from Gujarat: https://mobile.twitter.com/deepakpatel_91/status/13930705967...
The study that you have linked to above has primarily focused on western countries, where the process of reporting and recording of deaths is much better than in India.
The figures seem higher in the tweet, I am guessing we will have more clarity on this once the situation settles down a bit and more data can be aggregated.
15x more death certificates issued.
10x lower death per million wrt comparable countries
Much more rural deaths in second wave which were totally not counted.
The "daily bhaskar" did an investigative report in couple of districts and said it was 20-40x.
I am not trying to fear monger. Just obey the lockdown, use the mask and get the vaccines. And when things return to normal focus on development instead of egoistical statues and temples.
~600k/~200k is ~ 3x.
Those are the numbers mentioned for the country in discussion here.
Do you know if this is reported and compiled accurate in India?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-coronavi...
I know around 14 people that died of covid. None of them were listed in the covid deaths.
>logic has left the chat
Instead of resorting to silly childish taunts, I would appreciate you refute my sentence of why building statues and temples was more necessary than building hospitals or schools?
Especially when run by grandiose idiots like this who want to convert nitrogen to oxygen https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/yogi-explor...
You are comparing apples and oranges.
And you're going to compare 1.4bi people based on 100 people you interact with? Confirmation bias I'd say, numbers are higher but stating, yolo, 10x-100x is nothing but a Yellow Press comment.
>Instead of resorting to silly childish taunt
Says the person who jumps the gun trying to sound dramatic instead of any solid numbers to back their claim, all stating, "Maybe".
>why building statues and temples was more necessary than building hospitals or schools?
Ever heard of tourism? You can't run a country just by spending money, you need to spend money to earn money in long term too.
> Everywhere it's done the same way.
Neither statement us true. Belgium infamously had a really bad covid death toll because they decided early on to attribute unknown causes to covid.
Then the excess mortality numbers came in and every country had a ton of mysterious and unexplained excess mortality (you know, rampant covid)… except Belgium where the numbers tracked.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/opinions/india-farmer-protest...
> The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published
Source?
The absurdity of asking is even stronger when almost any understanding of the situation on the ground in India would mean an understanding that there is widespread and systemic problems with data collection in India, essentially as there has been throughout the pandemic globally, reflecting the difficulty of determining infection rates, CFR vs IFR and deaths in a testing scarcity environment. I don't know for sure but I would anticipate that there is a good chance that many indian deaths are never registered which would make other post pandemic methods of determining true 'excess mortality' very difficult.
The particular irony in this whole post extending from your question being that the BBC itself, in the linked article, in the second paragraph, states that 'experts say the real death toll is several times higher'.
Now that isn't your 1-2 magnitudes but you don't have to travel far from there to get those types of sources, but depending on how strong-systemiser you go on requiring hard numbers, the fact is no-one will ever know because no one is counting
That doesn't mean "here's why I blame COVID on my political opponents, AKA the evil-doers", is an interesting or useful start to a discussion. If it is, the counterpoint about protests is equally valid.
However in a situation with very little in the way of actual verifiable facts, what is someone actually asking for in terms of something that will support the evidence? What is a source in this environment? And at various thresholds of that, I will give you many sources (mostly medical) that will support 1-2 orders of magnitude increase. The article itself says only 196 people died in Kanpur during a 3 week period, but there were 8,000 cremations (obviously not all covid related, and without a baseline I can't tell you where this sits, but there is an implied increase given the other statements about lack of cremation space)
I would also challenge your definition of 'significant'. In the US last year, there was a 20% increase in excess deaths (0). Having an extra 20% of humans die in your country counts, I think, as significant.
Now granted it really depends on whether you are talking about India, the US, or the rest of the world but your statement is demonstrably false - in a country with good data, there were an extra 20% of humans dying last year; in a country with terrible data with an out of control epidemic and no way for people to isolate safely, the facts are we will probably never know what the true deaths are but if you're saying (and here a couple of things don't compute) about the same number of people are dying every year (?in India? how do you know that in the absence of data? and generally death statistics take several months to become solid) and the Ganges is a large river, are these two statements logically linked? And how?
(0) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361
My brother's two employees died. One was 28 and other in 30's. No complications, physically active people.
What you say is 'Mostly' true - in a bad flu season the medical community has a name for it, clearing out the dead wood.
But 'Mostly', when scaled to really large numbers, is still a scarily large number. And Mostly, in this instance, is still a long way from the truth.
First, there is a significantly increased risk of dying beyond the first 30 days of illness (ie when many people have recovered) [0]
Beyond the first 30 days of illness, individuals with COVID-19 had an increased risk of death (hazard ratio of 1.59 (1.46–1.73)). We also estimated the adjusted excess burden of death due to COVID-19 per 1,000 persons at 6 months on the basis of the difference between the estimated incidence rate in individuals with COVID-19 and all VHA users. The excess death was estimated at 8.39 (7.09–9.58) per 1,000 patients with COVID-19 at 6 months. Individuals with COVID-19 had a higher risk of requiring outpatient care (hazard ratio of 1.20 (1.19–1.21)), at an excess burden of 33.22 (30.89–35.58; all excess burdens are given per 1,000 patients with COVID-19 at 6 months) and at a greater frequency of 0.47 (0.44–0.49) additional encounters every 30 days
Secondly, it is not just death that is a concern (and again i'll stress that really, a lot of young people, through sheer weight of numbers, are dying of this. Huge number of infection, huge number of death, even at <1% CFR). It's long term morbidity. Your risk of death may be less than 1%, but your risk of hospitalisation may be 5-10% depending on your comorbidities and age. A person admitted to hospital and requiring ICU support and ventilation may have a 4-6 week hospital stay during which they lose 30% of their muscle mass. Once they come out of hospital, they need to learn to walk and eat again and go to Rehab for a couple of months. What would that do to your life?
The basis for this is data from places with at least some level of health care. From the reports I'm hearing, a lot of India's rural population is not making it medical care.
Also, worth mentioning that 1% of India's population is 13.8 million people.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
It's a poor country and tests aren't free, that alone will give you an under count. Throw in the current crises, the positivity rate and all the other challenges of a developing nation and 10x is not at all surprising.
Accurate numbers are a privilege of wealthy nations and even they struggled.
So bigotry is the source. Got it.
Why not make it 1000x-100000x?
At government hospitals, you have to be tested and be covid positive to be listed as covid death.
Private hospitals in rural areas simply don't send the stats back.
I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives.
They said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere and this is probably the price to pay for letting Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies. The strain has escaped India and we don't know how it will affect the rest of the world.
All his political life, him and his supporters cried for statues and temples and now they stand on the ashes of million dead people and all they can hear is a deafening silence of their gods.