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How has India managed to avoid a second wave of infection until now?

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Bantamzen

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I regret to inform you that the Chief Executive of Oxfam, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, is appearing on Question Time today/tonight, which almost certainly suggests the situation in India will be getting discussed (not sure how many watch it these days though) on the programme.
This doesn't surprise me, the BBC have taken the situation in India and are running with it to the point that almost no other news matters. Clearly they are not yet ready to cut back on their fear project, and given this size of the population of India and the inherent problems with poverty and healthcare there, this is likely to go on for some time.

I didn't watch the programme but I imagine the overall message would have been "we need to be cautious because India / Indian variant"....
 
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ExRes

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Not a mention of India, or anything else Covid, on the R4 6am news...

But there is on the BBC news website where they report that voting in the West Bengal election is going ahead, a state where 17000 new cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours, rallies have been held with no social distancing and there are long queues of voters, obviously politics are far more important to the Government than the welfare of the people
 

kristiang85

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But there is on the BBC news website where they report that voting in the West Bengal election is going ahead, a state where 17000 new cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours, rallies have been held with no social distancing and there are long queues of voters, obviously politics are far more important to the Government than the welfare of the people

To look at it another way, maybe the people see things such as democracy more important? Many of the people of West Bengal have raw memories of partition (or immediate family who do), and given thechallenges of day to day life there, 1 in 5000 people in WB getting positive tests for a respiratory virus probably isn't going to worry them too much. But they see their right to a say in politics as very much a priority.

The West's relatively safe and easy life really has skewed our perceptions of what to be afraid of.
 

brad465

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This doesn't surprise me, the BBC have taken the situation in India and are running with it to the point that almost no other news matters. Clearly they are not yet ready to cut back on their fear project, and given this size of the population of India and the inherent problems with poverty and healthcare there, this is likely to go on for some time.

I didn't watch the programme but I imagine the overall message would have been "we need to be cautious because India / Indian variant"....
Yes I definitely believe the poverty and poor healthcare issues account for a great deal of their current covid problems, something that also applies for Brazil, with both countries being in the BRICS group and, despite being well developed as a whole, still have problems with slum populations and poor healthcare stemmed from dire inequality. If the Oxfam CEO is sensible he'll emphasise this problem for long term improvements in the country being needed regardless of Covid, though I won't hold my breath.
 

35B

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To look at it another way, maybe the people see things such as democracy more important? Many of the people of West Bengal have raw memories of partition (or immediate family who do), and given thechallenges of day to day life there, 1 in 5000 people in WB getting positive tests for a respiratory virus probably isn't going to worry them too much. But they see their right to a say in politics as very much a priority.

The West's relatively safe and easy life really has skewed our perceptions of what to be afraid of.
That's fair, but the flip side of that is that the decisions to proceed with both elections and campaigning have been made by a government determined to demonstrate that life is continuing normally, and which has been resistant to admitting that there is a problem.

Whether or not reported by any particular news provider, this is a serious issue in India right now, and completely different in character to the endemic health issues that are present there. My colleagues in cities like Mumbai and Delhi are running scared by both the disease itself and even more the inability of the healthcare system to cope with the demand being placed upon it. They know that without effectively functioning healthcare, treatable disease becomes untreatable, and the risk to them or their friends and family becomes significantly greater. That is the reality there, right now.
 

brad465

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This doesn't surprise me, the BBC have taken the situation in India and are running with it to the point that almost no other news matters. Clearly they are not yet ready to cut back on their fear project, and given this size of the population of India and the inherent problems with poverty and healthcare there, this is likely to go on for some time.

I didn't watch the programme but I imagine the overall message would have been "we need to be cautious because India / Indian variant"....
In the end India was the third question, so not as hot on their agenda as it could have been. On the contrary their last question was finally on something more in tune with collateral damage: "Can there be any continued justification for the continued incarceration of residents in care homes?" Pity though their not giving this the same attention on their site as India matters.
 

brad465

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Looks like India is now passing through its peak, which would also explain why its not getting the media coverage it was while the situation rapidly escalated:



1620849633958.png1620849661725.png
 

kristiang85

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Yep, and the graphs look very familiar. Again, none of the endless exponential growth the doom mongers were predicting.
 

35B

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Yep, and the graphs look very familiar. Again, none of the endless exponential growth the doom mongers were predicting.
Because people in India are responding to public health measures which include masks and lockdowns? "Endless" exponential growth always presumes no changes in behaviour.
 

Dent

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Because people in India are responding to public health measures which include masks and lockdowns? "Endless" exponential growth always presumes no changes in behaviour.

Endless exponential growth would never happen in the real world anyway, for one thing the population not infinite. You also need to consider the effects of herd immunity. Predictions of infection rates growing exponentially ad infinitum without intervention are totally absurd.

The reference to masks is also a red herring given that there is no proven benefit anyway.
 

35B

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Can you evidence that please?
Yes - by conversations with colleagues who are living through this.
Endless exponential growth would never happen in the real world anyway, for one thing the population not infinite. You also need to consider the effects of herd immunity. Predictions of infection rates growing exponentially ad infinitum without intervention are totally absurd.

The reference to masks is also a red herring given that there is no proven benefit anyway.
My answer was for simplicity, I'm aware that exponential growth is not infinitely sustainable for the reasons you give. However, in the context of the graphs showing what is hopefully a peak (NB - I've seen similar before which were followed by a further increase, so wouldn't make any assumptions yet), the argument that a peak in cases proves the irrelevance of changes in human behaviour is self-evidently false. Precisely what effect individual measures are having is a much more open question.
 

35B

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Sorry, I meant actual data not what people are telling you. As a country with around 1.3 billion people, anecdotal evidence from your colleagues really doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.
For the country as a whole, maybe. For the cities of Delhi and Mumbai, where they are, it absolutely does have credibility - that is how they are having to live, and their experience of the country. The individuals I’m talking to are responding to national and local government policies, and they’re telling me that this response is general in their communities.

Alternatively, you could look at what the big employers in the sector (IT) are publicly saying they’re doing about the pandemic for their staff in all of the big cities. Mine has had staff in India working from home for as long as I have been, with very limited return to the office.
 

Bantamzen

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For the country as a whole, maybe. For the cities of Delhi and Mumbai, where they are, it absolutely does have credibility - that is how they are having to live, and their experience of the country. The individuals I’m talking to are responding to national and local government policies, and they’re telling me that this response is general in their communities.

Alternatively, you could look at what the big employers in the sector (IT) are publicly saying they’re doing about the pandemic for their staff in all of the big cities. Mine has had staff in India working from home for as long as I have been, with very limited return to the office.
And again, its not true data is it? I was under the impression that you were keen on actual data as opposed to anecdotal evidence on the issue of covid spread? Maybe I was mistaken.
 

kristiang85

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For the country as a whole, maybe. For the cities of Delhi and Mumbai, where they are, it absolutely does have credibility - that is how they are having to live, and their experience of the country. The individuals I’m talking to are responding to national and local government policies, and they’re telling me that this response is general in their communities.

Alternatively, you could look at what the big employers in the sector (IT) are publicly saying they’re doing about the pandemic for their staff in all of the big cities. Mine has had staff in India working from home for as long as I have been, with very limited return to the office.

Yes, but this is anectodal evidence from (presumably) middle class IT workers, who do have the ability to work from home and ride this out with full support of their employers. This option just isn't available to most people in India, and many do still need to go out for work and daily life.
 

35B

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Yes, but this is anectodal evidence from (presumably) middle class IT workers, who do have the ability to work from home and ride this out with full support of their employers. This option just isn't available to most people in India, and many do still need to go out for work and daily life.
Not just middle class - and they have connections in wider society, which includes having to live normally in multi-generation households (typically small flats, even for the most senior).

I agree that I'm reporting anecdote, but as commentary on why a graph of cases might be following the curve it is. Time will tell whether my analysis is right, or whether there are other factors.
 

kristiang85

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Let's have a reminder of where India is, given the media seem to have completely forgotten about them:


7-day moving average of "cases" down to 117,613 (down from a peak of 392,322 on May 8th, a 70% drop).

7-day moving average of deaths down to 2,777 (down from a peak of 4,182 on May 21st, a 34% drop - roughly in line with what you'd expect from the lag).

Note that India's daily deaths peaked at around the same as SAGE's pessimistic models were say we would be at now, despite having a population 21x the size of the UK.

It doesn't really support the case that this Indian super variant is going to decimate us now.
 
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