The Indian Government had one job. Prepare for this crisis. They had one year to prepare for it. They did nothing apart from grandstanding,claiming credit for vaccines, and suggesting home remedies and cow urine (not joking) while telling each other that Indians are immune to this virus. These naratives played out across whatsapp groups and yoga guru channels. The health minister even endorsed some of these remedies on TV.
The Prime Minister appears on TV on a regular basis to take credit for all things from all time and sermonise. Rarely has he been insightful or organized. The cabinet of ministers they have also seem to have failed to knock some sense into the Prime Minister and his egotistical proclamations that have put India on to this path.
The death toll is likely to be vast and India should expect generational impact. A resolution will take time, a lot of pain, and lots of external help. In the meanwhile, Indian officials will fudge numbers while the truth is out there for everyone to see in the fires that burn all across India and possibly visbile from space. It's unfortunate that a lack of education leads to populations electing incapable leadership leading to horrendous after effects like these.
The fact that the official numbers are through the roof tell you how bad the unofficial (and real) numbers are.
In the past week, there have been reports from several cities where the number of Covid deaths are measured in single digits - yet crematoriums are so full that people have started cremating their dead ones on sidewalks.
I'm in Delhi right now and its truly bad over here. My neighbor was sick and we literally couldn't find a hospital bed for him that had sufficient oxygen. The system is breaking down.
This Govt has been lying so consistently that people have stopped asking now.
It’s surreal in its darkest sense. It’s killing out there. People are dying on hospital floors lying and running out of air in their lungs because let alone oxygen cylinders there are not even empty simple beds of stretchers.
Daily deaths are easily in high 5 digits. At least!
High walls have been put around the place where pyres are burnt (so that they can easily fudge the numbers). There's no accountability. There has not been any since last 3-4 years now. Most of the media any is Govt mouthpiece. Every machinery/pillar of the state has been subverted and subjugated - press, election commission, judiciary. Indian bureaucracy was anyway always as bad as it gets.
A week ago one of the cities (Bhopal) released death count as 4. A local newspaper flew a drone above one COVID funeral ground and in its main page printed the photo of the burning pyres (those are COVID specific funerals). In that one drone shot at least 20+ pyres were burning. They put the number as 112 (or more) [0]
Govt released death count = 4
Min. number of deaths (as many the news paper was able to track) = 112
And this was just one city (tier 2 at that) and 7 days ago!
I remember the same exact thing being said about Wuhan. That urns were completely sold out, that the gov't was covering it up, just terrible. To date China insists less than 5,000 people died of Covid, though and all of that was conspiracy talk.
It's terrible but not unheard of. The same thing happened in Italy too and possibly in Wuhan. India is going to have a terrible period, but not very much worse than other cases like Northern Italy, London, New York, Belgium, Brazil, etc..
This is what I feared the first time would be, but somehow the virus spared India. The first time around majority of the population was careful, masked up and stayed indoors. The death was super low. That caused people to get over confident, people believed that covid is not harmful in the country and they fully ignored it. Now there is an Indian variant of the virus which apparently and the infection rates and deaths are up.
Last peak was around october. It was expected to go higher due to reduced restrictions and coming up festivals. But instead it came down drastically. There were many articles on what caused it to go down(weather, sanitation, food etc). Now in peak summer April suddenly its going up. Its a sharp rise. Would be interested to know the cause of the sudden rise in coming months.
I was traveling to India during March (Mumbai area) and immediately concerned about the lack of masks and possibility of super spreader events like kumbh - https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/indias-covid-conundrum. Unfortunately the worst case scenario has happened and it will now take time for the lockdowns to take into effect and the cases to reduce.
I wonder if epidemiologists have confidence taken in account in their modesls. Probably but still.. it seems such a natural social bounce after extreme fear then lower rates..
Based on over a year's worth of global data, it is reasonable to highly correlate confirmed positive infections with death counts, with only the degree varying from 2% to 6%.
Using "official" numbers alone, and the exponential growth they have exhibited in the past week, it is impossible to deny that an unmitigated disaster is unfolding before our eyes in India.
Speculate and blame all you want, the situation is deadlier and more real than we have seen globally thus far.
It seems to me the most appropriate reaction is to be aghast, and ask "How can I help?"
NGOs with selfless people are the ones which saved many from perishing on the roads during national lock-down in the first wave, Now they are the ones again helping the needy in the second wave where states, unions are taking the initiative for lock downs upon themselves; Yet the result is is same - Poor suffer and perish.
Those who wish to help, please donate to those NGOs. I'm not going name any to avoid spiraling this into another slug-fest and so I'm including a 'List of NGOs providing relief during Covid-19'[1] from the Govt. itself.
Those are corroborated by sentinel cases in Australia. The rate has risen to the point where quarantine is struggling to cope, and the doctors' union has suggested a complete ban on flights from India.
The problem with subcontinent countries is that their citizens mostly believe in pseudo science promoted by religious celebrities. Yesterday I was reading that Baba Ram Dev has suggested to inhale olive oil which will push covid-19 virus in stomach where it'd be killed by stomach acid. Such ppl exist here in Pakistan too one way and other and I see ppl don't bother to use masks when going mosques. Not sure what kind of stuff do these guys smoke.
Many out here are saying that "the system has collapsed".
They are _SO_ wrong. We never _had_ a system to begin with, in the first place!
Our "system" is only _EXPOSED_ now, to the entire world.
What's seen and exposed now, is what had been operational for the last 30 odd years. Everything needs some strings to be pulled and some hands made warm with a stash of notes.
A nation full of mostly meek, timid, inherently corrupt people all of a sudden wondering that "our system has failed! uiuiuiui!"
Indian nation had a grand opportunity at getting better. The Indian public just shat on it and smeared cowdung listening to the right wing propaganda. Now, let them drown in cow-urine / dung.
This might sound like a dark humor but yesterday the issue of Oxygen shortage came up in Supreme Court of India. (For the uninitiated Indian Supreme Court acts a bit like village elder where they can give any random order to government for any reason even if there is no actual lawsuits under consideration.)
Supreme court asked Government what their plan to increase Oxygen supply is and if they are planning to import it. The government's response is that they have floated a "tender" and have received 3-4 quotes. (Note that, many hospitals in India right now have < 24 hours of Oxygen supply).
Supreme court then asked government to force steel and petrolium factories to divert their oxygen to hospitals because steel and petrolium is not important. :)
Lockdowns hurt poor people very badly; they need to earn to survive. All the more reason everyone should mask up. And yet, most people stopped masking months ago. Crowds are as bad as they were in 2019.
On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it.
The central and state governments have mismanaged plenty of things. While they deserve their share of blame, the ordinary people have only made matters worse. Chin-mask, no-mask, herbal "remedies", religious gatherings, weddings, engagements, naming ceremonies... the list goes on.
As a truly perfect representative of the people, the chief minister here got COVID once, got vaccinated, and then got COVID a second time.
What I don't get is why we call ourselves democracies and speak as "lockdowns hurt poor people very badly"
In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.
locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does.
It's like this pandemic is proving one thing - that we suck at democracy and we're not willing to do anything to fix it because we don't want to change how it works for so few when it doesn't work for exponentially more - as long as we're part of the so few, we'll turn a blind eye.
>While they deserve their share of blame, the ordinary people have only made matters worse. Chin-mask, no-mask, herbal "remedies", religious gatherings, weddings, engagements, naming ceremonies... the list goes on.
Culture does not change in a day even at desperate times.
Government should ban gathering and events.
Even my extended family is planning to attend a wedding despite huge risk in doing so, why? In India attending someone's wedding is very important and basis for building social wealth. If you don't attend others wedding, they'll not attend yours. As simple as that, all families live in this fear of having no one attending wedding of their daughter or son that they take this massive risk to arrived at the wedding of their friends and relatives.
Only strict government rule can fix this, otherwise I've heard misinformed people claiming that Coronavirus is just a hoax by government and no one is dying, why can't you attend the wedding if the everyone is coming. Unfortunately, you can't teach the people who hold this view, you only lose to them if you try to use reason.
I wish people gave a bit more shit about protecting themselves properly, I see too many half-assed mask wearing (with the nose out) around. Or people thinking being masked means they can just hover near others.
> On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it.
So this was shared by someone who claims to be an ICU doctor in Delhi - the prescriptions are not being written because they are medically necessary.
My family member with the lowest SpO2 is in the DRDO hospital is on Ivermectin + prednisone & a Dexa IV (& not remdesivir).
The rumour is that some doctor had his arm broken by a family member for not prescribing the remdesivir after the patient died.
So the doctors are writing prescriptions and asking the patients to source them, even if the hospital dispensary has the drug in storage, to avoid getting beaten up by the patients family.
This has created a complete black market for the drug, which vastly outstrips the demand and hopefully the doctors are probably just chucking whatever shady vial the family brings over instead of putting in a sick person.
Really worried for my parents and other relatives. They are being as safe as possible but the virus is everywhere now and not sure if they will be able to avoid it.
What a tragedy that people just didn't mask up and avoid gatherings when the vaccines were so close.
This is due to new variant B.1.167 that has triple mutation. The variant appeared last December, I think, but surprisingly not much analysis has been done on vaccine effectiveness. This variant spreads far more faster and very likely vaccines have lower efficacy, but still protective enough to escape respirators. I would think this is going to spread elsewhere soon and lower vaccinated areas going to suffer same fate in coming months.
Indian Government needs to do something about this. Especially that it is happening all over the country, the death rate has reached its all-time high. This stat line might not even be accurate as people are dying remotely far away to the point that Governments are unaware.
Most don't. At most the ones in drier regions use cheaply-made desert coolers (that are effective, no doubt), but air conditioning systems are a sign of luxury in India.
It is sadly predictable that the pandemic would end up becoming a permanent source of havoc in less developed part of the world, even as it comes under control in the west. This will for certain be with us for many years to come and will further distort the difference between rich and poor. Not at least helped by the nationalism in the west in form of export controls and patents.
I live in a less developed part of the world - Vietnam - and the government and people have been incredibly successful in controlling the virus here. Aside from two short lockdowns of a couple of weeks, my life has barely been affected (except for the lack of tourists and the fact I can't travel outside the country). Local tourism and business seems to be booming. Meanwhile I hear all the stories from back home in Europe, and from the US... And my sympathies go out to everyone living though that. But I don't the development level of a country has much at all to do with how well it's handling this pandemic.
The only frustrating thing is how clearly it's been highlighted that the rich and powerful countries get all the vaccines and we'll only get them here once everyone in the west has been vaccinated three times over.
>Not at least helped by the nationalism in the west in form of export controls and patents.
In India's case it was one of the first places to be licensed to make the AstraZenca vaccine, I think at no cost. The Serum Institute there, the world's largest vaccine producer, was the first place to start producing vaccine in quantity. I'm not sure you can really blame the west here. Though recently the US have been blocking supplies which I hope is a temporary glitch.
Occasional source of havoc - yes.
Permanent source of havoc - no.
Vaccinations have ramped up in ways no one has every seen in history. And lots of lessons were learnt during the first few waves from all the blundering that happened. Nothing is static and predictable about systems that learn and change from day to day. Stick that on your Fridge. And re-examine how your prediction is doing next month.
India is actually one of the countries imposing export controls on vaccines in order to redirect them to domestic use, with the result that a lot of other developing countries don't have any at all...
Well, a source of havoc, maybe. But one among many, there is still Malaria, Tuberculosis, Dengue Fever, Ebola, HIV. All with far more significant consequences. That we are worrying as much about Corona as we do in the West is a consequence of those ailments being (mostly) irrelevant here.
What do you mean by "less developed" ? Those people have been with us on earth for the very same period of time as any other human. So they have been developing themselves culturally, economically, whatever-ally as much as any other human.
Lock down is needed in India for lot of the Morons in our country who were taking things so lightly after the first wave we all deserve the lock down so we can learn a hard lesson, and stupid people die of covid19.
The second wave is all because of the central & State Govt and people's foolishness & ignorance. Unfortunately its because of our stupidity its the people of the lower income class have to suffer the most, the daily wage miggrants & people who are contract employees. If only all the organizations took all the right steps we wouldnt have been in this situation. The entire govt mechanism failed from top to the grassroot level, local muncipalities did not bother and neither the people.
I hope at least this time, we all learn the lesson.
[+] [-] neonate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] windex|4 years ago|reply
The Prime Minister appears on TV on a regular basis to take credit for all things from all time and sermonise. Rarely has he been insightful or organized. The cabinet of ministers they have also seem to have failed to knock some sense into the Prime Minister and his egotistical proclamations that have put India on to this path.
The death toll is likely to be vast and India should expect generational impact. A resolution will take time, a lot of pain, and lots of external help. In the meanwhile, Indian officials will fudge numbers while the truth is out there for everyone to see in the fires that burn all across India and possibly visbile from space. It's unfortunate that a lack of education leads to populations electing incapable leadership leading to horrendous after effects like these.
[+] [-] hunter-2|5 years ago|reply
In the past week, there have been reports from several cities where the number of Covid deaths are measured in single digits - yet crematoriums are so full that people have started cremating their dead ones on sidewalks.
[+] [-] puranjay|5 years ago|reply
This is what they originally warned us about.
[+] [-] crossroadsguy|4 years ago|reply
It’s surreal in its darkest sense. It’s killing out there. People are dying on hospital floors lying and running out of air in their lungs because let alone oxygen cylinders there are not even empty simple beds of stretchers.
Daily deaths are easily in high 5 digits. At least!
High walls have been put around the place where pyres are burnt (so that they can easily fudge the numbers). There's no accountability. There has not been any since last 3-4 years now. Most of the media any is Govt mouthpiece. Every machinery/pillar of the state has been subverted and subjugated - press, election commission, judiciary. Indian bureaucracy was anyway always as bad as it gets.
A week ago one of the cities (Bhopal) released death count as 4. A local newspaper flew a drone above one COVID funeral ground and in its main page printed the photo of the burning pyres (those are COVID specific funerals). In that one drone shot at least 20+ pyres were burning. They put the number as 112 (or more) [0]
Govt released death count = 4
Min. number of deaths (as many the news paper was able to track) = 112
And this was just one city (tier 2 at that) and 7 days ago!
[0] (image of burning pyres - please decide if you want to click the link) https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/16/burning-pyres-telling...
[+] [-] shas3|5 years ago|reply
1. Crematoriums usually have enough capacity to deal with average death rates. Anything above that and it starts to look horrific.
2. What is the definition of "covid protocol" for cremation? Does it mean the patient had covid? I don't see this clearly stated any where.
3. There might be a delay between the two numbers with crematorium numbers being more current. This also contributes to the "10x".
The numbers are bad enough even without unscientific exaggerations.
I am open-minded about this FT article's claims being accurate, but there
[+] [-] saas_sam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kanche|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharikone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hesarenu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrevo|5 years ago|reply
For those in India, please support healthcare workers. This is something I wrote about in another post - https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/healthcare-services-in-indi...
[+] [-] collyw|5 years ago|reply
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
[+] [-] fnord77|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnohara|5 years ago|reply
Using "official" numbers alone, and the exponential growth they have exhibited in the past week, it is impossible to deny that an unmitigated disaster is unfolding before our eyes in India.
Speculate and blame all you want, the situation is deadlier and more real than we have seen globally thus far.
It seems to me the most appropriate reaction is to be aghast, and ask "How can I help?"
[+] [-] devdas|5 years ago|reply
Reversing this would be good too. https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/11/rich_countries_block_...
[+] [-] Abishek_Muthian|4 years ago|reply
NGOs with selfless people are the ones which saved many from perishing on the roads during national lock-down in the first wave, Now they are the ones again helping the needy in the second wave where states, unions are taking the initiative for lock downs upon themselves; Yet the result is is same - Poor suffer and perish.
Those who wish to help, please donate to those NGOs. I'm not going name any to avoid spiraling this into another slug-fest and so I'm including a 'List of NGOs providing relief during Covid-19'[1] from the Govt. itself.
[1]https://www.investindia.gov.in/bip/resources/list-ngos-provi...
[+] [-] thisrod|4 years ago|reply
Those are corroborated by sentinel cases in Australia. The rate has risen to the point where quarantine is struggling to cope, and the doctors' union has suggested a complete ban on flights from India.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-21/nt-covid-active-cases...
[+] [-] pknerd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raghava|4 years ago|reply
They are _SO_ wrong. We never _had_ a system to begin with, in the first place!
Our "system" is only _EXPOSED_ now, to the entire world.
What's seen and exposed now, is what had been operational for the last 30 odd years. Everything needs some strings to be pulled and some hands made warm with a stash of notes.
A nation full of mostly meek, timid, inherently corrupt people all of a sudden wondering that "our system has failed! uiuiuiui!"
Indian nation had a grand opportunity at getting better. The Indian public just shat on it and smeared cowdung listening to the right wing propaganda. Now, let them drown in cow-urine / dung.
[+] [-] KorematsuFred|5 years ago|reply
Supreme court asked Government what their plan to increase Oxygen supply is and if they are planning to import it. The government's response is that they have floated a "tender" and have received 3-4 quotes. (Note that, many hospitals in India right now have < 24 hours of Oxygen supply).
Supreme court then asked government to force steel and petrolium factories to divert their oxygen to hospitals because steel and petrolium is not important. :)
[+] [-] roywiggins|5 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/world/middleeast/egypt-ho...
Seems like a rational thing to want to avoid, even if you have to screw steel mills for a little while.
[+] [-] sytelus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qart|5 years ago|reply
On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it.
The central and state governments have mismanaged plenty of things. While they deserve their share of blame, the ordinary people have only made matters worse. Chin-mask, no-mask, herbal "remedies", religious gatherings, weddings, engagements, naming ceremonies... the list goes on.
As a truly perfect representative of the people, the chief minister here got COVID once, got vaccinated, and then got COVID a second time.
[+] [-] supernovae|5 years ago|reply
In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.
locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does.
It's like this pandemic is proving one thing - that we suck at democracy and we're not willing to do anything to fix it because we don't want to change how it works for so few when it doesn't work for exponentially more - as long as we're part of the so few, we'll turn a blind eye.
[+] [-] wolfretcrap|5 years ago|reply
Culture does not change in a day even at desperate times.
Government should ban gathering and events.
Even my extended family is planning to attend a wedding despite huge risk in doing so, why? In India attending someone's wedding is very important and basis for building social wealth. If you don't attend others wedding, they'll not attend yours. As simple as that, all families live in this fear of having no one attending wedding of their daughter or son that they take this massive risk to arrived at the wedding of their friends and relatives.
Only strict government rule can fix this, otherwise I've heard misinformed people claiming that Coronavirus is just a hoax by government and no one is dying, why can't you attend the wedding if the everyone is coming. Unfortunately, you can't teach the people who hold this view, you only lose to them if you try to use reason.
[+] [-] bellyfullofbac|5 years ago|reply
I also wish that governments try to inform more, I don't really see anyone saying "Ventilate more!" like this research results suggest they should: https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-a... .
[+] [-] gopalv|5 years ago|reply
So this was shared by someone who claims to be an ICU doctor in Delhi - the prescriptions are not being written because they are medically necessary.
My family member with the lowest SpO2 is in the DRDO hospital is on Ivermectin + prednisone & a Dexa IV (& not remdesivir).
The rumour is that some doctor had his arm broken by a family member for not prescribing the remdesivir after the patient died.
So the doctors are writing prescriptions and asking the patients to source them, even if the hospital dispensary has the drug in storage, to avoid getting beaten up by the patients family.
This has created a complete black market for the drug, which vastly outstrips the demand and hopefully the doctors are probably just chucking whatever shady vial the family brings over instead of putting in a sick person.
[+] [-] acvny|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] univalent|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sytelus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xtnmclain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orblivion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dartharva|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexCoventry|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dheera|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pknerd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esperent|5 years ago|reply
The only frustrating thing is how clearly it's been highlighted that the rich and powerful countries get all the vaccines and we'll only get them here once everyone in the west has been vaccinated three times over.
[+] [-] kjakm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|5 years ago|reply
In India's case it was one of the first places to be licensed to make the AstraZenca vaccine, I think at no cost. The Serum Institute there, the world's largest vaccine producer, was the first place to start producing vaccine in quantity. I'm not sure you can really blame the west here. Though recently the US have been blocking supplies which I hope is a temporary glitch.
[+] [-] op03|5 years ago|reply
Vaccinations have ramped up in ways no one has every seen in history. And lots of lessons were learnt during the first few waves from all the blundering that happened. Nothing is static and predictable about systems that learn and change from day to day. Stick that on your Fridge. And re-examine how your prediction is doing next month.
[+] [-] makomk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corty|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wiz21c|5 years ago|reply
What do you mean by "less developed" ? Those people have been with us on earth for the very same period of time as any other human. So they have been developing themselves culturally, economically, whatever-ally as much as any other human.
[+] [-] Kiraak|5 years ago|reply
The second wave is all because of the central & State Govt and people's foolishness & ignorance. Unfortunately its because of our stupidity its the people of the lower income class have to suffer the most, the daily wage miggrants & people who are contract employees. If only all the organizations took all the right steps we wouldnt have been in this situation. The entire govt mechanism failed from top to the grassroot level, local muncipalities did not bother and neither the people.
I hope at least this time, we all learn the lesson.
[+] [-] known|4 years ago|reply