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Covid 19 in India
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Looks like the aid as predicted, isn't getting where it needs to go:
Where are the 300 tonnes of emergency Covid-19 supplies that have landed in Delhi in last five days?
No doubt a lot of it is being stolen. Eventually, area's that voted BJP will probably receive aid, but even if I am wrong, and it just a case of incompetence, this is truly breath taking.
How can the world help a country, where the leaders are either thieves or complete idiots?
Having close contacts with India, this kind of news leaves me unmoved. Its what I'd expect to read.
Good news at least in the medium term is that modhi lost 3 states last week and elections are in 3 years so hopefully he will be gone0 -
SouthWesterly wrote: »Having close contacts with India, this kind of news leaves me unmoved. Its what I'd expect to read.
Good news at least in the medium term is that modhi lost 3 states last week and elections are in 3 years so hopefully he will be gone
Corruption is systemic. Nothing will change when Modi is replaced.What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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Cluedo Monopoly wrote: »Corruption is systemic. Nothing will change when Modi is replaced.
Most likely not but at least the nationalism will be tempered and the persecution of anyone who isn't hindu0 -
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Cluedo Monopoly wrote: »Corruption is systemic. Nothing will change when Modi is replaced.
Yes, for corruption to happen you need to one who bribes and the one who is bribed. it's systemic and endemic in India.
But saying that, Modi also adds a fascist layer and sells out India to private corporations which doesn't really help. It makes things ever worse.0 -
SouthWesterly wrote: »A friend in India has reported that about half a million are dying per day.
His brother and family have Covid as has another friend. Brother was recovering and got worse again overnight. He has a hospital bed with oxygen.
Sorry to hear that...
Don't know where and how they got the figure. But some estimates are 30x wrose then reported. I think they officially report around 3k per day, so I think 500k per day is way off. My wild guess would be 30k per day. No way, it's 3k per day. EVER.SouthWesterly wrote: »Biggest issue is under reporting as death my heart attack etc.
The underreporting has so many factors, it's not a single factor:
- systematic underreporting for political reasons - outright manipulation
- lack of control with reporting - errors, lack of attention, no control mechanism etc
- poverty - people dying somewhere in villages and no one knows, even no death cert
- lack of proper control/governance - not every death properly recorded
- decentralization combined with the lack of governance
- corruption
- cultural reasons
etc.0 -
I did not realize there are so many experts on India here on boards. I could only hope their judgement is not being clouded by biases and unconscious biases against India or Indians, and see the crisis for what is it - a virus that killed over half a million people in the world's richest country, a virus that had most of Europe on its knees - and it's no wonder if a developing country of a billion and half people - ordinary Joe Soaps like you and me are struggling to stay alive and keep families safe. It's a small miracle that they avoided it this far imho.0
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Really? Vaccines are not free in quite a few Indian states, so that is really idiotic if they charge there own people for them.
Also, people can "skip" the line for vaccines, as you can pay for vaccines privately. Few of the Indian guys I work with have done so. Can't blame them, I would do the same in their shoes, but amazing how India is basically gone full capitalist hellscape right now.
I recall Sky news item about 66 million exported and 33 million or so of it was donations. And Saudi Arabia and UK were the only rich countries in the "buyers" list who purchased vaccines from India and Sky's angle was why did UK do that given UK has much higher rate of vaccinations already in place etc etc. I can't find that exact news article but the link below looks comprehensive.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-how-does-indias-pause-on-vaccine-export-hurt-other-nations-12290300
I understand why US went "US first" and enacted war time export controls (which in turn blocked export of vaccine ingredients needed by Serum Institute, and they have been begging for it for weeks) - but it goes against the idea of "we are not safe unless everyone is safe". i think Biden administration turned around last week and modified policies to allow this export, and also exporting their excess vaccine cache as well - better late than never, I suppose.
As I mentioned earlier India's donations are probably not out benevolence. Perhaps it was part of the Covax deal. Or perhaps related to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funding agreement? I am not sure - but at least they didn't block it - at least not until recently. Now that is impacting many smaller nations (as per the sky link above).0 -
I did not realize there are so many experts on India here on boards. I could only hope their judgement is not being clouded by biases and unconscious biases against India or Indians, and see the crisis for what is it - a virus that killed over half a million people in the world's richest country, a virus that had most of Europe on its knees - and it's no wonder if a developing country of a billion and half people - ordinary Joe Soaps like you and me are struggling to stay alive and keep families safe. It's a small miracle that they avoided it this far imho.
India's status as developing country is imo wrong. They are buying Rafale fighter jets from France, have the worlds tallest statue which was recently built costing millions, they have a project costing nearly 2 billion dollars to built a new parliament and prime minister residence. India has chosen not to spend on health care (India is one of the lowest per capita in the world when it comes to health care spending), but rather spend on the military and infrastructure projects of dubious need.
Regardless of personal bias (my family is Kashmiri and I fully admit my bias), the facts are that the Indian government screwed up and screwed up very badly and are still screwing up. The failure to distribute aid is especially galling. People are dead, and equipment available to save them is sitting in an airport (best case scenario, could easily have been siphoned off and sold to the highest bidder already for all we know) a few short hours away.
Also, India's government failure put the entire world in danger, due to the potential of variants that can evade vaccines.
The world is trying to help India, yes it took a while for people get aid to them, but now the Indian government has the aid sitting in an airport for some bizarre reason. How can the world help them, when the government seem either unable or unwilling to use the help that has been sent.0 -
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I did not realize there are so many experts on India here on boards. I could only hope their judgement is not being clouded by biases and unconscious biases against India or Indians, and see the crisis for what is it - a virus that killed over half a million people in the world's richest country, a virus that had most of Europe on its knees - and it's no wonder if a developing country of a billion and half people - ordinary Joe Soaps like you and me are struggling to stay alive and keep families safe. It's a small miracle that they avoided it this far imho.
It is horrible and you might be right that it could have happened in India anyway but there's definitely a pattern with poor political leadership in several countries being particularly hard hit by the disease (e.g. US/Brazil). It is something even fairly uninformed outsiders (me) can see.
Arrogant right wing populists in charge. Their beliefs and world view blind them to the dangers, and they make a disaster certain.
They'd be alive to the threat if it was coming from up-to-no-good foreigners or others kinds of persona non grata with the wrong religion/politics etc. but Covid-19 just does not compute at all for them and their followers.0 -
fly_agaric wrote: »there's definitely a pattern with poor political leadership in several countries being particularly hard hit by the disease (e.g. US/Brazil). It is something even fairly uninformed outsiders (me) can see.
It's good you realize you are uninformed, but maybe you should double down on your realization and drop the pattern you claim to be able to see.
Unless of course you are also including Hungary, Czechia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Belgium, Slovenia, Italy, UK, Poland, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, France, Romania, Lithuania in the list of countries with poor political leadership and being particularly hard hit by the disease0 -
It's good you realize you are uninformed, but maybe you should double down on your realization and drop the pattern you claim to be able to see.
Unless of course you are also including Hungary, Czechia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Belgium, Slovenia, Italy, UK, Poland, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, France, Romania, Lithuania in the list of countries with poor political leadership and being particularly hard hit by the disease
Yeah, even the uninformed like me know Europe has been hit hard by Covid even if I don't know details of the situation in all these countries.
I actually do agree that a large part of the reason for that has been poor political leadership and a general failure to appreciate seriousness of this problem and react accordingly (even if most of the countries are not led by stupid right wing populists).
It may not be wealthy like Europe/US, but India's leaders have had advantage of more time watching this unfold in Europe/US + observing the mistakes made by others.0 -
India's status as developing country is imo wrong.
I don't know enough about what is the criteria for calling a country 'developing' or 'developed', I assume it's relative and probably not set in stone. Looks like India is on IMF's list of developing countries and Pakistan too for that matter (I don't see 'Azad Kashmir' there funny enough, must be a developed nation).
Everyone knows about poverty in India - it's crowded slums, lack of resources, social issues, corruption, caste system, the history - and while the country has made huge strides on bringing hundreds millions of people out of poverty in last two decades, and serious advancements in various areas especially in IT and biotech, it would be foolish to think that a country as big as India, with as high population density as it has, can be compared to any of the western nations. It's a hard situation - made many magnitude worse by the incompetence of the current administration (you can draw many parallels to Trump's America).fly_agaric wrote: »It is horrible and you might be right that it could have happened in India anyway but there's definitely a pattern with poor political leadership in several countries being particularly hard hit by the disease (e.g. US/Brazil). It is something even fairly uninformed outsiders (me) can see.
Arrogant right wing populists in charge. Their beliefs and world view blind them to the dangers, and they make a disaster certain.
I would agree with that. Within India, each of the states have their own administration and you can clearly see how some states are handling the pandemic so much better than India as a whole. My roots are in Kerala in the south of India, and historically Kerala have enjoyed a higher level of education and HDI despite very few industries. Kerala never had any time for Modi's BJP party. Kerala state government's Covid preparations last year was noticed around the world for how effective it was, and last month people of Kerala elected the same left leaning party for another five years and they are working hard on setting up control centers preparing for the current spike. Situation is getting bad there and hospitals are almost full, but there hasn't been any death from lack of oxygen yet (unfortunately the magnitude of the spike is so much that I would not be surprised if a few unfortunate deaths happens in Kerala as well, despite their best efforts). Their vaccination drive was better organised and executed than Ireland's as I mentioned earlier in this thread. Unfortunately this week they have reported that they can't get enough vaccines thru Central government now that the whole of India is looking to get vaccinated at once.
No doubt it's a very hard situation all around - we can only witness it all playing out from afar.0 -
Glad I was born here! Countries with that sort of population density and poverty levels were always in for a rough ride, I guess it just took this new variant to really let loose.0
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Their vaccination drive was better organised and executed than Ireland's
I don't think that is the case. Ireland is trending towards 25% and India is at around 9% - so it's hard to believe that that particular state is/was so much better than the national average.
For reference here: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL
There are other countries where you can get a drive through vaccination, but again, their strategy and execution at the national level is quite bad - and this can be seen in the results, deaths and ICU numbers.0 -
You are probably right - I was only speaking from personal experience (that my parents in India got their vaccination almost a month ahead of my in-laws of same age here in Ireland).
That's in Kerala - a rather small state of India - and that is probably an outlier than the average at the national level. What was impressive about their preparations was that since the first case of Covid there (medical student returning from Wuhan) they had mobilized a grass-root level volunteers, and my elderly parents had these volunteers calling over / phoning every few weeks to see how things are. Just keeping on top of things. They did this to anyone coming into the country as well when the mandatory hotel quarantine were stopped - passengers arriving at the airport had their details recorded and advised to quarantine at home, and hours later local healthworkers called into the address to verify the quarantine arrangements and in some cases arranged food / medicine deliveries etc. They really did over and beyond what I have seen here - but then again as well educated and well off society we probably don't need that much hand-holding here. Anyway, if I look around my friends / relatives circles, more people of my age and over are vaccinated there than here. They also had more restrictive movements / mask rules all along from what I can see - of course compliance levels would vary place to place / age group to age group. Again, this is probably just Kerala, rest of India could be miles behind.
Overall though, I am sure Ireland's vaccination program is superior - and it has to be - I would expect nothing less from such a well off, small Western nation with a per capita GDP 37 times better and with 1/280th of India's population!0 -
SimonTemplar wrote: »I have colleagues in India who said that some pharmacies in small towns and villages have been provided with vaccine doses but won't administer them unless they are given a bribe. That means the poor are unable to get their vaccines.
Is that like out elderly pensioners here being refused a medical card but given a GP visit card - but not being able to afford treatment because they have to pay e120 for any medicines perscribed out of their meagre pensions and the hospital bills being e100 per night for the bed only and consultants fres starting at e200 per visit.
Horrific what is happening in India.
Why aren’t our borders locked shut?
Times of Israel reporting that 4 of the 43 recently diagnosed covid patients had been vaccinated fully since February but now have full blown covid & are in ICU with the Indian variant. Frigtening.0 -
Glad I was born here! Countries with that sort of population density and poverty levels were always in for a rough ride, I guess it just took this new variant to really let loose.
This exact scenario could have played out with the original Wuhan variant. Just like all the other massive outbreaks around the world all occurred with other variants. This virus is plenty capable of doing this without it being a scary new mutant.JustAThought wrote: »Is that like out elderly pensioners here being refused a medical card but given a GP visit card - but not being able to afford treatment because they have to pay e120 for any medicines perscribed out of their meagre pensions and the hospital bills being e100 per night for the bed only and consultants fres starting at e200 per visit.
Horrific what is happening in India.
Why aren’t our borders locked shut?
Times of Israel reporting that 4 of the 43 recently diagnosed covid patients had been vaccinated fully since February but now have full blown covid & are in ICU with the Indian variant. Frigtening.
It's endless, the constant fear mongering. You are talking nonsense. There is no evidence the Indian variant evades vaccine induced immunity.
You guys are like zombies. We are dealing with this crisis for over a year. There is tons of information out there for people to understand what is going on, but it doesn't stick, people believe what they want. Fine, blame it on the variant, lock the borders down, cast a suspicious eye on anyone from India, at least the Brazilians are happy now the morons have shifted their attention to India. The baton is passed once again, we have a new scape goat people and variant.0 -
You are probably right - I was only speaking from personal experience (that my parents in India got their vaccination almost a month ahead of my in-laws of same age here in Ireland).
That's in Kerala - a rather small state of India - and that is probably an outlier than the average at the national level. What was impressive about their preparations was that since the first case of Covid there (medical student returning from Wuhan) they had mobilized a grass-root level volunteers, and my elderly parents had these volunteers calling over / phoning every few weeks to see how things are. Just keeping on top of things. They did this to anyone coming into the country as well when the mandatory hotel quarantine were stopped - passengers arriving at the airport had their details recorded and advised to quarantine at home, and hours later local healthworkers called into the address to verify the quarantine arrangements and in some cases arranged food / medicine deliveries etc. They really did over and beyond what I have seen here - but then again as well educated and well off society we probably don't need that much hand-holding here. Anyway, if I look around my friends / relatives circles, more people of my age and over are vaccinated there than here. They also had more restrictive movements / mask rules all along from what I can see - of course compliance levels would vary place to place / age group to age group. Again, this is probably just Kerala, rest of India could be miles behind.
Overall though, I am sure Ireland's vaccination program is superior - and it has to be - I would expect nothing less from such a well off, small Western nation with a per capita GDP 37 times better and with 1/280th of India's population!
That is interesting. Might be just Kerala.
I have never been to India (hence, as said, generally uninformed) but have worked with some people from the country in past incl. one from that state and was told the Communists have run it (locally), basically forever.
Whatever else about their faults, they usually believe in education, scientific method, human rationality applied to the solution of problems + should (in theory) be on a better footing for dealing with this particular crisis.0 -
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Stop being so insulting & calling me a zombie. And stop denying the medically proven existence of variants. You’re at it all the time. Just because if dosn’t fit your communist all are equal agenda dosn’t mean its not a real thing. And yes - if keeping me and my family and friends safe means refusing people from variant countries for this killer that they have no cure for - then I’m 100% in favour of that. Maybe if India had been a bit more prudent in their restrictions the medical holocoust they are experiencing now might not be so horrific and devestating.0
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JustAThought wrote: »Stop being so insulting & calling me a zombie. And stop denying the medically proven existence of variants. You’re at it all the time. Just because if dosn’t fit your communist all are equal agenda dosn’t mean its not a real thing. And yes - if keeping me and my family and friends safe means refusing people from variant countries for this killer that they have no cure for - then I’m 100% in favour of that. Maybe if India had been a bit more prudent in their restrictions the medical holocoust they are experiencing now might not be so horrific and devestating.
I do not deny the existence of variants. I deny that you have any evidence that they are evading vaccine immunity. And I strongly deny that the variant circulating in India poses a greater threat to you and your family than the variant circulating in the people within your own community.0 -
This type of misinformation has potential to take off like a wildfire, so I guess it's best to read up on it.
Guesstimate is that some 70% of the cases (keeping in mind that the amount of sequencing is tiny tiny) in India seems to be of type B.1.617.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_B.1.617
Link above says it was first observed in India in October 2020, and later in many countries including UK and US. This in itself is not proof that the mutation happened in India, or elsewhere - just like "UK variant" doesn't mean it mutated in the UK. But perhaps the mutation happened in India, who knows.
Preliminary test results are that the existing vaccines (both mRNA and the viral vector vaccines) seems to be effective against B.1.617 - I am sure more details will be available in weeks to come.0 -
JustAThought wrote: »Is that like out elderly pensioners here being refused a medical card but given a GP visit card - but not being able to afford treatment because they have to pay e120 for any medicines perscribed out of their meagre pensions and the hospital bills being e100 per night for the bed only and consultants fres starting at e200 per visit.
Horrific what is happening in India.
Why aren’t our borders locked shut?
Times of Israel reporting that 4 of the 43 recently diagnosed covid patients had been vaccinated fully since February but now have full blown covid & are in ICU with the Indian variant. Frigtening.
Israel predominantly use the Pfizer vaccine which is 95% effective so a small number of infections is to be expected in fully vaccinated people but these should still be protected from severe illness. 4 cases is still consistent with that. I could find no mention anywhere that they were hospitalised let alone in the ICU so that is likely untrue.0 -
Israel predominantly use the Pfizer vaccine which is 95% effective so a small number of infections is to be expected in fully vaccinated people but these should still be protected from severe illness. 4 cases is still consistent with that. I could find no mention anywhere that they were hospitalised let alone in the ICU so that is likely untrue.
Try reading the articles.0 -
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India is a mess.
I have 20 of my team living there, half of them have lost grandparents in the last month.
We've paid for a lot of others to stay in hotels so they can reduce the risk of infecting other staff/parents.0 -
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The ability to buy jets or build statues or whatever doesn't imply it's a developed country. There's clear criteria for classifying a developed country - literacy, infrastructure, governance, structure of the economy. India doesn't qualify in any of them.wes wrote:India's status as developing country is imo wrong.
They are buying Rafale fighter jets from France...
On the other hand if a country requires international aid to ensure people aren't dying in its hospitals then I would argue it's certainly a developing country.
As I said, Indian science, nuclear and space program is world class but what's it good for to put landers on the moon if major cities don't have a properly working sewer system or access to water and illiteracy and abject poverty are rampant. And that's before you go to the countryside, that's middle ages from European point of view. I've been there and seen it.
First get basic infrastructure in place then build statues, nukes and moon landers.
No bias. Been there 7 times etc.0 -
This exact scenario could have played out with the original Wuhan variant. Just like all the other massive outbreaks around the world all occurred with other variants. This virus is plenty capable of doing this without it being a scary new mutant.
It's endless, the constant fear mongering. You are talking nonsense. There is no evidence the Indian variant evades vaccine induced immunity.
You guys are like zombies. We are dealing with this crisis for over a year. There is tons of information out there for people to understand what is going on, but it doesn't stick, people believe what they want. Fine, blame it on the variant, lock the borders down, cast a suspicious eye on anyone from India, at least the Brazilians are happy now the morons have shifted their attention to India. The baton is passed once again, we have a new scape goat people and variant.
Surely you agree with closing borders in certain cases?0 -
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Surely you agree with closing borders in certain cases?
No, I specifically don't agree with doing it in certain cases, I agree with doing it in all cases or none.
Countries like China, NZ & Australia who shut their borders to everyone and then used long heavy lockdowns to drive local spread to 0 make sense.
Closing borders to specific countries is a pointless exercise that has been demonstrated over and over. I don't know if you remember but the USA shut its borders to China early in the pandemic, yet that didn't stop the virus getting in there. If the Indian variant is truly a fitter virus then its going to find its way into other countries which will eventually find its way here regardless of our border closures with India.
To me the idea of shutting borders to specific countries in a country like ours, with an ongoing epidemic and with restrictions being lifted is purely security theatre, and I am not a fan of that type of art.0
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