What's the deal with India?

[Captain Stern]

They have close to eight trillion (give, or take, a few trillion) people living there, and they're living in close quarters

Their virus cases per capita aren't anywhere close to what ours are, or Europe's.

They're not isolated from the rest of the world, and they're not geographically protected by being far away from virus out breaks.

So, what the deal? What have they done there that our country, an Europe didn't do?

[Phoenix61]

1. They haven't been testing. nt

[malaise]

2. Huh - India has 1.3 billion people n/t

[Captain Stern]

3. I know. I get that. The fact that a lot of people live there was part of my post.

I understand that there aren't 'trillions' of people in India, or anywhere else.

My question is why aren't they having anywhere near the problems with the virus that we're having.

[exboyfil]

6. How do you know they are not

[Captain Stern]

14. Fair enough. I don't know they're not. I do know they're not reporting as many cases. n/t

[Recursion]

4. They aren't testing, and they have a huge mortality "noise" to begin with

To take the example of the city I used to live in, Mumbai: it has 25,000 deaths a year from waterborne illnesses. The kind of death rates you're seeing in Spain are pretty much normal there. They're probably having a whole lot of Covid deaths that just don't make it over the normal "noise" threshold.

[Captain Stern]

12. That makes sense n/t

[Recursion]

13. India's initial response was very very good, incidentally

The first confirmed case was in Kerala, which is one of the few Indian states that the BJP (their Republican party, basically) doesn't control. They had a team of about 1200 public health workers fan out using GPS and tracking every single person patient 0 came into contact with, isolating them, making sure local health departments were informed, etc. So Kerala is actually still doing pretty well.

[OhZone]

5. Probably not testing +/or hiding the numbers - OR -

turmeric kills the virus?

O_O

[Shermann]

7. Latitude? Mexico is similar

[Captain Stern]

10. Maybe. But India has ten times more people than Mexico

India has ten gazillion people living there, and Mexico has a mere one gazillion.

And, only about twice as many confirmed cases of the virus

[Shermann]

16. Fauci did say there was a likely correlation with seasonal cycles / temperature

[Iliyah]

8. Besides India . . .

Russia, North Korea, Brazil, China and maybe a few others don't identify with an actual count. Therefore, the overall numbers for infections and death are unknown from these countries and the world's numbers are probably much higher.

As to the USA, same with many of the "red" states.

[uponit7771]

9. +1, no one believes Texas only had 300 cases 2 weeks ago

[duforsure]

11. I agree

Abbott's a trump lackey, so.

[Laelth]

15. They don't get around as much as we do.

Their transportation networks are not as developed as ours. They have less commerce than we do (fewer truckers moving around spreading the virus). It's not uncommon for a person to be born and to die in the same village without ever having left that village (or only having left it a couple of times). We are a much more mobile society, and I think that has a lot to do with how India seems "protected" from the massive outbreak we saw in China.

That said, I doubt that the Indian government has any clue how many cases they actually have on their hands. Governing the world's largest democracy is a game of guesswork, at best, and an act of futility at worst.

-Laelth

[dawg]

17. Seems to me like it must be one of three things ...

1. Massive under-reporting, perhaps partially abetted by normally high rates of deaths by disease.

2. Something about the heat and/or humidity slows the spread of Covid19 (which would be great for me, here in muggy Georgia), or ...

3. It just hasn't hit them yet, but when it does ... (the nightmare scenario)

[Demonaut]

18. it will be a blood bath

[JI7]

19. This was India less than a month ago