COVID in India
COVID is on the rise in India, and our MSM is in full court press to drive panic about it. But what is really going on in that country?
I happened to have been at someone else’s house yesterday and saw a few minutes of some network news, and noticed that – of course – they just gave figures of the diagnosed and figures for deaths and never adjusted it for population. Nor did they talk about a bunch of other things about which I was curious: the vaccine rate, for example, and something else I thought I recalled, which is that until now India has had very low rates of COVID.
I don’t expect the MSM to cover the important parts of the story and to place them in context. So, like the Little Red Hen (a story I detested as a child), I’ll do it myself.
(1) India has only 2% of its population fully vaccinated, although about 11% or 12% have had at least one shot. To give some perspective, about 32% of the US population has been fully vaccinated.
(2) At present, India has one of the lowest death rates from COVID in the world. The current figure for India is 159 per million people. Now. that might be artificially low because of differences in the reporting system or the medical system as a whole, but it is likely that, until now, India has been mostly spared. We know that with COVID there is a tendency for things to even out among the countries over time, and that sometimes (not always, but sometimes) a country that had a light toll in the first or second wave gets hit much harder in a later wave. My guess is that that is what’s happening right now in India. India also so far has had a very low rate of COVID diagnoses per million, and the same reasoning holds true for that.
(3) Various countries are helping out with a rush to get more vaccines to the country. This definitely should help.
(4) Another problem in India is the overburdening of India’s health care system. That was a problem even in some Western countries such as Italy during its early surge, but India’s system is hardly the best to begin with.
While we’re on the subject of COVID, there’s this in our very own capitol, Washington DC:
Beginning May 1, multi-purpose facilities and venues may host events such as weddings and special non-recurring events provided that there may be no more than twenty five percent (25%) of capacity in any room or up to two hundred fifty (250) persons, not including facility staff, whichever is fewer. A waiver is needed for attendance greater than two hundred fifty (250) persons. Attendees and guests must remain seated and socially distanced from each other or other household groups. If these events include dining, facilities and venues shall adhere to the rules established for restaurants and licensed food establishments. Standing and dancing receptions are not allowed.
Makes total sense, right? And there’s a lot more to peruse at that link.
It’s not that the deaths in India aren’t horrible (they are), but some perspective is called for. As your links point out, deaths per million are still at the low end internationally. They do have a real problem with hospitals for low-income people. Even without COVID, the poor in India tend to go the the hospital when illnesses are already advanced. It’s hard to describe the poverty and crowding of India to people who haven’t seen it.
India has never even come close to the testing level per population as the western countries. Covid has probably been there all along and not reported. If their testing is ramping up, they’re going to identify more cases and deaths. Even now, the testing is about 1/7th that of the US and other western countries.
I just had lunch with a friend, who told me a good friend of his, a retired admiral from Chile, just died from COVID. He had been vaccinated twice, but with the Chinese serum, and the thinking in the family is that the Chinese vaccinations are not good. I have no way of knowing — just reporting what I heard.
The admiral must have been over 70 — my friend is 90 and they were contemporaries when my friend was assigned to the naval attaché’s office in Santiago. So age would have played a part. OTOH, the admiral was well educated and one of his country’s élite, so one would expect that his care was better than average.
I recall hearing the Italians complained about Chinese vaccinations when they were first available. Anyone else heard anything more about the Chinese shots?
Short Video on India Situation: What does the Current Data Say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg4aUqjH4N4
India’s “Covid Crisis” has been hijacked – The Mainstream Media are lying to you
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/04/25/indias-covid-crisis-has-been-hijacked-the-mainstream-media-are-lying-to-you/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Did you know India has the second highest numbers for diabetes in the world.
One other thing to consider is the use of the drug Ivermectin. I have seen scattered reports from doctors and public health officials that India widely distributed the drug over the last year. It is very inexpensive, able to be produced by many manufacturers, and easily distributed. Many officials, such as Dr. Pierre Kory (who testified in Congress), have reported it being highly effective in treating COVID-19.
I recently read in the news that at the start of this year the use of Ivermectin was halted in favor of the newly-available vaccine. And now deaths are rising rapidly. I know this sounds very tin-foil-hat (Big Pharma influencing CDC/WHO to refuse to do large scale testing of Ivermectin to push high-profit vaccines), but I really do wonder if switching from a drug that is known to mitigate the worst of COVID-19 symptoms to a less readily distributed vaccine is leading to worse health outcomes.
My sister lives in New Delhi and has given us a bit of “on the ground” perspective, and she’s saying it’s really not anything anyone there appears to be worried about outside of the “foreign bubbles” of the various embassies and whatnot. She works at the US Embassy school there, so she’s exposed to that, but she lives and socializes “among the people” so she’s got both “bubbles” that she can compare/contrast to.
That said, she’s returning to the US tomorrow, not from fear of catching it, but since the embassy will pay for the flight and the school’s allowing remote work to finish out the year, so why not?
Yesterday, Dr John Campbell (nursing professor, ret.) in the UK interviewed an infectious disease specialist, Dr Nair, based North of Bombay, on the crisis. His response was too muddy in the recording, so much so that Campbell had to do a long solo recollection of the Indian’s report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQdKsLZjmaQ
Here’s more summary from my listening.
There’s much uncertainty about the numbers involved because of the lack of testing. But up to 40% of hospital cases are diabetic. Indians do have high rates of diabetes. And Indian’s have no sun friendly culture for UV skin exposure (despite tropical latitudes). Therefore they typically lack ways to gain Vitamin D naturally, and very often exhibit below normal blood levels — despite the fact that Vit-D is hugely beneficial to the immune system and combating respiratory infections in general.
So, India’s population remains vulnerable? Yes.
As for other differences? The Indian Covid viral variant seems to be significantly more easily infectious. And weeks later, a segment of the recovered come back with serious sinus fungal infections. (If neglected too long, which is easy, then surgery becomes their only hope of survival.)
A fungal infection problem in post-Covid recoveries seems to be lacking almost everywhere else except India — but it could simply be from overuse of antibiotics, available everywhere as a cheap first treatment at pharmacies in the country. And the sequence of Covid infection, then sinus bacterial infections is well known. Fungal infection is a follow on hazard from influenzas as well.
But ivermectin has been in wide use for early seen and moderate to lower level Covid cases — and with much success in resolving them.
It’s the older people and those impaired with multiple chronic immune of breathing problems who die, mostly — just as seen elsewhere with Covid, This explains the reliance on oxygen supplementation, and runs depleting this scarce supply feature prominently among premature and quick deaths.
Contributing factors? Urban crowds, sardine-style packed train travel, and political and religious events, especially, accelerate super spreading viral exposure events in India. Social distancing is not much an option in most of India.
The authorities genuinely believed that India has gotten lucky with the first wave of infections last year — and they believed that herd immunity had somehow already arrived. But sparse testing only failed to challenge these popular but mistaken beliefs.
No doubt there’s been some problems. Every country has had some problems.
FWIW, Communist China is an enemy, and liberals in the west hate Prime Minister Modi, who is a patriot.
So there’s that.
Kind of odd (not really) that the press doesn’t seem to have much interest in what the real numbers are in China.
They will ignore the obvious and go elsewhere for their panic porn.
After all, those real China numbers might cause people to believe that the virus came from China, which is of course racist. As is the implication that the Chinese government might be capable of industrial-scale oppression and falsehood.
F asks about vaccines used in Chile: “Anyone else heard anything more about the Chinese shots?” Yes, there are two makers in China. And the critical view is that they are unreliable and not fit for purpose.
Their effectiveness has been hyped and China has hidden their (No Surprise) real ineffectiveness. Impressive claim of over 79% have been found wanting in follow up studies. And two shot may give only 30 to 50% effectiveness. (An April 11th news story https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/china-considers-mixing-covid-vaccines-to-give-greater-protection?ref=upstract.com&curator=upstract.com ).
“The rare admission of weakness on the part of Beijing’s pandemic approach came from the director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, who said Chinese vaccines ‘don’t have very high protection rates’ “.
Thus, instead of the typical two shots, three shots appears to be the new standard of required care with administering these questionable vaccines. (Here’s an April 27 report questioning even their overall safety https://www.chiangraitimes.com/thailand-national-news/world-news/chinese-vaccine-expert-say-chinas-vaccines-most-unsafe-in-the-world/)
Buyers include Brazil, Turkey, Malaysia, Senegal, and Iran, in addition to Chile and some 50 nations in all.
The Chinese are not yet capable creating of these high tech health products. And therefore, these vaccines will only appeal to the poorest nations and those most desperate. ( Breaking news — WHO EXPECTED TO APPROVE two China vaccines for use https://news.az/news/who-may-soon-approve-2-chinese-covid-19-vaccines-for-use)
Chile was simply an early adopter that’s gotten burned — surprise! —again by Chinese failure. Sorry for your friend’s death.
The Chinese company Sinovac makes a vaccine called CoronaVac, and it is described here in the NYTimes. It is a classic vaccine utilizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has been killed or inactivated. I think there are a couple other Chinese made vaccines.
I don’t much like the idea of the Oxford/AstraZeneca or the Johnson& Johnson vaccines, but I’d rather take them over the Sinovac product.
India has a vibrant industry in manufacturing standard or generic pharmaceuticals. One of the early notions with the Oxford U. vaccine research was the idea that the manufacturing details could be given away, and countries around the world could manufacture it.
The Guardian on the early Oxford research
Wikipedia on the free vs. proprietary Oxford vaccine licensing
US AID states India had 2.9 MILLION cases of tuberculosis in 2019, but I don’t recall a single article in any American newspaper or TV broadcast reporting that little factoid. Meanwhile, in more important news, Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing.
Kate: “deaths per million are still at the low end internationally”
Indeed, when I scanned through the first couple of pages of WorldOMeter summary lines, India was THE lowest. By a lot.
Perhaps it’s because all families buy HCQ by the bucket to ward off malaria?
Something to consider for everyone. Here is a pretty consistent follower of Fauci (see the second embedded video). He says that about the most important single thing for Indians and everyone else is to boost Vitamin D levels. He gives a down-to-earth presentation in detail.
https://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2021/04/27/covid19-update-april-27-2021-india/
And here is a pretty much fierce anti-Fauci practitioner. He says that probably the single most important thing to consider is boosting your Vitamin D levels.
https://odysee.com/@SaveMedia:5/capitol-clarity-ryan-cole-on-covid-19-vitamin-d-vaccine-concerns:2
I’ve seen a couple of articles covering the India situation.
The first showed people lying dead in the street, like in the first days of Wuhan.
The second showed a son and son-in-law transporting a dead mother home from the hospital on a motorbike, wedged between the two of them.
Emphasis that I noticed in articles was death (for example, group cremations because so many deaths) and that deaths described were of young-ish people, 40s and 50s.
But I wonder if the deaths are truly out of expectations compared to other nations and I wonder about the age distribution of those fatally affected.
If you look up the population pyramids, only 5% of India’s 1.4 billion people are over age 60. In the US it’s 11%. All else being equal you’d expect a higher death rate in the US than in India since old people are a disproportionate percentage of death.
As for the number of deaths, if the disease were equally fatal to over-60s in both countries, you’d expect twice the number of deaths in India even though they have 4 times the population of the US.
JimNorCal:
“I’ve seen a couple of articles covering the India situation.
The first showed people lying dead in the street, like in the first days of Wuhan.
The second showed a son and son-in-law transporting a dead mother home from the hospital on a motorbike, wedged between the two of them.”
Random snapshot of business as usual on any given day in India in any given year of any given century. Shit covering everywhere and dead people on the ground. Stuff piled on motorcycles that’s got no right to be there. Not even scratching the surface of the sheer alien sensory overload of the place to a Westerner.
There is no country on earth where it’s easier to get Zombie Apocalypse dated today press photos if you put out a request for them.
That’s not to say that Covid isn’t scything through their generally very unhealthy population; I’m sure it is. I’m also sure that Indians will bleat and chatter about it in Soundbite English far more than most other benighted heathen types Without the Law — so it’ll be all over the news until … oh! Ponies!
On another note. RIP to that aged Chilean Admiral mentioned above. Extra kudos if he helped helicopter Allende’s people on one-way trips out to the fishes back when.
Underlying Health Issues and Genetics likely both play a huge role. Genetics means Race, therefore will never be heard of except if spun as Blacks Affected More or Women Affected More. Probably at least some low hanging fruit in there that might save lives, but better everyone should die for the Blank Slate.
India *ought* in a sane world to provide some useful data here. Castes make for some very interesting two thousand year old breeding pool silos. Let’s see if some do better than others in terms of covid resistance. Even the Indo-European / Dravidic cut might show up some differences.
Yes to the above on diabetes and Vitamin D. And, although I have no medical expertise on fungal infections to offer, April and May in India are the hot season, and the air is a fungal infection by itself, in my remembrance. And the monsoon will come soon. All that cow and human excrement in the roads washes down with the rains, and even without COVID poor people die of infections carried in the waters that are practically unheard-of causes of death in the US.
And as to infections, the Kumbh Mela was recently held, in which millions of pilgrims crowd into the Ganges to take a ritual dip in the waters.
@Kate:
Just reminded me of something with the monsoon season part.
There’s this lovely thing where after the world has been barren and dry for months, the first rains come.. and the earth opens up like a flower and Gaia’s aroma abounds. Well no… Not there. Wrong place. It’s more like what do you get if you add 3 parts water to 1 part dehydrated shit?
Good Old Days.
Westerners who go there *will* get very sick during an adaptation period. Indians seem to more or less survive and thrive in this environment, but one wonders if the hard work of fighting off pathogens 24/7 depletes the reserves and leaves them susceptible to straw that broke the camel’s back. One doesn’t wonder too strenuously though. They’re them. They can deal with it themselves.
Zaphod, we didn’t once get sick. My husband got sick on a previous visit; he was given ivermectin and antibiotics and got better quickly. But I did our cooking and was very careful. There were two or three restaurants in town where we could safely eat. I was taking long walks for exercise until I heard about some kidnappings and stopped going out without a driver.
@Kate:
You’re the Uebermensch then! I bow down!
I found with Indonesia, 6 weeks in country +/- a week would result in some unpleasant stomach bug… presumably took that long for my immune defences to be overwhelmed.
Never had a problem with Thailand. I think they’ve got a pretty good handle on food hygiene these days.
India bug swatted me in less than 5 days. But I can assure all present that this fact did nothing to colour my impressions 🙂
Check out the cases and deaths in Central and South America. Per capita they are several times worse than India.
India’s COVID outbreak & the need for scientific integrity – not sensationalism
New reports from medical experts warn against question scientific integrity of government measures to the “pandemic”.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/04/indias-covid-outbreak-the-need-for-scientific-integrity-not-sensationalism/
One thing, anyone there can buy Ivermectim easily at a store and it is a proven remedy. Cases had dropped since the October spike so the big vaccine push this year wasn’t working. So they hired a famous movie star to promote it. That didn’t work well since he died within two weeks. A co-star saw the connection and went public. They were imprisoned. Then the news started this new phase.
Yukon Cornelius wrote: “…Ivermectin. I have seen scattered reports from doctors and public health officials that India widely distributed the drug over the last year.”
Ivermectin was only distributed by India’s state of Uttar Pradesh, not by the Indian national government and not nationwide. Many bloggers in the US confused “in India” with “everywhere in India” and clumsily misled their readers.
“I know this sounds very tin-foil-hat…”
Yes it does. Consider taking your custom to another haberdasher.
“Big Pharma influencing CDC/WHO to refuse to do large scale testing of Ivermectin to push high-profit vaccines”
Much more likely than any ill-intentioned conspiracy are:
(1) Clever people prefer clever, complicated techy solutions.
(2) A certain Trump who trumpeted the now discredited HCQ damaged the credibility of everybody who looks into repurposing an existing low cost drug as a treatment or prophylactic for CHINA-19.
Perhaps had former US President Trump indulged his urge to go full huckster a little less and opened up the US federal government’s funding spigot a little more then proper studies could have been conducted of HCQ, Ivermectin, and similar drug candidates that looked good on paper. Now that the West has vaccines available, interest in the West in studying such drugs has waned.
In the long run, inexpensive vaccines such as the ones produced by Oxford/AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson/Janssen are probably the best long term solution. 30 days after one dose appears to provide protection equal to the best that is claimed for Ivermectin by its advocates. The very poor in India and other poor countries cannot afford $1US every 90 days for years to come in order to stay supplied with Ivermectin pills.
Micha Elyi:
Trump didn’t go “full huckster.”
One of the things that people who were promoting HCQ way back when were saying was that the research that was done on it didn’t use the right dosing schedule, didn’t use subjects who had mild disease, and didn’t use zinc, and that these omissions made the studies worthless. There were some later studies that did use better research protocols in that regard, and some found a benefit
and some did not. At this point it’s somewhat moot because of the vaccine, but whatever the benefits or lack thereof of HCQ treatment, there are better drugs around now to treat COVID.
@Ann in LA:
All South American countries are likely much better at tracking cases than India. They may also have other drivers — e.g. medical establishments and media institutions politically driven to make their governments look bad — Brazil this would absolutely be the case. But I’d put most of the difference down to competence in tracking cases.
Also worth noting that China aggressively sold Sinovac to these countries and that many of the dead have supposedly been vaccinated with this vaccine. That’s something I’d watch.
Micha Elyi:
And your expertise on predicting the future is based on, Elyi-hucksterism? Otay, buckwheat. Especially apt, since the Federal bureaucracies are known for quick response to emergencies and cutting edge science?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-just-like-your-opinion-man
India also has a huge air pollution problem.
As well as huge healthcare issues.
And hcq if given early with zinc seems to help. And if true, how many people died due to the demonization of using hcq to treat Covid due to politics.
Interesting after the election they say hcq is ok. No politics at all I’m sure…
https://principia-scientific.com/the-american-journal-of-medicine-now-recommends-hcq-for-covid19/
Roger Simon: How the Hydroxychloroquine Scandal Wrecked America and the World Along With It.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/429478/
French study of when Switzerland temporarily stopped hcq. Death rate went up. Restated death rate went down.
https://www.francesoir.fr/societe-sante/covid-19-hydroxychloroquine-works-irrefutable-proof
But Ray, the whole point was to inflate the numbers as high as possible—as well as to inflate the number of “deaths by COVID” even (especially!) where there were other causes involved—so as to be able to ensure that Trump be blamed for them. Scorched for them.
And of course the media complied in this relentless—and successful—campaign of gross negligence leading to mass murder.
It’s not rocket science.
It’s the reason why HCQ + zinc, etc. solution had to be entirely misrepresented, lied about (cf. that egregious Lancet article—
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2820%2931180-6/fulltext — and shoved under the rug; why Trump had to be publicly and endlessly scorned, ridiculed and lambasted; and why Cuomo (and Fauci, etc.) are considered “heroes” to “the cause”.
The Democrats and their media thugs have a lot to answer for.
Doubtful that they ever will, though, especially if their grand heist succeeds in totally transforming the country they purportedly “love”….
I also read the amount of covid testing in India increased. Same pattern in the us as testing increased more cases were found. And in the us testing was deliberately made too sensitive to increase the number of cases.
And I was surprised to read they have a ventilator shortage. In the us if you got put on a ventilator due to Covid, often you died. So the entire ventilator shortage in the us was a false panic. What seemed to help more is a steroid shot to reduce inflammation in the lungs.
And why is Africa having so little Covid deaths? Perhaps she demographics. Vitamin d, and use of hcq?
And I’m sure it’s a coincidence, that the msm hates the India ruling party, bjp, that Trump was friendly with, and would love it if they were forced out due to negative news. And a huge outbreak in India is useful to justify continuing Covid restrictions in the US.
And I wonder if India is leveraging a high Covid rate to get the ip for free on various Covid vaccines.
Bottom line I’m very suspicious of any Covid news out of India.
Related:
“Fact Checkers Missed Stealth Edits to [Stacey] Abrams’ Op-Ed”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fact-checkers-missed-stealth-edits-abrams-op-ed
How much you wanna bet they didn’t “miss” anything…?
India certainly has a disease problem but cutting off air travel (for the upper classes) seems more like a political warning to India, which has been struggling with border violence with both China and Pakistan. I doubt if all this is about the disease in the villages of India. More likely, it is a warning that the current Administration has many ways to hurt India if they are too effective defending their borders.
Mike-SMO:
And the current government in India was not Trump-phobic. So the message being sent probably is just the first “nudging” of the internal politics of India by the Obama regime part duex. Interference in elections in India will certainly follow; the same as is and has been done to Israel.
The cutting off of air travel is all about keeping the Covid panic hysteria going. The us does not care about India’s borders issues.
Looks like I was right on the ip angle, the emergency in India being used as a reason to remove patent protection. Since the Covid vaccine was deliberately delayed till after the election, they are getting what they deserve.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-administration-supports-waiving-patent-protections-covid-vaccines-bid-raise-n1266444