India is reported to be experiencing a gigantic Covid second wave. Yesterday alone, the virus is said to have killed two thousand eight hundred and twelve Indians. In response to the catastrophe, the international community is organizing relief efforts. As the Spectator reports:
The UK and the US are leading the delivery of aid to India, as the country battles a fierce second wave. The UK has sent 600 medical devices, including ventilators and oxygen.
But while every death is a tragedy, it should be remembered that, of India's 1.37 billion inhabitants, more than 27,000 usually die each day. So, at the height of the Indian epidemic, Covid is responsible for about 10% of all deaths, or about 2.06 per million of population per day.
How does that compare with a first world country where the covid epidemic is past its peak and mass vaccination is said to be well on the way to creating herd immunity?
Well consider Canada: with a current, seven-day, mean daily death toll of 49, Covid is killing 1.33 people per million of population per day, or about two-thirds of India's current rate.
So, yes, in India, Covid is bringing forward some deaths, mainly among the old and frail. However, the impact of Covid in India, where yearly healthcare expenditures average around US$22 per person, is scarcely more catastrophic at its current peak than in post-peak-Covid Canada, a wealthy Western nation with yearly healthcare expenditures of around six thousand US dollars per person.
Postscript:
After posting the above I tuned into the BBC's World Service from London to hear a most extraordinary report from New Delhi, India, in which a journalist reported smoking funeral pyres to be seen in every direction, of rows of dead bodies awaiting cremation, and in general scenes reminiscent of Hell.
How to explain the discrepancy between the numbers and the radio report?
Well apparently the national numbers that I cited above are correct, according to the BBC (see figure below), but as the red line below indicates, the number of cases in the capital city of New Delhi is reported currently to be about four times the national average, and a rate that probably matches New York City during the worst days, in early 2020.
Meantime:
Related:
The Irish Savant: The India Covid crisis. More fake news
You'd mentioned earlier India had achieved herd immunity, which I believe, and so I question this talk of another wave of infection there.
ReplyDeleteI also remember India's vastly smaller number of elderly compared to the US and Europe.
What I suspect-- and, alas, I can only suspect, for we do not learn what's really going on through our media-- this is more collateral damage from "the cure to covid", which, as Donald Trump correctly stated, "is worse than the disease."
600 medical devices. An Indian population of 1.37 billion! (Wow, I have been out of touch. There were only 800 million Indians when I was there and the crowding then stretched my abilities to cope.) 600 devices is a drop in the bucket and some kind of joke.
The US and UK will use this gesture to say we've done as much as we can, now it is up to you Indians to go back into lockdown.
The "cure" caused the excess deaths and now the excess deaths are being used to justify more "cure". Bye bye, excess Indian population. (But we sent medical devices so we're in the clear ethically.)
What the frack: another of my luminous comments trashed by Google. Thank you Google.
ReplyDeleteSo that worked, apparently because I was not logged into my Google account.
DeleteSo we will try once more.
Delete"You'd mentioned earlier India had achieved herd immunity, which I believe, and so I question this talk of another wave of infection there."
There was talk a week or two ago of India imposing a lockdown, with videos of vicious police beatings of the non-compliant distributed on the Internet.
So the rise in cases could be the result of lockdown disruption to regular medical services, more suicides, etc. Plus, India probably now has some Covid tests with which to boost the numbers.
But at least the Brits can hold their head high, having supplied their former vassals with 600, surplus to requirement medical appliances of dubious value, with which to treat India's teeming masses.
"After posting the above I tuned into the BBC's World Service from London to hear a most extraordinary report from New Delhi, India, in which a journalist reported smoking funeral pyres to be seen in every direction, of rows of dead bodies awaiting cremation, and in general scenes reminiscent of Hell."
ReplyDeleteWhat a nightmare.
That graph shows the deaths in Delhi as 6X the national average.
Another thing to remember is India had a very strict lockdown early on. (At least in urban areas such as Delhi.) It was much more strict than in the US.
At the very least, someone somewhere would be concluding the lockdowns were useless, regardless of severity. Oh yeah, someones somewhere were expert epidemiologists whose judgements were regarded as less reliable than political hacks. Wouldn't the political hacks eventually get a clue? Wouldn't those who heeded the political hacks over the experts eventually get a clue?
The judgment of expert epidemiologists has been universally dismissed, ignored, hidden (e.g., U-Tube's flushing of Governor De Santis's round table discussion with Gupta and other actual epidemiologists) or condemned as crackpot conspiracy theory.
DeleteSo whether Covid was deliberately loosed upon the world, or accidentally spread from the US-funded Wuhan biowarfare lab, the response has evidently been driven by concerns other than public health.
Question is, are we seeing merely opportunistic behavior of ruling elites, profiting politically and financially from the pandemic, or is there a coordinated plan to "set ourselves on a new and more sustainable course", or a more totalitarian vaccine passport-controlled course, or what?
It does have the appearance of something coordinated. Certain elements of it have fit together so smoothly, almost seamlessly. Because we already had something much more like a global culture, and a mass media of a span and influence nearly unimaginable one hundred years ago, under monopolistic control completely abhorrent only decades ago, I can see how such coordination would be possible. Because such a small number control the media (and Bill Gates is one of them...How many people understand the MS in MS-NBC is for Micro Soft)it isn't a terrible stretch to see how it could happen. It is still possible Bill Gates and others are fortune's fools, simply placed in this ridiculous position of absolute power, captains of mother ship earth who never took flying lessons and don't know how to fly. It is also possible there are other people on the plane looking for ways to displace Bill Gates and the others, and take over mother ship earth for themselves. That might explain why there is this strange careening and no clear or truly sensible direction established. There are fools at the controls, and they are partially distracted by struggles with some of the passengers.
ReplyDeleteThere's also no real way to know one way or the other. That's also because "We only know what we read in the newspapers". See above why it might be we know next to nothing about what's actually happening.
"That might explain why there is this strange careening and no clear or truly sensible direction established. There are fools at the controls, and they are partially distracted by struggles with some of the passengers."
DeleteThe question, it seems to me, is whether those in power get what they want, and what it seems they, in the West, most want is total power which they aim to achieve by way of the vaccine passport.
Once there is a digital file on every person to which their entire history of pro- or anti-social behavior -- as judged by the elite, that is -- is recorded, absolute tyranny is achieved.
Video surveillance and face recognition software, combined perhaps with audio surveillance and voice recognition software, etc., means that wherever you are, you will be watched and subject to state intervention at any moment such intervention is judged "necessary" in view of your digital record, such intervention to include not only arrest (necessary only under exceptional circumstances) but punishment or reward in accordance with the Chinese-style social credit system, including access to bank facilities, means of travel, access to places of entertainment, etc.
This is surely the intended destination and there seems little chance of the passengers forcing a change of course. What we will see, therefore, is the transformation of most if not all of humanity from a collection of free agents guided in their actions by an inner moral sense, to a colonial form of society in which individuals will be as devoid of moral sensibility as members of a termite colony.
This is the great divide in world history: between states that chose individual liberty under God, and those that reduce mankind to an endlessly malleable instrument of elite power.
Underlying this divide is a fundamental conflict in the elite view of society. On the one hand, are those who see human existence in terms of civilization, of a complex structure subject to continual improvement and requiring constant maintenance. On the other hand, are those who see life as a relentless conflict over the rewards of life: money, sex, drugs, whatever.
Oddly, Russia, under a restored Orthodox Christianity is now is the world's beacon of individual responsibility and freedom, whereas the post-Christian West is headed for a technology-enabled slavery that only a Bolshevik hater of humanity could desire.
"What we will see, therefore, is the transformation of most if not all of humanity from a collection of free agents guided in their actions by an inner moral sense, to a colonial form of society in which individuals will be as devoid of moral sensibility as members of a termite colony."
ReplyDeleteOdd you should say this, CS, about individuals being as members of a termite colony. Are you familiar with E.O. Wilson?
"Are you familiar with E.O. Wilson?"
DeleteA little. But I guess I should read up on what he has to say about termites.
But Brandon Smith argues that the American Red States, not Russia will be the main resistance to the Great Reset, whatever exactly that entails. Maybe I should be thinking of moving from Trudeauvia to Montana.
DeleteE.O. Wilson says millions of interesting things about termites, CS. That the red states are the main resistance to the Great Reset is something I have concluded, too, as the blue states are willing to pretend Biden, no matter how idiotic and corrupt, must be supported at all costs.
DeleteI love Montana. But you're cool wherever you are. (British Columbia I also love.)