Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

^^ Yeah it was only +5,798 on Monday at a TPR of 0.74% from 779K tests (and only 0.48% outside Ker/Miz)... The seven-day average dropped -920 to 11,353... Still getting hefty drops every day. We may be flattening to something below 5K, if at all we are to flatten. Maybe we will just flatten to zero!... There were 101 deaths and 81 old ones added by Kerala/Goa.

[suresh]

India may see fourth Covid wave around June 22: IIT Kanpur study

The study led by Sabara Parshad Rajeshbhai, Subhra Sankar Dhar, and Shalabh of IIT Kanpur’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics shows that the severity of the fourth wave will depend on the emergence of a possible new coronavirus variant, and vaccination status across the country.

When will the fifth wave occur? How about the sixth? People want to know.

[Atithee]

Rajiv, sad to hear about Hong Kong’s situation. Hope everything gets back to normal soon. Take care.

[suresh]

For 2 years until December the daily cases in Hong Kong were single digits or even zero now all of a sudden we have daily reported cases of nearly 40k per day, and these are just reported cases , unreported cases the figures are upto 200k per day, and now the  HongKong death rate per million is the highest in the world, with no place in the Mortuary to keep the dead bodies, the bodies are lying in the wards.
Health system is totally overwhelmed with no place hospital beds and the patients are forced on bed outside the hospital.
We depend on China for daily needs but road borders are closed as the truck drivers are down with covid and so now essentials come by sea, with long queues and near empty supermarket shelves with panic buying going on.
Hong Kong looks like a ghost town, with a very tense atmosphere, same like KIEV,only difference being no sound of guns and rockets.

Take care Rajiv. The Omicron rises and falls very fast -- let us hope the same holds for Hong Kong.

[jayakris]

Rajiv, stay safe. But I am sure the bad days will pass soon in Hong Kong.

[jayakris]

IIT Kanpur should give this tamasha a rest. Okay, guys, you schemed the Indian press very well and got your fame. But, stop please. You don't have a model of any predictive power, and many of us know that very well. You are getting on our nerves with your "predictions".

Suresh, didn't you and I predict the latest peak as "soon this week" just about 2 or 3 days ahead of the peak, when these IITK guys were saying "maybe 2 weeks later?"... I need to go back and check, but I think we did. We could eye-ball the curve and say that, and their mathematical model was confused at the sudden change of numbers and slopes. We knew how an omicron peak would look (pointed peak) and their model probably had no idea. And when we hit the peak, that day or the next day I said it was the peak. Sometimes human eye-balling with some domain info is better than statistics!

[suresh]

IIT Kanpur should give this tamasha a rest. Okay, guys, you schemed the Indian press very well and got your fame. But, stop please. You don't have a model of any predictive power, and many of us know that very well. You are getting on our nerves with your "predictions".

This is a different group from IITK. All major newspapers are carrying this prediction -- they should know better by now.

[Kumar]

Rajiv, stay safe! Omicron is mild, hopefully things round to normal very quickly

[Kumar]

So, it looks more and more like we are past an inflection point and could reach a peak in a week or maximum 2 weeks. That is my feeling for the time being.

Looks like IITM agrees with me ... India’s R-value further reduces, COVID-19 peak likely in next 14 days: IIT analysis (PTI/ The Hindu)

I guess there is no need for any analysis. Just looking at the curve shape, one can generally guess it!

At or past the peak already, now that the TPR is also dropping?? ... maybe... just maybe... keep your finger crossed!

I am glad that we ended up following the SA model and not US model. It was very clear that with the level of past exposure and vaccination percentage / delayed second dose, our case numbers stayed low.

With this virus, I am not going to make any predictions, but it makes no sense scientifically to live scared . Yes virus can mutate or not into a very dangerous variant, but that is the risk with probably every virus. My guess is that Pretty much 70-80% of the world population may have been exposed naturally or thru vaccination. Around 56% of the population is fully vaccinated.

[Rajiv]

Thank you Aitithee,Suresh,Jay,Kumar for your concern.
What has created a panic and a huge scare is the high number of fatalities, which now stands at the highest in the world per million.
However a notable findings in these deaths was that 80% of the fatalities were unvacinated, and the remaining 20% were suffering from acute severe respiratory ailments.
P.S: would a kind moderator shift these posts to the appropriate thread

[jaydeep]

P.S: would a kind moderator shift these posts to the appropriate thread

Done.
Rajiv, be safe and take care of yourself and family ... This phase will be moved on.

[suresh]

Random States Update March 1, 2022 Tuesday

KL - 2846 (7%)
MZ - 1325 (18.3%)
MH - 675
TN - 348 (0.6%)
DL - 344
RJ - 318
MP - 285
KA - 202 (0.5%)
OR - 168
HA -
TA -
GJ -

Total - 6591

I expect that we will have around 8K cases today.

[jayakris]

Random States Update March 1, 2022 Tuesday

Haha, it has now become "random" states. Makes sense though. It is now a bunch of small numbers from some states and that is that. Many "big states" have become "small states". Only Kerala "the giant" and Mizoram "the idiot" remain as some sort of "big states"

[sameerph]

Thank you Aitithee,Suresh,Jay,Kumar for your concern.
What has created a panic and a huge scare is the high number of fatalities, which now stands at the highest in the world per million.
However a notable findings in these deaths was that 80% of the fatalities were unvacinated, and the remaining 20% were suffering from acute severe respiratory ailments.
P.S: would a kind moderator shift these posts to the appropriate thread

Take care Rajiv. Just puzzling that Omicron is causing so many more fatalities in Hongkong while it appears quite mild in rest of the world particularly in India. Is it due to immunity caused by earlier variant infected people or due to vaccines.

One thing is for sure. However strict may be a lockdown, what it does is only postpone the outbreak, not avoid it. You may lockdown a country for a year but it will hit you as soon you open up at some point of time. So, it is better not try to control it too much. That is my reading.

[jayakris]

^^ True, Sameer. I don't think that zero-Covid strategies and elongated lockdowns that some countries tried, turned out to be any great benefit in the end. Almost all countries ended up getting big Covid waves at some time or other, depending on the immunity levels at the time they got their waves. Vaccination helps a lot, but big waves can still happen, and are bound to happen. Everybody (except China) has had at least 25K cases per million population and sometimes even up to 150K or 200K per million, if they tested properly. China may be a ticking time bomb, or they will have to keep on doing the extremely unproductive quarantining regime and domestic travel restrictions, which are causing unimaginable inconvenience and suffering to people.

Anyway, India had only +8,177 today, at a 0.94% TPR (and 0.49% outside Kerala/Mizoram)... The seven-day average again fell by -1044, to 10.3K... 94 deaths, before KER added 128 old ones.