Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[prasen9]

Lathi-charging is an abuse and should be used as a last resort when the person is totally not obeying commands. We need to get to a culture where random violence is not okay. Self-defence, seriously uncooperative or even harmful cases are the only ones where lathi-charge should be tolerated.

[jayakris]

This is interesting... India prepares for massive screening effort after April 14

So, the plan is to do blood tests for a million people (for high viral loads) and then to do the Covid-9 tests for the selected ones, to chase down community transmission. I suppose that makes decent sense, and could possibly find hot-spots fairly quickly rather that wait for 5 to 10 days for Covid-19 patients to start appearing in hospitals (which is too late and could cause 2 or 4 times the number of patients purely due to that mich of delay)? Basically a sampling strategy for testing?

I have no background on this topic, so I need to research more... But it is interesting. Have other countries followed this kind of a scheme?

[jayakris]

Lathi-charging is an abuse and should be used as a last resort when the person is totally not obeying commands. We need to get to a culture where random violence is not okay. Self-defence, seriously uncooperative or even harmful cases are the only ones where lathi-charge should be tolerated.

I saw somebody say today that this is all kinda new for the policemen too. India has never been a police state, at least since the emergency time 44 years ago. Some police guys suddenly must be feeling a bit too empowered. This needs to be controlled, or it could get out of hand pretty fast. Yes, beating people with lathis just should not be allowed other than in extreme cases. On the one hand it is good for some of these stories to get out, so that a lot of people will become serious about the lockdown, but it is usually the poor guys who get beaten up, and they probably don't even know what the heck is going on except that some "karona" illness is going around. That is sad. I don't think the activists in India will stay quiet for too long, for good reasons.

[prasen9]

I have seen WB Police regularly abuse the lathi whenever they wanted to move people. While they did not hit with enough force to break bones or anything, they have regularly just used it to inflict some pain so that the person would move. While use of police force to move people is justifiable when there is imminent danger or when you really need to move someone and someone is not moving, I have seen police hit first and then talk ("he chalo"). This is nothing new but standard police practice now being used more. I wish this culture will change.

Again, I condone it being used in cases where people absolutely will not move especially if it is mild and works. But, to use it just to get the word out and make an example of an usually poor, migrant worker or someone like that is not something I condone. Nor should anyone.

[jayakris]

Kerala had only six new cases today (and only ONE in Kasarkot). Very good. But Kerala also had the first death, after 182 cases. A 69 year old man from Mattancherry, Kochi. He was buried at a church under by Govt supervision, following WHO guidelines. Indian total is 21 deaths from 945 cases right now.

So far, no problematic numbers from India today, as Maharashtra also did not have any explosion (11 new cases there). +59 to 945 but some more states to come

ICMR has not updated the testing numbers since yesterday (27th) morning 9 am. The one before that was at 10 pm on the 25th. Hope they give an update tonight. Why can't they give regular updates?

[jayakris]

Pakistan seems to be doing a decent job, and not letting the numbers get out of hand. After they got a whole lot of new people out of the blue from across the Iran border and had a 27% growth rate from 190 to 800 over 6 days, they have had a few calmer days, growing at a 13% daily rate (excellent!) for the last 5 days to still stay under 1500. Pakistan had banned all mosque congregations, by the way, and have arrested a lot of people at mosques!

But Russia is beginning to have a "situation" in Moscow, with 2/3rd of the 1250 Russian cases right there in the capital. The Moscow numbers have gone from 300 to 825 in just 4 days, at a 25% growth rate. Not good.

On India's railway coach hospital plans - India plans to turn some idled trains into Coronavirus isolation wards (Reuters)
I saw the specifications from the Government on removing the middle tiers, side seats/berths and having 2 beds (but 1 patient, unless absolutely needed in each partition; our trains have 8 of those in each coach), redoing the toilets, checking power connection for medical equipment on he single seat side, having enough ICU/ventilator equipment, etc. And they had already converted one prototype coach. This article says each of the 16 zones with convert 10 coaches into mobile wards a week. That is 16*10*3*8 = 4000 (to 8000) hospital beds available in 50 trains in three weeks time.

This is actually really great, as they can be moved to hot spots that may start off within a day or two. By the way, Indian trains being nearly entirely "beds-based" unlike around the world (chairs-based, mostly) could come in handy here.

I just thought of one other thing that helps - we have broad gauge (1.676 meter), which is somewhat rare in the world, as most developed countries use the standard gauge (1.435 m). That is an extra 24 cm the track and about 40-50 cm on coach width - that is what allows the extra seat/bed on one side. This extra width comes in very handy, as there is over a meter (3.5+ feet) beyond the beds to push equipment and carts - which isn't possible in most foreign train coaches which only has about 60-70 cm on the walkway in sleeper coaches.

[jayakris]

India just joined the 1000-case club ..... Now 1004 cases, with +118 so far today.

The official Ministry figure is 933, but that is as of 5:45 pm, and the rest of the state totals will be added only tomorrow.

Damnit, ICMR. Release the testing status numbers! No updates for almost 2 days now.

Update: 1024 by midnight. Not looking great. I guess we may see 175-200 extra cases by tomorrow evening ministry update (which for today was 933).

30 new cases in Maharashtra. Punjab had a few, and went up to 39 cases, and 25 are connected to the patient zero there, the sikh Granthi (preacher) who came from a foreign trip. Independently in Chandigarh, it seems somebody who came from Dubai 15 days ago (!) showed symptoms and was found positive.

[jayakris]

The migrant workers' travel issues are becoming VERY serious. The Government needs to do some urgent work on this. As in the case of demonetization, it is again the people of the lowest economic stratum that are badly suffering. Modiji takes some tough decisions, and in this case, it was the right decision that we were all screaming for. He really did not have much choice, and took the hard decision without delaying it (one of the hardest decisions in the history of mankind, actually, to lock down 1.35B people).

Quite a lot of the controllable things have been taken care of relatively well. But the parts we don't have much control over, ends up causing suffering. I wish somebody was there to put some plans in place for the migrant workers' travel.

This is why when I was screaming 8 days ago for trains to be stopped and buses to be stopped, I did not ask for intercity buses to be stopped (I only asked for buses running shorter distances to be stopped; not expresses). There was bound to be a whole lot of people who just did not have a way to go where they needed to, and I assumed that they could at least take multiple buses and get somewhere. Some people have been walking for 50 and 100 kilometers and one migrant worker walking from Delhi even died today out of exhaustion. Come on!!

Anyway, they are pressing buses into service in many places now, though the crowds waiting to catch those buses are unbelievable, seeing the pictures coming in.

That brings up a question. Why doesn't India have a ministry for migrant workers? We are talking about 100M to 300M workers like that, out of which some fraction go from place to place within the year for agricultural work too. Such a huge population of workers with nobody seriously looking after them in a coordinated basis. For instance, even if the Center wanted to make some plans for their travel, I wonder if they have proper data on what to do. We should actually be having some big network of facilities with some accommodation and food options that is cheap enough (even tent cities are better than nothing, if you ask me). Like rest stations on highways, there should be places that are mainly meant for migrant workers, with a department's officials handling their matters.

The migrant workers are essentially the nation's resource. The states will never take care of them well enough as they may not speak the language or know the culture. They rather face discrimination and racism from many states' people. There needs to be a national department for these hard workers. A large number of them are young people too. Give them a chance to spire to a better life after all their hard work as our labor force.

I saw this article from 2008 - Support for migrant workers: The missing link in India’s development. The issue has been building up over the last 15-20 years, and we still don't have much of a plan or coordination for this immense work force we have. We cannot just let them walk for miles and die! ... Maybe this Covid-19 crisis will wake us up, to start setting up some ways for the migrant workers to be brought properly into our conscience and national planning. Most importantly, we need to have some idea or control of where they are, what they do, what they need, where they need to go, and how to keep them out of trouble when similar emergencies arise.

[prasen9]

Modi thinks very little about the aftermath when he takes decisions. We saw it in the massive bungling with the demonetization that caused enormous harm to common people while the rich escaped. Again here. The government needs to have a plan for supporting these people with temporary shelters, foods, etc. Let them stay in those god-damned trains with social distance. Or somewhere else. Not possible? Then, at least set up some shelters every 10 miles or so where people can temporarily stay when they are walking back home. The guy is good at talking but not that great with respect to planning.

You don't need a full-time national plan. Yes, that will be good. But, now you need to make sure people have food and a shelter when they are walking back. And not being harassed by the police. The state governments are complicit too. Police should be told not to beat up migrants. Give them passage.

[jayakris]

It's tough for me to agree that PM Modi only talks and never plans, prasen. He has done a lot more of actions and planning (right or wrong, as I always say ) than other PMs, in my opinion. He is definitely not just talk. The Government has done a lot more planning than I thought they were doing on the Covid problem too - based on things that we keep hearing have been in the works over the last 3-4 weeks.

But this is India. Serious of gaps exist in our system, and crap will normally happen, however well we plan. All our former PMs (with the exception of maybe Indira Gandhi if she felt her interests were in danger) would show a reluctance to make a call because they knew that such gaps and flaws in the system would come back to bite them. Modiji does not seem to have that kind of reluctance, and he will make a call. We have seen it way too many times. I would rather a PM do that. On the migrant workers' matter, I don't think a whole lot could be done because if they had not totally shut all travel services, it would not be a lockdown.

If I were the PM, I would not have made the call to stop intercity buses. But then I wouldn't have got a lockdown because people would be out, saying they were going somewhere. And a LOT of regular folks would have left the cities like Mumbai and Delhi by bus first to far away places to escape disease (not the migrants; instead the richer people who should be staying put). It wouldn't have worked.

In other words, I would be chicken, and would've screwed it up if I were the PM. Modiji wasn't chicken, and he probably knew that this would happen. he had to turn heartless. So, after 4 days, here come the buses out, to take them, but now we have a huge crowd-transportation problem. Could he have planned anything here? I think not. No way to do it without data and a NATIONAL department in charge. The states would not particularly care to send "outside" people away properly, and would only be STOPPING people from coming in. Pinarayi Vijayan would have said go to hell to Modiji, in other words. If he tried to nicely send Bengali workers away through TN and Karnataka, they would've said go to hell to Pinarayi too!

Without a department, and without data, I fail to see what could have been done. Not in roughly a week of time that Modiji felt he had. And he called the lockdown just on time, faster than any leader in the world and the world clearly acknowledges it. It shocked me, and it shocked the world too..

So, my issue is that EVEN IF Modiji wanted to plan the bus dispatch properly now for the migrant workers, I doubt he has a department that is ready to anything. Who is supposed to go and build even 100 tent cities in 4 days time for workers?

This gap in the system happened because we, as a country, have done nothing much during at least the last 2 governments of Congress and BJP (as far as I know) on tackling the migrant worker population and bringing them properly under the national safety net. So, I doubt if Modiji could plan anything, without proper data and management infrastructure for them. Now the country suddenly realizes the problem that has been waiting to happen for a couple of decades.

Should the Manmohan and Modi governments have planned a proper department over the last 15 years? Surely, yes. Can I blame them, when I myself never paid attention? No. Can the other parties, politicians and intelligentsia blame Manmohan and Modi? No, because nobody else has consistently raised the issue or asked for some serious national spending on this matter either. So, it is not fair to just say that Modi does things without planning. It is often a case of planning being relatively impossible when the systems were not put in place by him, his predecessors, and the nation's leaders who had a duty to ask for that. None of that happened, and so we have precious laborers walking and dying.

[Atithee]

Don’t the states share some blame? Why do 1-2 states have to be the labor supply of the entire country? It’s states’ failures to not generate enough employment for their citizens. And, if these folks feel they’re better off in their homes, why did they choose to leave? The chasm must be even deeper now.

[jayakris]

I was just editing my post above and adding a bit on the states' response, as you were posting, Atithee. Yes, they do share the blame, but it is easy for the CMs to blame the PM, because the migrant workers are not appreciated in the states, even though the state's people cannot live without them. Like the Mexican workers in the US. Kerala simply cannot survive without Bengali workers. Period. They run the state now. But the pompous Malayali keeps will complaining that he cannot even ask for a tea in Malayalam in a tea-shop anymore (how sad, eh?). There is no labor supply from among the Malayalees. They would rather die than do manual labor, as they are "educated people". Oh well...

So the states don't care for the migrant worker. It is a national issue that needs to be handled from the center. We are seeing how important it is.

But it is good for the country's productivity to have a flexible labor force that are allowed to work without restriction to fill the demand wherever it is, at whatever time or season. It is a tremendous resource, that is not harnessed well enough. We probably have a lot more laborers available to be productive, if we plan properly. Make them more mobile, through proper facilities. Not many countries have a labor force that is willing to be this mobile as the large young population (20 to 30 years) that India now has.

[jayakris]

Anyway, it naturally falls under the Home Minstry's portfolio. Here is the latest from Amit Shaw, Saturday night - "Give Food, Contain Them": Home Ministry On Migrant Workers Amid Lockdown

[prasen9]

Actually, someone who takes a lot of action is perhaps one who plans the least. Planning takes time. You can jump off a cliff. That is an action but if you do not think what will happen afterwards carefully you have not planned.

Yes, the government has been thinking of how to manage the system and the country to minimize the number of deaths and spread. But, you need to be able to chew gum and walk too. Maybe I should revise my statement. In both the demonetization and this case, the government did show some planning with respect to the primary objective. However, they seemed not very careful about the side-effects of these actions. And, if you do not take into account the side-effects and study things carefully, you can actually decide fast and take lots of actions because you are not doing full due diligence. That seems to also suggest that they do not have people with the administrative experience and expertise of addressing social problems that are multi-headed and multi-faceted.

Absolutely, Atithee, the state governments also have to take the blame for not setting things up and for the police doing random things.

Everything is not about politics. It is about basic human decency. Giving migrant workers a safe passage, a lift here and there and a bed to sleep in at night with logistics to wash things up would require some money and effort but state governments can do it if they want to. Heck, they can corral empty hotels with emergency acts and do it for cheap. Abysmal lack of human decency.

My parents say that everything is closed and they do not know how or where they will get food supplies in one week or two in their neighborhood. Things will perhaps open then.

Implementation is chaotic without any rhyme or reason.

[jayakris]

In both the demonetization and this case, the government did show some planning with respect to the primary objective. However, they seemed not very careful about the side-effects of these actions. And, if you do not take into account the side-effects and study things carefully, you can actually decide fast and take lots of actions because you are not doing full due diligence. That seems to also suggest that they do not have people with the administrative experience and expertise of addressing social problems that are multi-headed and multi-faceted.

I think that is all generally correct, especially about the side-effects and details.

And I also have felt frequently that BJP doesn't surround itself with enough domain experts. Not because they don't respect or believe expertise (unlike how the party in power in the US views scientists), but because they cannot find people who will work with them.

The problem is actually with the experts, who are to a high degree, people who do not want to understand what Hinduism is, takes it to be just like any non-Indian religion, doesn't like the concept of a religion itself anyway, and so hates the idea of a Hindu party. They just don't gravitate to BJP, and so the Center has to live with whomever they can find. The "experts" in India should stop focusing on how BJP is out to destroy the India of high ideals that is in their puerile fantasies, but rather take what is the reality and start thinking of making India better. If they would stop constantly trying to downplay even the good things that BJP does, that party can try to make use of these experts.