Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[Omkara]

Maharashtra again adds 16K+ ... When the hell will Modiji do something? Or say something. Whatever... Go after that hapless state chief minister if you must. Help him, or hurt him... Or play politics, threaten him, dismiss him with governor's rule, send the army in to help... Whatever. Do something, Mr. Prime Minister!

Being so damn hands off from Maharashtra has been the biggest mistake that Modiji and the Central Governement have done so far. Right from the beginning in April. It is like BJP knows whether to argue or work with the state government, everywhere else. In Maharashtra, it is totally hands off... Like the state doesn't exist and is not in India.

We should cross 79K today.

Maharashtra is a mess. But having messed up the Indian economy so bad modiji has smartly decided to be away from this mess. He is busy with rhea Chakraborty, ram mandir and rafaele jets.

[iShUuU]

Maharashtra is a mess. But having messed up the Indian economy so bad modiji has smartly decided to be away from this mess. He is busy with rhea Chakraborty, ram mandir and rafaele jets.

He already asked us to be aatm nirbhar. So we have no rights to blame him , rather we can blame our CMs :P

[jayakris]

He already asked us to be aatm nirbhar. So we have no rights to blame him , rather we can blame our CMs :P

To be fair, this is indeed one area where the PM does not have too many weapons to use. Healthcare, by constitution, is TOTALLY under state control. That is why our healthcare systems and quality are extremely uneven from state to state. That is also why India is like 200th out of 250 countries in almost any healthcare index you can use, and some states like Kerala has 5 times better healthcare facilities than some other states like say Chhattisgarh. It is why the Covid stats are all over the place when we go from state to state. Totally extreme variations in everything.

India has no Central Government staff in healthcare, in the states. The states run the whole thing. And we suffer, when things like a pandemic hits, because the Central Government just cannot get the states to do what the Centre wants. You need the states to allocate personnel properly into contact tracing, testing etc. So some non-BJP states with sensible officials and CMs have done better than the BJP states who listen to the Center and some non-BJP states have done worse than the BJP states. On average, except Maharashtra, all the BJP states are staying out of trouble though (except Karnataka, but they don't seem to be in MAH-like trouble).

So, blaming the CMs is absolutely correct. Blaming the PM is correct too - to the extent that this is the kind of situation when leadership is needed. Modiji has been quite ineffective in showing leadership and convincing non-BJP CMs to listen to him. Sometimes you need to get it done in some way, with your own personal abilities (when the constitution hardly gives you much of a tool). He has generally failed at that. He did succeed in getting the lockdown going, basically using the trains and plains that are totally under his control, and he also got people to listen to him initially too. That helped a lot, and avoided extreme healthcare capacity issues. We built testing capacity as well as PPEs, ventilators etc, also. But then it is over to the states again to do something to stop the viral spread. And that needs personnel working on the ground. That is all in the CMs hands. And some of them are failing gloriously.

In the end, Modiji failed in getting the CMs to arrest the viral spread, even if he succeeded in reducing the deaths from it. But if you don't arrest the spread, the deaths will keep adding up, even though it is at a much lower rate than it might have been, had we screwed up during the lockdown period. The longer this goes on, everything becomes more and more of a failure. For everybody. The PM, and the CMs.

[jayakris]

So we finished with 79.5K today. Did 1030K tests, as per the states. The positivity again inched up to 7.8% today. It has inched up the last 3-4 days after steadily dropping for like a month, except for the weekend numbers.

I never thought we would get this high. But seeing how we again started accelerating on the daily count in the last 5 days - and seeing that this is really a nationwide rise (some 60K of the 79.5K coming from areas growing at 2 percent or less rate), what it means is that we should expect it to keep growing. How long? Who knows! ...

Looks quite probable that we will go up to 100K per day and beyond at some point.

Yeah, our numbers can flatten if Godforsaken MAH would stop their growth at 12K per day or so. But they still going up up 2K every week. It will be 18K next week. Nashik, that went calm about 3 times already, showed a 4th wave today with 1500 cases. Friggin Nashik. Simply a case where the officials went home some 2-3 weeks ago and stopped paying attention to tracing or testing (after only doing 20% positivity testing to start with). If you do that, another wave will come in 2 weeks. This keeps happening in many districts in MAH. You think they are done, and gone flat. But then no, they are back 2 weeks later. Kolhapur again showing big numbers. What BS is this?

Anyway, we should expect to see 80 to 85K per day next week, 85 to 90K per day the week after, etc, I guess. It may keep on going. Until somebody - has to be the PM - decides to have a national plan to do something about this and get the CMs to cooperate on it. Ain't gonna happen in India. What is ever going to convince anybody of there being a problem, if 24K deaths in Maharashtra haven't convinced Uddhav to seek help or advice? Worse still, when nobody even asks the question to him... And he is a nice guy and not even a bad boy CM who is quarreling with anybody, like the Mamatas out there.

This is India. Nothing will change. We will keep going and the numbers will keep coming.

[jayakris]

Revisiting my predictions from 2 weeks ago (Aug 16), which was checked and revised in my post last Sunday (Aug 23):

New 14-day (first) prediction for Sunday, Aug 30, is 3.600 to 3.650M

Lowering my prediction for next Sunday, Aug 30, to 3.570 to 3.600M
New 14-day (first) prediction for Sunday, Sep 6, is 4.050 to 4.100M

We are at 3.619M today, well over my lowered prediction last week. I should've stuck to my Aug 16th prediction - when my spreadsheet had actually said 3.611M for today, not far from what we got. I shouldn't have reduced it last week, going hopeful of some more flattening. No, instead we started rising yet again this week.
So, the revised prediction for next Sunday, Sept 6, is 4.100 to 4.130M
New 14-day prediction for Sunday, Sep 13 is 4.750M to 4.800M

It's all just numbers at this point, and nothing else. Big numbers, but we are numb to it all... Isn't that the case, sadly?

[Sin Hombre]

India (both people and the government) has given up at this point.

We need the Oxford/Astrazenaca vaccine to show promising phase 3 results when they come out in end Sep, and if they do, start vaccinating en masse even if the efficacy is only 60-70%.

[jayakris]

^^ That is the feeling I am getting too. Everybody have kinda given up on it and are going through the motions now. Can't blame them. To be frank, a lot of people put in a lot of hard work, but there are only so many people we have in healthcare, to be able to do anything more. A few wrong decisions and delayed decisions were there in some states, but there is nothing really that can be pinpointed as "here is what we did wrong". Because even the states that really did nothing wrong (for the most part) like the Assams and Keralas have also not got great results in flattening the curve.

------

ICMR Update: 42,307,914 total tests... Tests on Sunday: 846,278... My guess is that the states may not report much more than this number on Monday. Lab count: 1587

[suresh]

#worldometerwatch

We will overtake Brazil today and take second place in the total number of cases. The US showing signs of slowing down while the number of our daily cases increasing. But the US is way ahead in the total number of cases and so it will be a while before we overtake them, if that ever happens.

[jayakris]

We will overtake Brazil today and take second place in the total number of cases. The US showing signs of slowing down while the number of our daily cases increasing. But the US is way ahead in the total number of cases and so it will be a while before we overtake them, if that ever happens.

But then again, considering that we have 4.5 times US' population and 6 times Brazil's... and then 12 times US' population density, and 16 times Brazil's, is it not some sort of a miracle that we have are still behind them.

I mean... the first factor determines the total number, and the second factor (population density) has a lot to do with the spread and how fast it can happen in a country. That is, the second factor should affect the growth rate of the curve with more rapid spreading.

It is like we should have reached at least 3 times the daily count of those countries, like some 10 times faster. That would mean we should have reached some 200K cases a day, some 3-4 months ago

So, to see some 6 months after the pandemic started, that we still are behind these two countries, is some sort of a miracle. Isn't?

[Omkara]

There is another angle. Beyond population and density. Most nations are highly prosperous. This disease impacted peoples balance sheet. Its ate away people savings. Indians stayed at home till the point they could manage. Then it became impossible to sustain. They had to take the risk to go out. US and Europeans were partying. Hence them having such high numbers is preposterous.

Indians have till now balanced it well. We could have done better with our testing rates. But otherwise its still OK.

[suresh]

My #worldometerwatch is meant to be an observation without any thought put into it.

[Atithee]

Re: India’s low numbers, part of it has to be fewest tests among big countries. It’s not a judgment on the protocols; simply some data including other summary information.

https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/ ... -mark.html

[suresh]

In total number of tests, we are third after China and the US. However, our tests per million is at 30K which is good enough for 121 place.

[suresh]

Normal service has resumed in TN. We are back to 5950+/-30 after yesterday's brief correction.

[jayakris]

Re: India’s low numbers, part of it has to be fewest tests among big countries. It’s not a judgment on the protocols; simply some data including other summary information.
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/ ... -mark.html

That is bullcrap from Deccan Herald. Actually from that quoted virologist, who should know better. But I have hardly seen any insightful comment from Indian virologists, save a couple... So no surprise. And some people will find any stat to make India look bad. No other country has as many people who are hellbent on doing that to their country. It doesn't matter which party is in power - our press and leftist "intelligentsia" are always there to spew nonsense.

Tests per population is a stat to use only after the spread has happened and the whole area is reasonably under local transmission. When there were no cases at all in UP and Bihar, we should have wasted time and resources doing 140K and 100K tests per day like the two states are doing now, to keep those states' 350 million people in the denominator? India reached a full-spread stage only about 4 to 6 weeks ago when it finally hit the Nagpur-Raipur area and the cases started coming 3-4 weeks ago. A whole 4-month period after all these other countries had spread like India now has.

At this point, the tests per million stat for India is beginning to make some sense though. And even on that stat we are ahead of Argentina, Japan, etc. The current tests per million population (30K, i.e, one in 33 people) is ahead of where many (most?) countries were when they got their peak, too.

Test positivity is all that matters when the disease is still spreading. And even after that, it is the only stat that correlates somewhat with flattening the curve. The above virologist has not noticed that India stayed in the upper 1/3rd to 40% of countries all along in that stat. We are 4th out of the top11 right now, doing better than South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Iran, Brazil, etc. Pretty near USA, and worse than only Russia and Spain. Or maybe the said virologist knows it, but would rather just say that India is screwing up.

In fact, testing at 4 to 8 percent positivity for the first 3 or 4 months is the reason why India's spread got so delayed. The work that Odisha, UP, and Bihar (and even WB) did on tracking, contact-tracing and testing as best as humanly possible on all those migrant laborer returnees that brought the virus in, is why those states are pretty much flattening the curve now, even after local spread started everywhere.

In fact, Bihar is the one large state that has fully dropped the daily additions to half its peak over the last 2-3 weeks; and thy test at 1.5% positivity, which is out of this world. The active cases have dropped every day, for the last 15 days there - down from 33K cases to 17K.

Heck, Maharashtra has higher tests per million than UP and Bihar. And we know where that stat has got them. They always tested only 1/4th people they should've tested. Test those who needs to be tested, who are contacts (or inn the area) of those with the disease. Do that when they need to be tested. That is all reflected (somewhat) by test positivity. Not by tests per population. And positivity is the ONLY stat that should even be discussed. Some of these virologists do not know how to look at statistics properly.

In fact, sensible people, like at Covid19india.org, don't even report tests per million population in their main table. They show test positivity.