Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

Only 158K new vaccinations (first dose) by 6 pm today. 231K shots... 8.418M total people (8.518M total shots)

I don't don't know where we are trying to get with this worse-than-anemic vaccination program that is being sold to the country as "world's largest" and "world's fastest" and all that.

[suresh]

The Indian Zombie Strikes Again

This is an interesting blog post.

[suresh]

Have you all followed the “pawri” memes? It’s hilarious. Learned about “Burgers” or “Borgors” and “Burger Bachchas.” Covid India has jumped on the bandwagon too.

What on earth is pawri?

[jayakris]

The Indian Zombie Strikes Again
This is an interesting blog post.

Good find. Seems like he thinks quite like what I wrote in the last page, with about similar numbers to start (until he multiplies it by about a 3 very cavalierly). Where he and I disagree is that he thinks 60-70 have immunity after that multiplication. I think it is nowhere even close in India. At best it is 40-45%, but more probably much closer to the sero-prevalence number of 21%. Maybe 33% of Indians have immunity.

There is plenty of non-immune population in India to support another serious wave. The only question is the immunity level among the super-spreaders who need to get that wave going and take the virus to that vulnerable population. But the wave will quite probably be there. It may not take the numbers too high, and could be more localized, but I won't be surprised if we see 25K cases a day in India in a few weeks with places like Tiruchirappalli, Dhanbad, Alighar, Vishakhapatnam, and a lot more smaller towns raging with hundreds of cases. Hopefully not 75K cases a day.

[jayakris]

What on earth is pawri?

Just the way the Pakistani girl says "party" in the viral video. We in the south might write it as "paazhi" but since that sound doesn't exist in Hindi, people wrote it as "pawri"... Maybe she was a bit drunk or something when she said it, but it was cute and it went viral.

[Atithee]

Just the way the Pakistani girl says "party" in the viral video. We in the south might write it as "paazhi" but since that sound doesn't exist in Hindi, people wrote it as "pawri"... Maybe she was a bit drunk or something when she said it, but it was cute and it went viral.

That’s how the “burgers” say it in Pakistan. It was intentional and that is the whole point. She said “car” in a similarly fake way, but people didn’t notice that much.

Even in India, it’s the same thing. We used to call them “pseudos” instead of “burgers.” There are also “burger bachchas” in Pakistan. Read the original caption of her a mere four second video.

[Omkara]

Slowly the fear that Corona is making a comeback is creeping into our mind. I have heard the buzz word on WhatsApp on many groups. It's WhatsApp. There people believe g** mutra can cure Corona. So one should not trust. But just like the murmurs of Lord Voldemort.... There are murmurs of Corona making a comeback in Mumbai

[jayakris]

If you want to cry, hear this - Maharashtra only tested 37K people today. And got 3663 cases at 9.8% positivity. Just when cases go up, they test fewer. Is there a bigger idiot in this world than Rajesh Tope?... I am predicting 5K to 6K cases per day next week in Maharashtra. Could even be 10K in 2 or 3 weeks. All bets are off. Maharashtra is back, in style... Hope I'm wrong. Argh.

If you want to cry more, we vaccinated only 79K new people (first doses) till 6 pm today. That's like 1/3rd of the rate last Tuesday. What in the world is the ministry trying to do? When we should do 1.5 million day, we do less than 1/15th of it! Hope there is a big jump in the late night numbers of the day. But as of now,

Anyway, we had +11.6K today, which is a rise from last Tuesday, and our 7-day average is on a steady rise now (to 11.6K average). Pretty much the start of a second wave, unless Maharashtra calms down. It is really only Maharashtra that is growing. No other place (except perhaps Punjab, KAR and TN showing some very small signs that they *might* rise?... but maybe that is just me being nervous). I just do not feel that we will stay down for too long. The positivity has been clearly rising the last few day. It was about 706K tests at 1.64% on Tuesday. The tests need to rise in Maharashtra, or we are in trouble again.

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ICMR Update: 207,977,229 total tests... Tuesday tests: 644,931 (damnit, that isn't enough)

[sameerph]

Slowly the fear that Corona is making a comeback is creeping into our mind. I have heard the buzz word on WhatsApp on many groups. It's WhatsApp. There people believe g** mutra can cure Corona. So one should not trust. But just like the murmurs of Lord Voldemort.... There are murmurs of Corona making a comeback in Mumbai

Not only on Whatsapp but i am beginning to get to hear a lot more known people turning positive in last 1 week than for a couple of months before that. I think it is a sure indication of resurgence of Covid here.

[jayakris]

^^^ Sad to hear that, Sameer. There is no doubt now, that Maharashtra has a second wave going. Hopefully it won't be as bad as the first wave. +4.9K today. Basically, once the numbers bottom out, you need to keep testing at a very high level (under 2 percent positivity, but preferably under 1 percent like most states in India are doing now), to keep it there or to drop it to zero. But Maharashtra never fell below 4.9 percent. The second wave was bound to start pretty soon.

[sameerph]

Or maybe it will be worse than first wave, I hope not. But people are a lot more lax now than 6-8 months back. Restaurants are full, marriages are in full swing with apprently no restrictions on number of people, cinema halls started, suburban trains open to all. If it spreads it will spread real fast now.

I guess the only condition where it will remain in control is if there are lots of people with immunity developed due to tested/ untested previous infection. Not sure what that number is in Mumbai / Maharashtra.

[jayakris]

Okay, experts have started talking about the extremely slow pace of vaccinations. Some good comments here - https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-o ... 2021-02-16

The only thing I disagree with, is the need to vaccinate older people. The chance for them to get it is so low now, that we need to take a calculated risk, and go for taking out the super-spreaders in the population -- to prevent 5 or 10 times as many older people getting infected and dying in the coming months on another big wave. I would vaccinate the active population first.

But I am a minority in that opinion (actually, is anybody else saying this??), and possibly only China and Indonesia are doing the right thing and not giving big priority to older people (need to check; but I think I saw it somewhere this week). India, as usual, will not do anything that original and will ape what the western countries do. They all have big waves going, and need to vaccinate against deaths from that. But India's need is to vaccinate against preventing another big wave.

We are not thinking right, in my opinion. May prove to be a HImalayan mistake later.

[sameerph]

Btw, if I see the worldometers, the curves are again bending down for most of the Europe and US. Is the vaccine effect already kicking in or it just another phase?

[jayakris]

Btw, if I see the worldometers, the curves are again bending down for most of the Europe and US. Is the vaccine effect already kicking in or it just another phase?

I don't think so. Nobody except Israel and maybe UAE has vaccinated enough fraction of population (over 20-25%) for it to help the Covid curves yet. Most countries had the December vacation and Christmas related surges and the curves are going down because of immunity in the areas where the cases where. Now we know that this happens rather naturally, due to immunity built up from exposure and antibody-building (among people who never got infected enough to ever be RT-PCR positive). That kind of immunity-building happens to people in the areas where the pandemic rages, during a lot of those family and other interactions ("active life"). After a point, there aren't enough un-immune people to infect and the numbers go down. And then we have to wait for a critical mass of super-spreaders to get it started in other places where there is less immunity in the population, for the next wave in the cities/states/country.

This is all pretty straight-forward to understand now. How much of other areas and population-segments are there who have not got exposed-enough to developed antibody immunity, is what determines the severity of the next wave.

I am hoping that there aren't as many un-immune people left in Maharashtra in the new population-segments catching the disease now, to cause the kind of wave we had the first time. My random guess is that MAH won't go to more than 10K cases per day in this wave, compared to numbers like +24K a day in the first wave's peak.

[rajitghosh]

Having had covid and recovered, here is my take on the situation in Maharashtra and rest of the country.
Now that offices are opening, trains have started, there is no restriction on the number of people in restaurants, weddings, mutiplexes, malls and so on people have thrown caution to the wind and are mixing freely. Since most people are getting cured people are treating it like any other virus. Yes I had an initial 5 tough days but recovered eventually. In offices people are working in a closed atmosphere with ACs on so the virus is bound to circulate. Tourism is getting bak to normal with places like Lonavla, Mahabaleshwar and Alibaug seeing huge crowds. Hence cases are going up.
One thing I can say about Maharashtra is that they are prompt in reporting and tracking. The day I got a positive even though the next day was a Sunday the municipality paramedics were at my home asking for details. I didn't get calls on a daily basis but I know others even got calls daily enquiring about how they are.
I am not sure other states do this kind of contact tracing. I know for certain from my relatives and friends in Kolkata that West Bengal doesn't.
Looking at Maharashtra's numbers I wonder if other states are not picking up cases. It is possible that people with mild symptoms do not get tested due to the fear of quarantine and as long as hospitals don't fill up this chalta hai attitude can continue.
On immunity, what my doctor told me that the antibodies can last 5 months or so but if some other strain attacks these antibodies won't work. He gave examples of people who got re-infected. So the hypothesis on herd immunity may not be correct with the virus mutating. Moreover, we are at 1 year of the virus now. So people who got it in the early days have a chance of gettinf re-infected.
One thing is certain. The virus has lost its malignancy as in the cases are not that dangerous. Alternatively it may be true that doctors have found out what medicines work.