No, I don’t. Look, I understand why you’d want to cling to the idea that India might escape the worst of this. People everywhere are desperately clinging to the flimsiest reasons for hope. And the fact India’s population is so skewed toward young people (because the life expectancy is lower than the global average) may make it seem, at least at first, as though India will escape the worst of the virus. But that’s not the case.
From a great New Yorkerinterview with Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist and economist who directs the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy in Washington, D.C., and who is currently in New Delhi:
India already has many infectious diseases, and, as the New Yorker article points out, those diseases don’t take a holiday just because COVID-19 is around. With resources focused on COVID, there’s the possibility one of the other diseases–TB, pneumonia, diarrhea–will go out of control. It’s a grim and dangerous situation.
Deaths are also being undercounted, possibly even more than total cases. For example, I understand most countries only count deaths of people who’ve died in hospitals. Or just of those people who’ve tested positive, and they rarely test people who died since they want to save the tests for living people.
Does ‘targeted testing’ mean only people who’ve been to a foreign country that has a high rate of coronavirus and anyone who they interact with? If so, it means they likely missed a lot of community cases.
And it is not only the relatively small elderly population but the huge child population, which not only seems to get extremely mild disease but may be minimally contagious when they get disease, to a large degree acting the same as those who have resolved.
Another factor might be the more common use of the BCG vaccine in “the developing world”.
But yes it is hard enough to be always sure about what is and is not a COVID-19 caused death in New York City … in much of the developing world? Let’s just agree that it is harder yet, especially in real time.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger?” I dunno. You have to live to find out. Third world squalor in the 1800s led to cholera outbreaks. The high body count from those outbreaks led to modern civil engineering, urban planning, and public hygiene and sanitation. Decades later, environmental regulations further reduced the body count. Moving away from lead paint and gasoline saved lives, thanks to decreased lead poisoning, and it could be a factor in dropping crime rates.
Please keep your horrible and frankly racist suppositions to yourself.
The way infections work does not depend upon nationality, and the exponential rates of infection mean that it only takes one person to start it off and in the crowded unsanitary conditions found in third world nations are exactly the conditions for it to become rife.
India has connections all around the world, any one of which could import and spread the virus - the idea that it is just a Chinese connection is misleading, dangerous and racist. Virus does not have nationality, and attempting to assign nationality in a thinly veiled racist slant is a slur on the intellectual capacity of the majority of posters here - and frankly you are spreading misinformation as surely as any virus spreads.
Historic losses to pandemics are double-digit percentiles. Covid-19 is single-digit or even fractional.
People living in “squalor” are, effectively, just living the way that our ancestors did. We should expect to see a similar result to them as we have seen in history (minus intervention from the modern world).
This disease didnt just pop out of nowhere. The virus came from China. A country, and country whether that be the US, Italy, or India, where alot of people visited from China between November and say March (when restrictions started) or if that countries citizens visited China and especially Wuhan, is a pretty good chance the virus came also.
Discussing world trade and international connections is not racist.
Someone already mentioned the bubonic plague killing serfs and peasants in droves in the Middle Ages. I would add Native Americans being virtually wiped out by European diseases, notably smallpox, a few centuries ago.
So what seems to be happening is that living without modern sanitation might result in a population with higher immunity to the diseases they live with, since those without that immunity will have died off over time. But it doesn’t seem to do any good against foreign diseases.
And it goes without saying that people who are malnourished, unprotected from the weather, or exhausted are more susceptible to any kind of disease.
Do you really think that a Haredi ultra-Orthodox enclave Tel Aviv adjacent is part of a discussion about “3rd world squalor” and its impact on severity of COVID-19?
And if the estimate about infection rate there is correct, relevant to the thread, what is the death rate compared to other populations? I can find a report of one elderly woman with other health conditions from there who died, but with a population of near 200K and 38% infected? For Israel overall -
Interesting in the context of Israel to note the circumstance of the occupied territories. Per the WHO.
Not “3rd world” either but lots of poverty and crowded conditions, especially Gaza (population of the OTs about 3 million). But a population pyramid with a very broad base and a small elderly population.
No, but i really think that a Haredi ultra-Orthodox enclave Tel Aviv adjacent is part of “less developed and even nominally “modern” jurisdictions whose leaders ignore medical advice”, which is why I quoted that part, which you might have noted if you had read carefully.
Despite their centuries back affectations the Haredi are modern not just nominally so. Their issues are the same as some Christian groups. Yes it belongs in a conversation about how some religious groups ignore guidance and may put the rest of us at risk. But while poor they do not live in squalor.
Control-z usually these are densely packed populations.
Norway has a low population density and isn’t “squalor”. India has a high population density and has a ton of squalor.
The Philippines has a population density of 336/km[sup]2[/sup]. That’s somewhere between the population density of North Carolina and New York State and, similar to them, includes cities and towns.
I think Ecuador meets the criteria for squalor and third world, at least in some parts. The situation there is atrocious and getting worse, says the press and my cleaning lady, who comes originally from there. Guayaquil is hell, and it is a mayor port with about 3 Million inhabitants, not a city high up in the cold Andes, so there goes the thesis that this will disappear “as if by miracle” with the warm weather. Very bad news.
No, being poor, godforsaken and destitute is not a recipe for survival.
I prefer 1) high SOL, any density; 2) adequate SOL, any density; 99) squalor. I have lived in 1st and 3rd world varieties of squalor. Squalor sucks greatly. YMMV.