My wife had dengue and it is really nasty and really scary.
The standard therapy begins by taking a ton of Vitamin C, tho; it includes hydration but hydration is not all what’s needed. I had what appeared to be the flu when I was in Costa Rica; since the first symptoms of the flu and of dengue are identical and lab tests do have false negatives, the doctor said “looks like it’s the flu, but in any case have a box of VitC tablets: if it’s the flu and you take them no damage done, and if it’s dengue and you don’t you could die, so take them.” The government’s anti-dengue campaigns focused on getting standing water cleared (to avoid mosquitoes) and on making sure that your VitC intake was good.
By the time my wife’s dengue was identified, she needed emergency blood transfusions. I spent the night trying to find people in Aceh with her blood type and then convincing them to go with me the the Red Crescent to get drained. As each bag was prepared, I gave it to my office assistant who sped across town on a motorbike to the clinic where my wife was. Just a crap day.
I’ll probably never go to India, but those pictures didn’t shock me as much as the “Look at these stupid foreigners, don’t they understand how stupid they are?” attitude of the author commenting on them.
Strangely enough, there have been a lot of people who have traveled to India without contracting cholera. I happen to be one of them. And a lot of people have gone to India without having to wade in rivers of human excrement.
Yet another merkin who don’t get the irony thingy.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Well, if you don’t take in the local cultures what’s the point of going?
And this is a grossly naive and defeatist attitude. No sane person has ever claimed that the government can fix ALL of our problems, and no sane person wants the government to fix all of our problems. But public health and sanitation is one area in which government regulation and enforcement has proven time and again to be the one reliable solution. Reliable because public health authorities use epidemiology and pathology to determine the cause and the solution of the problem and then write regulations addressing it. Reliable because governments have the resources to enforce those regulations across the board and can take the blame as Bad Guy until the population realizes they no longer have babies dying of diarrhea and they actually like having clean water.
London during the Victorian era was nearly as bad as India is today. The Thames was a cesspool. The city was filled with poor, homeless, and disease ridden people. Cess pits - 30 foot by 30 foot holes filled with shit - were common neighborhood landmarks. The air was unbreathable due to coal burning, and anyone with money left the city during the summer because of the outbreak of disease with warmer weather. Prince Albert died of typhoid fever, which is transmitted by contaminated water. It took a concerted effort to build the infrastructure necessary to clean up the Thames, but it happened.
The United States went through a period at the turn of the 20th century where adulterated food and medication was commonplace, even expected. When the situation became intolerable, the government intervened with the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. When our rivers became so polluted that the Cuyahoga caught fire and the Hudson couldn’t be fished or swum, the Environmental Protection Agency stepped in, created regulations preventing the destruction of natural environments and enforcing them. We are a hell of a lot better off since then.
So, please, don’t wave your hands and say “government’s not the answer”. While it is not a perfect answer, it is the only one that has reliably worked.
Wow, that’s nuts.
I think the nuance here is that strong governments are great, but you can’t make those magically appear. It’s not like India is unmanageable because the government is just exceptionally lazy. Some of the things that have made our system work so well at maintaining public health are either not there or not working in India. Chances are these are not just personal failings, but something systematic that isn’t what it could be.
Actually, with the speed that India is changing at, it could just be that they had a late and different start, and are going through a lot of the stuff every society makes as it transitions. It wasn’t that long ago when the Thames was a disgusting cesspool. In historic time, a couple hundred years here and there between countries is hardly anything.
But the point is that “good governance” doesn’t happen over night, and none of us have the magic answer to making it happen.
[dengue hijack]
Dengue is not as closely entwined with poverty or big masses of humanity like cholera. Dengue is endemic in urban areas that are not necessarily slums. Dengue is endemic, for example, in the US territory of Puerto Rico. I lived there 18 years, visit there regularly, and have never gotten it, despite being eaten by mosquitoes for most of my life.
With that said, there are mild and there are severe forms of dengue. It is possible I may have had a very mild form of dengue that I attributed to some other cold/virus, and since it didn’t progress to anything threatening, I never cared.
The dengue example mentioned earlier, though, was not typical dengue. It was hemorrhagic dengue, a small subset of all dengue cases. Some types of dengue may be more prone to cause hemorrhagic version, but overall, hemorrhagic dengue is the most severe form and is not the “typical” form most people get. It is because of this type, though, that prevention methods and PSA are common in areas endemic to dengue. Nobody wants to get it.
[/dengue hijack]
An outbreak of dengue happened in Key West not too long ago.
Yeah, I think I may be missing your “irony” too. When you said
You were being “ironic” because… sometimes corpses are seen floating in those places? Implying that India isn’t really that different?
An implication that (as has already been pointed out) is false, because it happens much less frequently and tends to make the news when it does, so— what’s the grand ironic statement that you feel is being missed by us “merkins”?
Varanasi is in Uttar Pradesh, which ranks 32nd out of 35 Indian states in development, so I imagine it is one of the poorest areas in the country. That state alone has 200 million people, which is pretty incredible.
I hope to make it there within the next couple of years. I think it would be easy to spend half a year wandering around that country. But it’s hard for me to imagine the level of poverty in these parts of India. Is it much worse than in Cambodia or Burma? Those countries have similar HDI (human development index) numbers as the poorest states in India, but I don’t consider them shockingly poor.
“Shut up, racist!” is usually a good guess for these things.
Also note that because of its status as a holy city, a lot of poor people end up on Benares.
That’s always been a mystery to me too. How are a billion people able to survive to reproductive age, (I know people will fuck anyone, anywhere), successfully gestate fetuses, and raise kids to reproductive age…in what should be lethally toxic conditions and perpetual famine?
I know the answer has something to do with, “They’re the lucky 10%, India is beating The Grim Reaper by sheer force of numbers.” But I’m hoping there’s a different answer.
Perpetual famine? If sufficient food is being produced and isn’t being withheld from the market by political forces why would there be perpetual famine? I believe the last major famines in India were under British rule and were caused by a combination of catastrophic agricultural failures (drought) and faulty policy reactions. India actually is as of now a food-exporting country, so why would there be perpetual famine?
I don’t understand this comment.
Firstly other posters have already remarked there are areas in the USA where the poor face difficult situations. Your strong Government hasn’t fixed that.
Secondly, what is your knowledge of the Indian government? I have none regarding modern times but it certainly seems strong in regard to military matters and extending influence.
And finally, Government is so broad reaching. Again, I have no recondite knowledge of how India operates but in the “government” responsible for kerbing and sewerage? Or is that down to local councils?
You have made a very broad statement with no details to back it up.
Perhaps the answer to that is because a Billion people aren’t living in toxic conditions and perpetual famine?
Economics of India Wiki
The problem is that India has pockets- there are some areas of extreme affluence, but there are also plenty of areas of EXTREME poverty and malnourishment. It’s got 1st world nation areas and 3rd world nation statuses just as well.
A movie that surprisingly gets it right is “Slumdog Millionaire”, not so much for the plot, but just for showing the background- where you can see the various slums and conditions of people all living together, but contrasted with the later parts of the film, where you see the characters standing in highrise buildings and looking out at the developing city. That’s what I tend to think of when I see India- more of the developing nations part, and India always feels like it’s 10 years behind culturally, but it has been doing well for itself. The problem is not all of it is doing well for itself- but you can’t look at either extreme of rich/poor and assume that’s what the whole sub-continent is like- India is a land of diversity and mixed influences in all regards.