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Medicine

India Tops a Million Coronavirus Cases as Pandemic Hits Villages (nytimes.com) 114

India on Friday became the third country in the world to record more than one million coronavirus cases, behind only the United States and Brazil, as infections spread further out into the countryside and smaller towns. From a report: For India's population of around 1.3 billion, experts say a million cases are still low and the number will rise significantly in the coming months as testing is expanded. India recorded 34,956 new infections on Friday, taking the total so far to 1.004 million, with 25,602 deaths from COVID-19, federal health ministry data showed. That compares to some 3.6 million cases in the United States and 2 million in Brazil -- both countries with populations under 400 million.

Epidemiologists say India is still likely months away from hitting its peak of cases, suggesting the country's already overburdened healthcare system will come under further strain. "In the coming months, we are bound to see more and more cases, and that is the natural progression of any pandemic," said Giridhar Babu, epidemiologist at the nonprofit Public Health Foundation of India. "As we move forward, the goal has to be lower mortality... A critical challenge states will face is how to rationally allocate hospital beds," he said.

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India Tops a Million Coronavirus Cases as Pandemic Hits Villages

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    • It's indeed not very useful when contact tracing is a lost cause. Testing them on admission for isolation is plenty, mass testing is just a waste of resources at this point.

      • Giving up on contact tracing was the big mistake the UK made. It's always worth contact tracing. If it isn't working then you have to shut down mobility until it does work, but in the end you can always scale up the tracing by hiring more of the people who are out of work due to people's fear of going out and catching the virus.
        • They aren't organized enough for that nor are they rich enough to sustain a lockdown. The lockdown was an unmitigated disaster. They were fucked before and they were double fucked after.

          • They aren't organized enough for that nor are they rich enough to sustain a lockdown. The lockdown was an unmitigated disaster. They were fucked before and they were double fucked after.

            Some areas are. I believe Kerala has more or less succeed in controlling the virus. Even if it happens in only some places, it's still possible to save thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives and you can also use the people developed in those cases to help solve problems elsewhere

          • That's the problem, India is mostly a third-world country, despite having a thriving high-tech and industrial sector. About three quarters of the country lives on less than 20 rupees a day, that's maybe 30 US cents. So their monthly income is about USD 10. It's really difficult to engage in serious anti-pandemic measures when you've got that as your starting point.
    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      How would it even be viable to test majority of Indian villages? Logistics without so much as proper roads would be a nightmare considering that you'd have to test about a sixth of total human population of entire planet.

      • Rwanda somehow does it. [npr.org] They randomly select people to test to gauge the amount of COVID in a region. They also use batch testing to save resources. It's a matter of using basic statistics to focus resources.
        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Rwanda makes for one of the poorest analogues to India you can think of. It's a small, concentrated, medium overall population density, with multiple large navigable waterways between largest population centres.

          India is huge, spread out, high population density, vastly divergent terrain ranging from extremely elevated mountainous to swampy tropics, with few navigable waterways. And that's before all the cultural divergence that happens when you have a sixth of planet's total population in one nation state.

          • India also has over 3 times the per-capita wealth to deal with those challenges. It's a much more developed country.

            Also, large population size is not necessarily a challenge. While it means there are more people to test, there are also more people to perform those tests.
            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Wealth in total is a poor measure of capabilities. Especially in case of India, where you have hyperwealthy cities and subsistence living in the remote villages.

              And yes, total numbers are actually a challenge. Always. When it comes to human management, crowd is always harder to control than individual people in it, and the more people you have, the more infighting there is in the nation.

              Rwanda is what, 12-13 million? And even they have a massive genocide just a few decades prior because of irreconcilable di

          • "has navigable waterways" is an important basic travel concern if you're a crocodile. If you're a human, your first choice is roads. Does India have roads?

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              This demonstrates an incredible ignorance of how humans organise logistics. The reality is the polar opposite. We focus our logistics around navigable waterways first and foremost. They require little to no build up or maintenance, minimal volumetric and weight limitations and are around 40 times more energy efficient per weight transferred than next best thing we have. Railroads.

              Which in turn are again better in all aforementioned parameters than the factor you mention. Roads. They are the least efficient,

              • This is simply not true. Most human activity is on land. Rivers aren't big enough to carry the traffic that roads carry.

                You're waving your hands and imagining. Look outside.

                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  This is just stupid. "Human activity" and "human logistics" are two different issues. We're not aquatic, so we obviously exist on land. And our logistics exist on water as much as we can make them, which is why largest "places where human activity takes place" sit on navigable rivers and sea/ocean coasts. I guess you looked at your nearest map and realised you had to concede your point, but as is the case in most internet argument, you just didn't want to so you decided to play word games instead?

                  Navigare n

        • India has its own set of problems dealing with the spread of disease. Of 1.5 million tuberculosis deaths worldwide in 2018, 450K were in India.

          Outside of Africa, the nation that polls most frequently near the top of the death count for malaria is India.

      • How would it even be viable to test majority of Indian villages? Logistics without so much as proper roads would be a nightmare considering that you'd have to test about a sixth of total human population of entire planet.

        I'm completely surprised at the level of politicization of the Covid issue at this point.

        The MSM recently touted, breathlessly, that the US had the largest number of Coronavirus cases. While not fake news per-se, it's is a divisive statement meant to foster outrage at the cost of truth.

        The US has the 3rd largest population in the world, after China and India. China is not being candid with their numbers, and India has not done a lot of testing for various reasons such as the ones mentioned in the parent.

        Num

        • by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
          This is one of the most insightful posts I've read. I have also first hand experience where someone I know had a heart attack, died, tested negative for COVID and got a death certificate that said COVID.

          As for India having lots of rural areas, one interesting tidbit is: so does the US. We're a big country (geographically) and people are spare here. So that contributes bias as well because the majority of testing is probably done in dense urban centers where you would expect a higher infection rate.
          • This is one of the most insightful posts I've read.

            No it's not. It's the typical goal post moving deflection we've seen since the beginning. If you think that's insightful, here's something to consider. South Korea has twice the population of the state of Florida (51.27 million vs 21.47 million). In one day Florida had more confirmed cases of covid-19 than South Korea has in its entire country (and Florida continues to have more daily cases than the entirety of South Korea).

            If we're going to use the deat

        • I'm completely surprised at the level of politicization of the Covid issue at this point.

          Surprised / not surprised. When you look at things like renewable energy where simple facts like "wind is cheaper and more flexible" become political this is norma.

          The MSM recently touted, breathlessly, that the US had the largest number of Coronavirus cases. While not fake news per-se,

          Or in other words, and why can't you just bring yourself to say it, "it's true".

          it's is a divisive statement meant to foster outrage at the cost of truth.

          The US has the 3rd largest population in the world, after China and India. China is not being candid with their numbers, and India has not done a lot of testing for various reasons such as the ones mentioned in the parent.

          The accusations against China had lots more weight a while ago. It's pretty clear that Coronavirus has not been leaking out of China as would happen if they still had problems. It's pretty clear that their navy is running around disrupting the world in a way that th

          • by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Even excess deaths can be misleading. Here in BC, there was a record number of deaths from opioid poisoning in Jume, 175, compared to 189 total deaths this year from the virus. Now in some ways the amount of toxic drugs and the number of users using alone is related to the pandemic but out of the 200+ excess deaths in June (in a population of 5.1 million), the majority were not corona deaths.

            • Even excess deaths can be misleading. Here in BC, there was a record number of deaths from opioid poisoning in Jume, 175, compared to 189 total deaths this year from the virus. Now in some ways the amount of toxic drugs and the number of users using alone is related to the pandemic but out of the 200+ excess deaths in June (in a population of 5.1 million), the majority were not corona deaths.

              The thing is that the "misleading" part will be something below 5% of those excess deaths. The "great thing" about a death (as a statistical event - it's still a tragedy, even if it's together with millions of other ones) is that it's a clear fixed event that happens to a real person and affects many others. It's something that you can go back to and check that it's been recorded correctly. If just one death is recorded incorrectly then many people around that death start making a big noise about it. The

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          The problem with the US is not the cases per million or deaths per million, it's the *current* new cases per million per day. Or positive test per administered test rate, if you prefer.

          The US did an okay job initially although it's a bit sad that the richest country on the planet seems to think it's some kind of success to be only the ninth worst. The concern now is that the US never did suppress its transmission rate much, and is currently going rather quickly in the wrong direction. Most of the countries

        • by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Deaths per million isn't the best statistic either as the highest death rates are in countries with the best medical systems, which result in more people being kept alive after strokes, heart attacks, cancers etc. These are the people dying from the virus here in Canada, people that would have already died without a good 1st world healthcare system.
          Here in BC, they've just done an anti-body test, using random blood samples. Seems only 1% of the population has been exposed to the virus, about 1/8th of those

        • by Tom ( 822 )

          Deaths per million citizens is a better metric, as it equalizes out the population and testing. On that score, the US is 9th in the world: 8 countries are worse than the US, including UK, Spain, France, and Sweden

          7-day moving average of new deaths:

          UK: under 100
          Spain: under 10
          France: around 20
          Sweden: under 10

          meanwhile, USA: more than 700

          Give it a few weeks. The USA has been steadily rising in ranks, even on the "per million population" charts.

          And don't forget that, except for France, all the countries you listed are ones that are generally considered examples of how not to deal with a pandemic (UK, Sweden) or were hit hard early on, before anyone was ready (Italy, Spain).

          Meanwhile, while the US is at 429 deaths per m

    • there's so many to choose from. You can reopen schools. Discourage mask wearing. Hold large political rallies indoors. The possibilities are truly endless.
  • It seems like we will now see what happens when the virus gets free spread among parts with limited healthcare.

    That is because while many parts of Indian cities are pretty high tech and otherwise advanced, huge parts are still small villages with basically no advancements.

    • You could just look at China for that. Oh wait, they just donâ(TM)t report anything.

      • Indeed China is very similar in structure with some highly developed cities and not developed at all areas.

        But there are two big differences: One is the China not reporting part that you said, the other is that China is totalitarian and can thus make sure people follow lock down orders by beating any who do not until they do and they have the procedures for controlling their population well planned.

        • the other is that China is totalitarian and can thus make sure people follow lock down orders by beating any who do not until they do

          I seriously doubt that even China has enough government goons to make 1.3B people behave when "behaving" could very well mean "starving" for many of them. I suspect that there are still more than a few Chinese who remember the famines of the '70s....

          • True enough. But there is also the issue that there is a long standing policy of suppressing any independent though in China. That means that most uppity people have already been picked up and "re-educated" in the past. That leads to a lesser number of people protesting until things get really bad. But as you say when the starvation level is reached, all bets are off.

        • by ghoul ( 157158 )

          Indian rural areas are pretty totalitarian. The District Magistrate is pretty much the single point of authority . India also has a centralized civil service system so a single policy can be applied across the country

    • by ghoul ( 157158 )

      India is big. Especially in the rural areas its pretty lightly populated. Its not like Western Europe where people live cheek to jowl so there is natural social distancing built in. Dont expect it to get as bad as France or Italy. e.g. With Caste prejudices people avoid touching things touched by others. This is more true of villages than cities so I expect it to spread more in the cities but the cities also have medical infrastructure.

      • Touching things was an early concern, it isn't something that has been found to be important in the transmission of COVID-19.

        I'm having to tell you think in July. Not May, when it was already old news. I suspect you still won't know even by September.

  • America's status as number one in the world is under threat.

    Trump is going to have to step up his game.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      This is a story on a topic that doesn't concern Trump even tangentially. Virus spread through South Asia from Singapore and later via direct international flights from China. India is neutral in the current US-China power struggle, and not even a party of most international economic agreements that are at the centre of the conflict.

      And if anything, China and India having more and more conflict as authorities of both countries see more and more reason to have an external conflict to divert attention from dom

      • America's status as number one in the world is under threat.
        Trump is going to have to step up his game.

        This is a story on a topic that doesn't concern Trump even tangentially.

        GP was making a joke about how Trump said we'd be tired of winning, and the only "race" we've "won" since he became president was leading the world in the number of Covid cases and deaths. Are you tired of winning yet?

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Oh, so Trump is the party that's guilty for US state officials poorly managing their response, like New York literally sending patients with infections back into care homes as if to ensure that as many elderly as possible get it and die?

          I guess some people actually do believe in omnipotent God Emperor Trump, rather than POTUS Trump who's powers within US are extremely limited by US constitution. Funny how most of these people tend to be his most vocal opponents. I wonder why.

          • Oh, so Trump is the party that's guilty for US state officials poorly managing their response

            Supposedly he's the president. Supposedly he's the leader of this country. Supposedly he should be doing whatever it takes to protect the citizens of this country. Instead, for three months, all we heard was it's no big deal. It will go away. It's only 15 people. We stopped it cold. The numbers will definitely be going down.

            When that didn't work, he abandoned the entire country, explicitly stating he bore no

            • by Tom ( 822 )

              Because that's what matters, how things look.

              Frankly speaking, he's just the most extreme example of an entire culture.

              Look at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Look at the PR and marketing departments of any major company. Look at the celebrity pages and magazines.

              Clearly, "how things look" is one of the major things our society is concerned with. It's a huge thing. For many people, it's the biggest thing, the one that matters.

          • by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Canada has a similar setup, healthcare is clearly a Provincial responsibility. Yet the Federal government has been involved in things like sourcing PPE, economic help to the people and small and large businesses, and perhaps most important, setting a good example. The PM self isolated early when his wife caught the virus, he wears a mask, and is generally supportive.
            The Federal government can borrow money much easier then the individual Provinces so it is important that economic aid comes from there, and if

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              There are many public statements from state executive leaders who are exceedingly vocally anti-Trump who went on record to thank federal executive and Trump for their exceptional assistance during the pandemic. This hypothesis stands on very thin ice.

              • by dryeo ( 100693 )

                Same in Canada, Alberta in particular was happy to receive the wage subsidies, even for the governing party, before reverting to attacking the Federal government.
                Note during the worst times, they bit their lip and said thank you. Meanwhile they're at war with their Doctors during a pandemic, investing more money in pipelines then supporting their people. The only difference is it is inverted from America, Alberta is very right wing and considers the centralist Feds to be too far left wing. The other differe

                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  >doing the best to divide the country during a crisis instead of trying to unite it.

                  Last I checked, Trump did the damnest to try to unite people, by among other things doing those daily addresses. Remember what media did when that happened?

                  "We can't let Trump say things directly to the people! His approval numbers are skyrocketing when he does that! We need to stop airing those and have our middlemen get control of the narrative!"

                  And then, division stopped being reduced and started to increase. You are b

                  • by dryeo ( 100693 )

                    I heard some of those messages by Trump, sure didn't sound uniting, at that looked like he just wanted the spot light.
                    Sometimes the best leadership is standing in the background and letting the most qualified person take charge.
                    It's how it has been working in my Province, we have a highly qualified head of the health department, Dr Bonnie Henry, who does most of the communicating, with the Minister of Health standing behind her and helping answer questions when it becomes political and the Premier only show

                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      How do I know that you lying?

                      You wrote those two sentences one immediately following another:

                      >I heard some of those messages by Trump, sure didn't sound uniting, at that looked like he just wanted the spot light.
                      >Sometimes the best leadership is standing in the background and letting the most qualified person take charge.

                      If you actually did watch the live shows, that was pretty much his thing. He'd walk in with a few experts. Start by giving introductions and points about to be raised. Cede podium to

                    • by dryeo ( 100693 )

                      I said heard some of his talks, not saw all (or any) of his talks. Quite possible I missed some of the early ones before he started threatening some States with no PPE and various of other shit. He's a foreign President, I sure don't follow him that much, never liked reality TV or Politicians.
                      Anyways, if he started out doing such a good job, why did he stop?

                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      He didn't. Mainstream media stopped broadcasting those shows. Because his ratings started climbing to best he ever had, and when those speeches were broadcast, they had incredible ratings. While mass media shows built on "let's talk about what Trump said today" started crashing hard, because they continued the narrative spinning. Which doesn't work if people actually saw what he was talking about before the spindoctors get to them to tell them "what he actually said".

                      Common theme on blue checkmark twitter w

                    • by dryeo ( 100693 )

                      Did Fox really stop showing Trumps broadcasts?

                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Can't remember, but as I recall, pretty much everyone did. Fox may have been the only outlier, but the entire point behind them was that everyone gets the most up-to-date information straight from the experts from their favourite news channel.

                      So when most channels walked out after a few weeks, they tried continuing for a few more and it just didn't serve the purpose in media blackout any more.

                    • by dryeo ( 100693 )

                      Likely just wasn't pulling in the ratings. As far as I know, it is the same here, you pretty well just get highlights when something interesting happened, at least on the commercial networks. Doesn't stop the daily updates, most of the time the feds didn't have much to say once we got into the pandemic, excepting things like border controls, economic aid, occasional modeling stuff and research grants, which do get reported.

                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Like I said, it was shattering ratings. This was not in doubt, ever. It was some of the most popular TV content ever created throughout the time it was aired. Turns out that when you're in a middle of pandemic, people actually want to hear straight from the experts if you make it easy enough for them, like just push it live to their TV from their favourite news channel. It bruised a lot of "people are stupid, they need me to explain to them what was actually said" egoes.

                      The problem was that it was destroyin

          • Freak out! This is what happens to hateful minds after months of social isolation. LOL

  • by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Friday July 17, 2020 @03:21PM (#60301087) Journal
    This pandemic has shown me how bad people with numbers. The number of cases is meaningless to compare locations. You want to compare population proportion, or per capita COVID-19 cases.

    You can't compare the US total to any single country in Europe, because the US has about the same population as all of Europe combined. (Although, the US is still pretty bad no matter how you look at it) We also need to be careful comparing India to other countries because it has the second largest population in the world. [wikipedia.org] With a population that large, of course they are going to have a lot of cases! India isn't an anomaly, but China is!

    I see a lot of reports about how bad California's COVID numbers are, comparing them to Florida. However, California has roughly twice the population as Florida, so it's actually half as bad as it seems. Of course, Wyoming always looks great, because the population is tiny.

    Stop posting these meaningless stories everywhere. Post meaningful figures, like per capita data, and positivity rates, [jhu.edu] that tell us if an area has enough testing capacity to manage the outbreak (among other things).
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Even with percentages instead of total, I'm not sure "cases" is a good metric because it depends on how widespread testing is done and who takes the tests. For example, cities probably have higher rates, due to closer proximity, such that if most of the testing is done in cities, you'll get a different answer than testing more in rural areas.

      Deaths per 10k of population may be more telling, but is a lagging statistic, being it takes roughly a month to succumb. ICU's occupied per total may be a more practica

      • I completely agree. When I look at the data, I notice a bell shaped curve, where medium income countries seem to have the most cases. I hypothesize that this is because those countries have the resources to test, but no additional resources to combat the virus. Poorer countries don't have the resources to test, and therefore seem to have few cases. This is where test positivity rate is useful.

        Per capita cases surely is not the only way to look at the data. Nor do I claim it to be the best. However,
      • Even with percentages instead of total, I'm not sure "cases" is a good metric because it depends on how widespread testing is done and who takes the tests. For example, cities probably have higher rates, due to closer proximity, such that if most of the testing is done in cities, you'll get a different answer than testing more in rural areas.

        Deaths per 10k of population may be more telling, but is a lagging statistic, being it takes roughly a month to succumb. ICU's occupied per total may be a more practical metric because it can suggest if hospitals are about to get swamped, hurting medical care in general.

        Have you looked at the state of Georgia numbers? You're more likely to catch COVID by gathering with friends / family in some of the more rural counties than you are in the cities? There are certainly more cases in the urban counties but the cases per capita are insane in some of the more rural counties. The hospitals that are struggling in that state are mostly rural.

      • by ghoul ( 157158 )

        Deaths is a more accurate but lagging statistic. The most accurate and usable statistic is test positivity- out of every 100 tests done how many are coming back positive.

        • out of every 100 tests done how many are coming back positive.

          Oddly enough, there's a site for that [jhu.edu]

          Georgia, the state whose governor is suing the mayor of Atlanta because the mayor has ordered masks be worn whereas the governor says they don't have to be, has a 15.5% positive rate (as of this posting). Florida, from whence an untold number of memes come from, has an 18.1% positive rate. Texas is at 16.1%. Alabama at 16.6%.

          For comparison, New York is at 1.2%, New Jersey at 1.4%, Maryland at 5.3%. And th

          • by tomhath ( 637240 )

            Florida, from whence an untold number of memes come from, has an 18.1% positive rate.

            Ah yes, Florida. Where several labs were caught only reporting positive tests, so we have no idea what the actual rate is. We also don't know what goes into the decision of whether or not to test. Symptoms? Or test because someone asks to be tested? There is no consistency.

            • Ah yes, Florida. Where several labs were caught only reporting positive tests, so we have no idea what the actual rate is.

              At one time Florida had a positivity rate of ~2.5%. If labs reporting only positive tests were a widespread problem, they would never be able to achieve that. If that doesn't convince you, look at the data broken down by laboratory in this report [state.fl.us] and decide for yourself. It's on page 26.

            • Where several labs were caught only reporting positive tests, so we have no idea what the actual rate is.

              It's not the labs' responsibility to report negative cases. They report the positive cases so those can be tracked. It's the duty of the submitters, those providing the total amount of tests, to provide the negative portion so a percentage can be obtained. No one cares about the negatives. It's the positives they're worried about because that determines how widespread the infections are.

              We also don't

            • by ghoul ( 157158 )

              The nice thing about test positivity number is - IT DOES NOT MATTER- what criteria is used to decide to test. If the positivity number is going down you are testing enough and also doing other things right. if you are not the test positivity number will keep going up. And if noone is reporting the negative tests the positivity number will simply shoot up and someone will investigate and then make sure the negatives get reported. So if we just concentrate on this number it is a good way of telling if we are

      • ICU's occupied per total may be a more practical metric because it can suggest if hospitals are about to get swamped, hurting medical care in general.

        Based on that, Arizona and Texas are in the shits because they've requested refrigerated trucks [cbsnews.com] to hold the dead bodies.

        As for ICU beds available, again, Arizona and Texas, as well as Florida, are screwed. This site has a map [sun-sentinel.com] showing the percentage of ICU beds occupied in Florida. As of the 13th, Arizona had 90% of its ICU beds in use [azcentral.com] (which includes all ICU

    • This hotspot map [nytimes.com] of the US is actually useful. It shows per capita COVID-19 cases over the past 7 days. (remember to block cookies for the New York Times)

      Here is a similar map for the world. [nytimes.com] However, be careful! Some countries likely have limited testing, which makes their COVID case count appear much lower!
    • by ghoul ( 157158 )

      Actually the raw numbers are useless as if you dont test you will have 0 cases to report. Look at Mexico - small number of cases but high number of deaths. They are basically not testing but deaths are harder to hide.

      What matters is really the positivity ratio. For every 100 tests you do how many are coming back positive. That is the real measure of how widespread the cases are and if cases are going down or up.

      India positivity rate is still lower than US, most of Western Europe so it still has a chance to

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Except that India has already said they've given up on trying to shut down the spread. It was too harmful to their economy. Their strategy is damage control now.

        By almost any meaningful metric India isn't too bad. But the direction they're going, combined with their announced policy, is pretty ominous.

        • is pretty ominous.

          This is pretty much the death knell for any fish left in the Ganges, that is for sure.

    • This pandemic has shown me how bad people with numbers. The number of cases is meaningless to compare locations. You want to compare population proportion, or per capita COVID-19 cases.

      The absolute number of cases is not meaningless, but as you suggest should be considered with other metrics. Per capita cases is one. However, even more important are the rate of increase of cases (flattening the curve has already faded from the public consciousness), the percentage of positive tests, and the rate of increase in deaths.

      • However, even more important are the rate of increase of cases (flattening the curve has already faded from the public consciousness), the percentage of positive tests, and the rate of increase in deaths.

        I have another post discussing the rate of change metric down the page. In summary, rates of change tend to magnify noise in data. Careful data processing needs to be performed to make sure it's not misleading. For example, the rate of change always shows a spike on Tuesdays, because public health officials take Sunday off, and there is a one day lag in reporting results.

        Deaths have a long lag time. If we wait for deaths to increase, we have waited about a month too long to act!

        I mention test positi

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      You do realize that India and China account for 40% of the world population, right? So by raw numbers alone, it should be China, India and then the US (the three most populous countries in the world).

      Ignoring the differences in testing regimes and everything else, that is. The US should NOT be number one at all, because at 300-odd million people, it's close to 1/5th the population of China and India (who have roughly 20% of the world population each or somewhere around 2.8-2.9B people combined. The US has o

      • I think we're in agreement on this, and I'm confused by your post. Perhaps my original post wasn't worded clearly. Your point is exactly the point I was trying to make.
      • You do realize that India and China account for 40% of the world population, right? So by raw numbers alone, it should be China, India and then the US (the three most populous countries in the world).

        My point is, the raw number is meaningless without the population. The way you are doing this analysis is effectively calculating per capita COVID cases. But the raw number of cases, with no information about the population, is meaningless.

      • by dryeo ( 100693 )

        One difference is it is at an earlier stage in India, hate to see the numbers in a month or 2. China is also authoritarian enough to enforce testing and lock downs to keep it under control.

    • I see a lot of reports about how bad California's COVID numbers are, comparing them to Florida. However, California has roughly twice the population as Florida, so it's actually half as bad as it seems.

      Florida is less than half the population of South Korea yet has more daily covid cases than South Korea has reported in its entirety. Using your logic, Florida is orders of magnitude worse than South Korea.

    • by Tom ( 822 )

      Yes and no.

      You need to look at both figures. Absolute numbers are important because they inform you about things like growth rate, which a percentage figure would hide neatly, especially at low numbers.

      Absolute numbers are also the thing to track during the early phase of a spread, where the population limit isn't a ceiling. An epidemic starting from a single point or a few isolated points will spread at the same speed irrespective of the total population, until it essentially hits the border.

      Once the virus

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday July 17, 2020 @03:26PM (#60301111)

    Every country has was over a million Covid cases, it's just a matter of how many each has found so far. The "number of cases" figure is utterly meaningless at this point, especially as now death tolls greatly diverge from number of cases.

    Interestingly, Worldometer shows India has 654k *recovered* cases, with 358k active [worldometers.info], so it sure seems like they are trying to scare you a lot with this "million" number when a vast number of those are already recovered.

    On top of that, Worldometer also shows India has just 19 deaths per million, which is vastly better than most other countries. So they are still doing quite well compared to just about anyone else, even having previously had a lot of infections.

    There are some facts for you all, you may got back to your unreasonable panic now.

    • Many states in the US are counting every positive test as a new/separate case. If you test positive and are asymptomatic then get tested again 2 or 3 times until one comes back negative (required to return to work) they count that as 3 or 4 "cases". None of the data can be trusted.

      • Many states in the US are counting every positive test as a new/separate case. If you test positive and are asymptomatic then get tested again 2 or 3 times until one comes back negative (required to return to work) they count that as 3 or 4 "cases". None of the data can be trusted.

        States are tracking both. The problem is that people are making it political and using the number they like to make their case (usually wrong). So don't make claims like "None of the data can be trusted." because that's just not true.

        Hint: If the data comes from the CDC its probably pretty damn close. If the data comes from Trump, it's most likely manipulated.

        • In Louisiana all they report are "new cases" and it turns out that "new cases" actually means the same people testing positive multiple times before a test comes back positive. One Parish had to put out an announcement saying not to panic when the state reported their cases doubled when in fact it was the same group of positives being tested repeatedly, that's the only reason we know its happening. This should be a huge scandal but media is refusing to report it.

      • Many states in the US are counting every positive test as a new/separate case. If you test positive and are asymptomatic then get tested again 2 or 3 times until one comes back negative (required to return to work) they count that as 3 or 4 "cases".

        This is the dumb shit you end up thinking you "know about" when you're aliterate. It starts out, Billy-Bob says, "Them thar demo-crat pol-i-ticians probably don't even know that some of the people get tested more than once."

        Then Wilbur says, "They prob-ly do that on porpoise!"

        Jimmy chimes in, "They do that so they can get paid for each test!" And everybody believes it now, because she used to work in the collections department at a hospital in the big si-tay.

        So Barney goes home and says, "Today I learned th

        • What I posted is happening exactly as I said. Here is a release from Red River Parish's Office of Homeland Security explaining that their number of cases did not double overnight, instead the state Dept. of Hospitals is counting each positive test from the same individuals as separate cases.

          https://www.facebook.com/redri... [facebook.com]

          You can draw your own conclusions as to why this is happening and how many other states are inflating their numbers the same way.

          • This is the dumb shit you end up thinking you "know about" when you're aliterate.

            And then you link to facebook. LOL

            That's what it means to be aliterate; you can't read information, but you can scan things you believe are communications from loved ones. So facebook has a window to your soul, and you can't fact-check anything.

            • It's their OFFICIAL Facebook page jackass. That's where their Homeland Security Office makes announcements to the public so they'll be seen quickly. Who's aliterate?

    • by Tom ( 822 )

      I'm looking at the same numbers as you, and read them differently.

      The growth curve for India is a textbook example of exponential growth and if it doesn't scare you, then you're ignorant of basic math.

      Deaths are lagging behind cases, and since Italy et al we've learnt that we need testing, testing, testing.

      The outbreak in India isn't contained and has not yet reached the entire country. "per million" is a meaningless figure if many of those millions are - currently - entirely outside of the scope. Meanwhile

      • I'm looking at the same numbers as you, and read them differently.

        Yes, "wrong".

        The growth curve for India is a textbook example of exponential growth

        Because your mind is clouded by looking at meaningless data, and ignoring the only figure that actually means anything - deaths. That chart is not exponential. In fact the growth is cases being exponential while the death rate is not, should show you all by itself that there is vastly less of a problem than you are seeming to suggest.

        What you, and others, ca

        • by Tom ( 822 )

          the only figure that actually means anything - deaths

          Says who?

          There is increasing evidence that survivors suffer long-term consequences, possibly permanent damage in some cases.

          We also know for a fact that the number of cases does matter a great deal because we can keep mortality rates down as long as we have ICU beds available. Once hospitals are overwhelmed, the death rates skyrocket.

          So no, absolutely no, deaths is not the only figure that "means anything".

          What you, and others, cannot seem to grasp is that since the total REAL case count is unknown, the chart listing number of cases is simply a lie

          Most of us have an IQ above 100, so we fully understand that the number given is the number of KNOWN c

  • A lot of people are saying this number doesn't matter, and I get their point. OTOH, you can't necessarily use the lower per-capita death rate and/or case rate to paint a rosy picture for India.

    Take a look at their current rate of increase. It's been over 3% for the last week. Hospitalization and death rates lag positive rates by a few weeks. India's increase rate is faster than California's, although you have to assume comparable testing--a big assumption. Regardless, over 3% a day is not good for anyb

    • Yes, rate of increase is useful for extrapolation, it allow us to make heath decisions sooner than we would otherwise. Just like the derivative term in a PID controller. However, we must be careful that anytime we calculate a differential/rate of change, we magnify noise in our data.

      For example, if you were to look at the COVID data for the July 4th weekend in the US, you would notice a sudden drop in the rate of change in COVID-19 cases. However, the following week would show a huge spike! This is be
  • Odds are, however, that he who has the cash will have the bed.

  • i wonder when Africa will rear its head or is it actually too hot and too much UV there so it will be spared ?
  • Compared to other countries https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

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