Probably already discussed, but…
Why didn’t it get this bad in India a lot sooner?
I recall that India had a SEVERE lockdown around the beginning (March 2020). “No one out of their homes” kind of deal.
Why, there is even a wiki page:
But their lockdown is generally not credited with their early success. In fact, their draconian lockdown led to a lot of “forced migration” of people traveling to get home.
What I’m reading is that their early success was thought to be due to a combination of a relatively young population and prior exposure to related coronaviruses, leaving a lot of Indians with some immunity. Also, Indians are outdoors a lot, which might be helpful. The new explosion in cases and deaths (including among the relatively young) is thought to be driven by new, more virulent variants.
Well, its official that the Indian variant is very likely bad. We are looking at an R0 value in the 4-6 range given the comparisons with the Kent variant.
From SAGE (UK):
There is a “realistic possibility” that the Indian coronavirus variant could be as much as “50% more transmissible” than the Kent strain, the Scientific Advisory Group for emergencies (Sage) has said.
The minutes of the meeting between the government’s scientific advisers on Thursday said that it is “highly likely that this variant is more transmissible than B.1.1.7 (high confidence), and it is a realistic possibility that it is as much as 50% more transmissible”, PA reports.
It did puzzle me why it took India this long to get to this point.
Also, whatever happened to Brazil? Did they somehow contain it?
In Brazil? No.
But the P.1 variant there seems to be less transmissible.
We have:
- Kent variant
- South Africa variant
- Brazil variant
- Indian variant
In the UK, but we are mostly seeing the Indian one growing as a % of total infections. Its still isolated now to heavy-Indian background neighbourhoods, so its linked to travel. This could change quickly which is why they are now surge vaccinating all over 18s in those areas.
We used to have a poster on actuarial outpost from Kent.
He is my evil twin.
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jaskent
um
:yikes:
Hmm, it don’t see anything i love to replace that…
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Now I’m reading reports that we may not reach herd immunity. That’s pulling the carpet out from under me in terms of what I was expecting. I’m all about remaining vigilant and staying lockdown until everyone’s vaccinated, the virus can’t transmit, and we’re left with an annual shot in the arm. If that’s not the end game here, I don’t see anything left that’s not life/society altering.
I mean the first message was “socially distance/lockdown to flatten the curve”, which was a probably unintentional bait and switch.
I think accepting that we’re never getting COVID risk to 0% will be something people will be forced to accept, slowly.
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I don’t know if it was intended as a bait & switch. I just think that circumstances played out differently than what leaders hoped.
And they were working with a lot of unknowns so I think we have to extend them some grace. They had to make decisions with incomplete knowledge with no luxury to wait for better intel. With hospitals and morgues overflowing they really were in a serious crisis.
But your second paragraph is spot on.
That’s fair, I’ve added “probably unintentional” to the bait and switch bit haha
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That’s mostly because a large fraction of our herd has decided they don’t want to be vaccinated.
But I think, even so, we can drive covid to low enough levels that life can be mostly normal for the vaccinated. If you go to a wedding with your vaccine-denying branch of the family, you might want to wait two weeks before visiting your immune compromised elder relative, but otherwise you probably won’t risk much more than an unpleasant cold.