The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published officially. Most people died at homes due to them being rural and all hospitals working at capacity.
At government hospitals, you have to be tested and be covid positive to be listed as covid death.
Private hospitals in rural areas simply don't send the stats back.
I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives.
They said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere and this is probably the price to pay for letting Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies. The strain has escaped India and we don't know how it will affect the rest of the world.
All his political life, him and his supporters cried for statues and temples and now they stand on the ashes of million dead people and all they can hear is a deafening silence of their gods.
> I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives.
I am sorry for the losses you and your friends have experienced. I came here to provide a contrarian view just so that the readers here do not get a skewed view of what is going on.
I agree with you that the actual deaths are at least 10X and possibly 100X more than the official numbers. But nobody in my family has been tested positive with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19 or any other illness in the last 2 years. I know many friends and colleagues too whose entire families have been safe in this pandemic. There are a few who have lost a family member to COVID-19. Some of them got infected and recovered. But most of the people in my circle and their families are safe.
>But nobody in my family has been tested positive with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19 or any other illness in the last 2 years.
My immediate family could quarantine because we are relatively well off. We can order online and most of our jobs are tech as well.
Other friends and families including doctors can't afford to stay locked down.
The first wave was withering down, life was returning back to normal. All modi had to do was to sit down and shut up. But he thought his getting elected was more important so he organized election rallies and let the kumbh mela happen with 12 million people gathering.
There's a big difference in prevalence/spread of covid across economic classes. Without knowing which one you belong to, this is not a great data point.
Ganeshkrishnan said he didn't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives. He didn't say such families didn't exist, just that he didn't know any. It is valuable to provide information that such families do exist.
> Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies.
In terms of number of cases the worst affected are Karnataka and Maharashtra[0] which had neither Kumbh Mela nor election rallies. Neither did other badly affected states like Delhi. Kumbh Mela in fact started when the "second wave" was already well entrenched.
Also, long after Kumbh Mela was truncated and the election rallies got over - and even at the height of the second wave - people were still blowing social distancing norms to smithereens at farmers rallies [1] and Ramzan/Eid celebrations[2].
Things are pretty bad. I was talking to a colleague of mine who lost his Dad to COVID in Delhi and he said the wait time at the crematorium was super long. He found one guy was who in queue with bodies of both his parents for almost 18 hours. Given the situation, relatives are reluctant or unable to help so this guy just sat with the bodies all alone.
The situation is quite sad, and I am happy you and your family are fine as you mentioned in your other comment. I am quite sure you can do without spreading FUD here though.
If you have data to back up the 10-100x claim, please share it.
There has been undercounting in most countries and India having largely poor infra you would expect it to be higher there. The data has been analysed by a lot of experts and most are putting the real count between 2-3x. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1390536686635978752?s=...
The 10x count is comparing death certificates with official counts; you are right.
And a significant portion of the families especially low income families don't even get death certificates. There were people that died and their fatality will never be recorded anywhere anytime.
> With due respect, our entire country is experiencing fear, uncertainty and certainly despair. Giving voice to it is not unreasonable.
I totally respect and understand that. It is just that hyperbolic figures just lead to flame wars and I would rather not have it here. That's why I asked them to back it up with statistical analysis they are relying on.
Do you have any other source other than the blog you linked? I remember from Wikipedia source discussions, that the site is not a good source for news reporting, so I am going to skip opening their article.
You're right that it isn't 10x everywhere. India as a whole is probably 3-5x, but the point that it is 10-100x in the very worst areas is also true. Some places in UP and Bihar are reporting no COVID deaths at all. People are dying of 'cough and fever'
Finally, at a pan India level, while the government refuses to count deaths accurately, it has done sero-surveys. Those have consistently shown antibodies in 25-60% of the population (before this new wave) with the higher figures reported from poorer denser areas.
As of now, even after the new wave, official figures say about 2% of our population has been infected.
Did you even read the article? The article reports work done by an unrelated journalist who compared the death certificates issued during the same periods in 2020 and 2021 to estimate the number of excess deaths, which was 15x the number of covid-19 deaths reported by the government during the period.
There is a lot of evidence that the death toll in India is an order of magnitude higher:
From this very article:
"He said officially 196 people had died from the virus in Kanpur between 16 April and 5 May, but the data from seven crematoriums showed nearly 8,000 cremations."
The study that you have linked to above has primarily focused on western countries, where the process of reporting and recording of deaths is much better than in India.
I think their analysis is also using the total pronounced deaths to Covid deaths and studying the delta from previous years, the same as the tweet you linked.
The figures seem higher in the tweet, I am guessing we will have more clarity on this once the situation settles down a bit and more data can be aggregated.
>If you have data to back up the 10-100x claim, please share it.
15x more death certificates issued.
10x lower death per million wrt comparable countries
Much more rural deaths in second wave which were totally not counted.
The "daily bhaskar" did an investigative report in couple of districts and said it was 20-40x.
I am not trying to fear monger. Just obey the lockdown, use the mask and get the vaccines. And when things return to normal focus on development instead of egoistical statues and temples.
Sorry not true, there were multiple events that led to this including a lack of social distancing at the Farmers Protest. The EC requested digital rallies but it was the opposition parties that blocked that happening, not Modis party. The Kumbh happened after the variant of the Chinese virus was discovered. In between many festivities continued like Ramadan etc.
I'm sorry to hear that. The number of cases has been difficult to compare between countries since everyone measures differently but the number of deaths are in many countries extremely accurate and even though it differs a bit each year it still gives a good measure of how bad it is.
Do you know if this is reported and compiled accurate in India?
I know around 14 people that died of covid. None of them were listed in the covid deaths.
>logic has left the chat
Instead of resorting to silly childish taunts, I would appreciate you refute my sentence of why building statues and temples was more necessary than building hospitals or schools?
Building statues is quite normal all over the world, the opposition party did this a lot with Mayawati, nothing to do with the BJP, the BJP only built one of a historical figure (Sardar Patel) which generate huge amounts of Tourism. Busts exist all over the UK, and in America. Most temples are donated from private funds, same as building Mosques, Gurudwaras or Churches.
>I know around 14 people that died of covid. None of them were listed in the covid deaths.
And you're going to compare 1.4bi people based on 100 people you interact with? Confirmation bias I'd say, numbers are higher but stating, yolo, 10x-100x is nothing but a Yellow Press comment.
>Instead of resorting to silly childish taunt
Says the person who jumps the gun trying to sound dramatic instead of any solid numbers to back their claim, all stating, "Maybe".
>why building statues and temples was more necessary than building hospitals or schools?
Ever heard of tourism? You can't run a country just by spending money, you need to spend money to earn money in long term too.
Neither statement us true. Belgium infamously had a really bad covid death toll because they decided early on to attribute unknown causes to covid.
Then the excess mortality numbers came in and every country had a ton of mysterious and unexplained excess mortality (you know, rampant covid)… except Belgium where the numbers tracked.
I'm just trying to understand how insensitive it is to comment on a thread where OP is clearly someone who has either suffered loss or has an entire network suffering loss, and then go full strong systemiser and ask for a reference.
The absurdity of asking is even stronger when almost any understanding of the situation on the ground in India would mean an understanding that there is widespread and systemic problems with data collection in India, essentially as there has been throughout the pandemic globally, reflecting the difficulty of determining infection rates, CFR vs IFR and deaths in a testing scarcity environment.
I don't know for sure but I would anticipate that there is a good chance that many indian deaths are never registered which would make other post pandemic methods of determining true 'excess mortality' very difficult.
The particular irony in this whole post extending from your question being that the BBC itself, in the linked article, in the second paragraph, states that 'experts say the real death toll is several times higher'.
Now that isn't your 1-2 magnitudes but you don't have to travel far from there to get those types of sources, but depending on how strong-systemiser you go on requiring hard numbers, the fact is no-one will ever know because no one is counting
So we should accept any numbers thrown out as long as the person is sufficiently bereaved? I don't even think their numbers are wrong but that's a silly concept. I am sorry for their, and everyone's, losses, but that doesn't give a liscense to claim anything unchallenged.
Of course not. But what does it add to the conversation in what is manifestly an out of control situation with terrible data all round. How do you respond to that when there are no good authorative sources, except Doctors reports, oxygen stockpiling, and lack of cremation space to the point that trees in parks are being cut down to burn bodies?
A lot of comments that appear neutral here are actually political btw. Saying that deaths are undercounted or citing foreign media is seen as "anti national" now within India.
Everything regarding COVID is political which is absurd. I'm not indian or have any indian family but I am a Doctor and most of my lines of data come from the medical community reporting back
That doesn't mean "here's why I blame COVID on my political opponents, AKA the evil-doers", is an interesting or useful start to a discussion. If it is, the counterpoint about protests is equally valid.
What do feeling have to do with facts. COVID has at most 1% mortality rate. It hasn't been shown to significantly increase yearly mortality rate. About the same number of people are dying as every year. The Ganges is a large river. The claim is a hyperbolic exaggeration.
Feeling doesn't have anything to do with facts, as I pointed out to the other poster.
However in a situation with very little in the way of actual verifiable facts, what is someone actually asking for in terms of something that will support the evidence? What is a source in this environment? And at various thresholds of that, I will give you many sources (mostly medical) that will support 1-2 orders of magnitude increase.
The article itself says only 196 people died in Kanpur during a 3 week period, but there were 8,000 cremations (obviously not all covid related, and without a baseline I can't tell you where this sits, but there is an implied increase given the other statements about lack of cremation space)
I would also challenge your definition of 'significant'.
In the US last year, there was a 20% increase in excess deaths (0). Having an extra 20% of humans die in your country counts, I think, as significant.
Now granted it really depends on whether you are talking about India, the US, or the rest of the world but your statement is demonstrably false - in a country with good data, there were an extra 20% of humans dying last year; in a country with terrible data with an out of control epidemic and no way for people to isolate safely, the facts are we will probably never know what the true deaths are but if you're saying (and here a couple of things don't compute) about the same number of people are dying every year (?in India? how do you know that in the absence of data? and generally death statistics take several months to become solid) and the Ganges is a large river, are these two statements logically linked? And how?
What you say is 'Mostly' true - in a bad flu season the medical community has a name for it, clearing out the dead wood.
But 'Mostly', when scaled to really large numbers, is still a scarily large number.
And Mostly, in this instance, is still a long way from the truth.
First, there is a significantly increased risk of dying beyond the first 30 days of illness (ie when many people have recovered) [0]
Beyond the first 30 days of illness, individuals with COVID-19 had an increased risk of death (hazard ratio of 1.59 (1.46–1.73)). We also estimated the adjusted excess burden of death due to COVID-19 per 1,000 persons at 6 months on the basis of the difference between the estimated incidence rate in individuals with COVID-19 and all VHA users. The excess death was estimated at 8.39 (7.09–9.58) per 1,000 patients with COVID-19 at 6 months. Individuals with COVID-19 had a higher risk of requiring outpatient care (hazard ratio of 1.20 (1.19–1.21)), at an excess burden of 33.22 (30.89–35.58; all excess burdens are given per 1,000 patients with COVID-19 at 6 months) and at a greater frequency of 0.47 (0.44–0.49) additional encounters every 30 days
Secondly, it is not just death that is a concern (and again i'll stress that really, a lot of young people, through sheer weight of numbers, are dying of this. Huge number of infection, huge number of death, even at <1% CFR).
It's long term morbidity.
Your risk of death may be less than 1%, but your risk of hospitalisation may be 5-10% depending on your comorbidities and age.
A person admitted to hospital and requiring ICU support and ventilation may have a 4-6 week hospital stay during which they lose 30% of their muscle mass.
Once they come out of hospital, they need to learn to walk and eat again and go to Rehab for a couple of months.
What would that do to your life?
> What do feeling have to do with facts. COVID has at most 1% mortality rate.
The basis for this is data from places with at least some level of health care. From the reports I'm hearing, a lot of India's rural population is not making it medical care.
Also, worth mentioning that 1% of India's population is 13.8 million people.
1% of those that get the disease. Not everyone.
I would expect the average Indian to fare better than the average American due to the population being younger.
Some stats on age and comorbidities.
It's a poor country and tests aren't free, that alone will give you an under count. Throw in the current crises, the positivity rate and all the other challenges of a developing nation and 10x is not at all surprising.
Accurate numbers are a privilege of wealthy nations and even they struggled.
FWIW, even in normal times it's fairly common to "bury" dead people by putting them in Ganges. (Cremation is preferred, but can be prohibitively expensive for the poor.) Varanasi in particular is notorious for this.
For avoidance of doubt, it's clear that situation right now is much worse than usual, but it's also not quite as unusual as if we had bodies floating down (say) the Hudson or Thames.
It is not common on this scale. 2 to 3 magnitude more bodies are floating in rivers. So while 1 body in 15 days is 'common' it is not same as 15 bodies a day.
> But many communities follow what is known as "Jal Pravah" - the practice of floating in the river the bodies of children, unwed girls, or those who die from infectious diseases or snake bites.
> Many poor people also cannot afford cremation, and so they wrap the body in white muslin and push it into the water. Sometimes, the bodies are tied to stones to ensure they remain submerged, but as many are floated without weights. In normal times, corpses floating in the Ganges are not an uncommon sight.
You can also find plenty of gruesome footage of decomposing corpses in the Ganges near Varanasi, shot by recent tourists.
> Traditionally, Hindus cremate their dead. But many communities follow what is known as "Jal Pravah" - the practice of floating in the river the bodies of children, unwed girls, or those who die from infectious diseases or snake bites.
> Many poor people also cannot afford cremation, and so they wrap the body in white muslin and push it into the water. Sometimes, the bodies are tied to stones to ensure they remain submerged, but as many are floated without weights. In normal times, corpses floating in the Ganges are not an uncommon sight.
Exactly, they were an ancient practice. while i wouldn't be surprised to see it practiced in remote and poor places, it would've been a negligible minority before COVID-19 times. This framing is just narrative mitigation/down-playing of the magnitude. (May be not deliberately, just misinformation from the sources, but nevertheless.)
It’s clear that the official numbers are almost an order of magnitude out vs countries that do more testing (e.g. US).
If you take the official global average death rate of 2% and apply it to India’s case count you’ll get roughly double the number of officially reported deaths.
The news coming out of India is tragic and given the lack of infrastructure in rural areas and the shortage of medical supplies we keep hearing about the “1 order magnitude out” is starting to look like a lower bound.
What is the best way for someone in the US to donate to help with the situation in India? I'm not Indian so I don't know much about charities in India but news like this is just heartbreaking and I want to do my minuscule part in helping.
Whatever you do, do not donate to the PM Cares Fund. It's transaction is supposed to be open to the public, but it is not. Requests made to Right To Information Act was denied every time. So please stay away from it.
Here are some suggestions-
1. Gunj - active in very rural and remote areas
2. Akshaya Patra - currently involved in feeding the poorest of the poor
3. Ramakrishna Mission - Religious organization but honest as hell in serving those in need
4. Red Volunteers - They are volunteers from the Communist Party doing amazing work, as is covered in media and seen by me, but they don't have a centralized payments system
5. CM funds of some states are tranparent, but I would stay away. States like West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Odisha come to mind.
I would suggest Ramakrishna Misiion and Akshaya Patra as I have seen their work first hand. And you would find it easy to donate to them.
I am irreligious and athiest. But I still trust Ramakrishna Mission and I think you can specify that you don't want your money spent on religious activities.
Just so you know, Akshaya Patra is also part of ISKCON, the Harekrishna people in the US. They are headquartered not far from my home, and they are trustable in this regard.
Hi. My state has a new chief minister who has been doing amazing work on Covid. A third wave is predicted in india in September and he's doing rapid work to buy 3.5 crore vaccines before it hits. I have great faith in his work. If you can donate to his state fund that would be amazing. Here is some news coverage about it -- https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/donations-...
Avoid donating to PM CARES FUND. It is a private entity, not a government fund, that has collected almost 2B$ and as far as I can tell had spent only 30M$ to set up a couple of oxygen plants, most of which are not functional.
Another charity I would avoid is Sewa international, which is the charity arm of right wing, nationalist and militant organization RSS. Indias current party in power BJP is an offshoot of RSS.
NIA is set up to investigate political opponents by the BJP. NIA's investigation is simple retaliation for humanitarian support provided by Khalsa aid to farmers protesting all over India.
THIS. I won't speculate where the money goes. But this fund is held in a secret account, no authority is allowed to audit and no one is allowed to inquire where the money is being spent.
Hello! I run a non profit called Enrich Lives Foundation in Mumbai and we're doing COVID relief work since day one of the pandemic. We distribute food, cooked meals and grocery kits to the most needy. We also are setting up COVID care centers and mobile health clinics. You can donate directly via GiveIndia at www.tinyurl.com/Donate2ELF
In my day job I also work as an impact investment professional. We run this NGO completely transparently and all donations go towards relief directly, we are completely volunteer run. I'm on Twitter @ShievaniU and would be happy to personally answer any of your queries.
It's getting harder to get an empty vaccine slot. I think there is a huge shortage of vaccines in my state (UP). Fortunately, I got my first shot of vaccine yesterday. At the vaccination center, I saw people breaking the line, taking pictures of their relatives getting the vaccine, and in general not maintaining a safe distance. I guess many handled their ID cards and tokens without sanitizing their hands...
It's heartbreaking to see people suffer due to this pandemic. Reminds me of the privilege I have.
All the vaccines work for variants - COVID is not actually that good at mutating, it's not the flu. Some work better than others, but there's no reason to skip one because it appears you can mix them with no side effects.
A body floating ashore is the start of a western detective story. What a different situation, to just cremate them. Can you really just murder someone, dump the body in the Ganges and have the police dispose of the body for you? It seems like that must happen if so many dead are in the river.
Why is this flagged? This news has been covered extensively before this BBC article. One of the downstream states had put a net to prevent those victims washing up to their shores. Looks like there is an effort to silence this news.
At government hospitals, you have to be tested and be covid positive to be listed as covid death.
Private hospitals in rural areas simply don't send the stats back.
I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives.
They said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere and this is probably the price to pay for letting Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies. The strain has escaped India and we don't know how it will affect the rest of the world.
All his political life, him and his supporters cried for statues and temples and now they stand on the ashes of million dead people and all they can hear is a deafening silence of their gods.