COVID-19 (coronavirus disease)/SARS-CoV-2 virus

It's also possible that their ACTUAL cases and deaths is 6 times higher than what is reported. My friends and colleagues who have family in India all believe the actual numbers are much higher as there is limited testing and no transparency in reporting. They had 300K new covid cases in one day but it could very well be 1MM+ daily new cases in reality. It seems like their family in India all knows people who got covid and died from covid, and elderly people are not leaving the house right now so it is a terrible situation over there. When the locals (through personal connections, not "reported" through the media) feel the government is severely underreporting numbers, you know something is up.

I'm all for banning travelers who have been in India in the past 2 weeks given that we don't have a quarantine system in the US but to be fair, with our porous borders, it is only a matter of time before the new variants takeover here.

 

The problem with India is hospital capacity and death rates. The health care system there can't handle US levels of cases. Hospitals are running out of oxygen and have very limited ICU capacity.

 

The double and triple mutants sound worrisome.

My understanding is that you have to have one cell that gets penetrated by multiple different variants, [insert "at the same time" joke from Office Space], and the variants then have a disgusting sort of coupling and out comes the nasty combo, potentially combining the worst characteristics from each.

EDIT: How gross are you to get infected with two variants of COVID at the same time, LOL?

 

He gets into India around the 7 minute mark




https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...08831746/India+TF+Policy+Brief+April+2021.pdf

A link to the PDF he mentioned

 

This.

If USA reported say 50% of actual cases you would be lucky if India reported 0.5%.

 

I'll add onto this. A coworker with family there says that anyone that tests positive for COVID is treated like a leper and socially shunned. It's a huge cultural barrier to get people tested, despite a high likelihood of having COVID. Their previous numbers are likely much higher than reported.

This spike has to be a super contagious variant of some sort to have such a dramatic rate.

 

I've seen my mom do it even after I told her that she'd had to inhale little droplets on packages. I'm like, if that's true then everyone getting their food/groceries delivered are screwed.

Covid mutant orgy.

Sounds like a red hat kind of kink.

 

Certainly - I'm not dismissing it as a huge problem. But when we talk about its spreading so much and maybe due to all these variants and such, it's worth noting that US (and Europe) had similar/more spread with the basic variants we already know about. And with better general hygiene, awareness, and a less tightly-packed population.

@Cokebabies - the underreporting is absolutely going to be an issue in a place like India, especially in rural areas or the slums where probably no one is getting tested. I didn't really expound well in my post, but that's why I mentioned we were 6x their current case rate at our peak (and not all US cases were likely being reported either). They could be underreporting by a factor of 6-8x and still have similar spread to what we did. I'm not suggesting India's not in bad shape - I'm actually surprised they didn't get to this point long ago, and the hospital/space/death/etc is a massive problem. But it doesn't need any crazy explanations or mutations - even with a bunch of underreporting, they'd be having similar spread to the US and Europe at their respective peaks.

 

The issue with India's #s is the trajectory. The haven't peaked so the comparison to the US won't hold for long..

They are parabolic at this point..sort of like Gamestop a few months ago?

 

My buddy in Toronto said things are bad. No vaccines available. Strictest restrictions to date, almost complete shutdowns and on top of that lost complete cell service.

 

I do a lot of business with a Toronto based production company - The fear is that they are about to go in to lock-down mode. You may not be able to travel anywhere in Toronto area unless you are considered essential.

 

Yeah, that’s what I heard. He made it seem like it’s already full shutdowns.

 

Wow this shows how bad we did, but it’s heavily underreported as some have already mentioned


Watching this is sad:

 

Hopefully this pandemic will become the beginning of more funding, research and development of vaccines so we can get good news such as this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...proves-highly-effective-in-burkina-faso-trial

A good malaria vaccine finally.
Malaria kills more than 270,000 people every year and has been with humans since the beginning of civilization.

Also not a good two years for hydroxychloroqinue.

 

I just saw this message from a former student who is now an ICU doctor in Iowa.
"All right folks. Both of the hospitals in my area are full and the ICUs are literally overflowing. I nearly put a breathing tube in a man slightly younger than me today (thankfully got him turned around before it came to that, but it was a close thing). Covid is not over... please be careful."

 

I had a straight-up "q-anon" dream that a spy from another country put the HIV virus into batches of hundreds-of-thousands of US vaccines.

 

Just got Pfizer shot #2! Woohoo! Waiting to see if my arm falls off.

 

This might be better for the D&D thread but it's sad that getting vaccinated is bound up with both partisanship but some warped gender views.

US Men on average don't use healthcare as much as women and don't take as much care of themselves as much as women. Now it seems like not taking the vaccine is getting to be more of a male issue.

 

If they have ICUs overflowing it's not from covid. This stuff is easy to verify. https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/pages/hospitalization-analysis