Re: The Coronavirus Thread TLDR - testing-testing-testing mantra is a one-glove-fits-all solution, it doesn't suit every country.
There are so many rants in social media in different styles, but the message seems to be :
"why is India's number of tests/million such a low number, if we had the brute-force testing strategy like Germany/S.Korea, we could have selectively quarantined, instead of this nationwide lockdown. What a poor choice of strategy this current lockdown is, severely impacting the economy".
Well, the counterpoint is - the scale of activity and infrastructure, if we are to adopt a brute-force-testing-instead-of-lockdown approach, is of Himalayan proportions, for a country with 130 crore population.
Let's take S.Korea, a country which exactly followed the "brute-force-test-everyone-in-the-locality" whenever/wherever anyone who is contract-trace-suspected showed up ; and hence didn't have to impose a nationwide lockdown, thus insulating their economy from a cardiac arrest. Their peak testing rate was 0.35 tests per 1000 people per day, for a country with 5 crore population. That means ~17500 tests per day. India's current testing rate (as of 8th April) is ~13000 tests per day, something not far off from the S.Korean numbers. But because of the size of the population, this works out to 0.01 per 1000 people per day. If India were to approach the problem like S.Korea, the testing infrastructure has to scale up 35 times, to ~455000 tests per day. It's just not possible to expand labs within such tight time constraints.
Lets take Italy. Ever since March 27, they are conducting more than 36000 tests per day. That works out to >0.65 tests per 1000 people per day (almost double the Koreans), for a country with 6 crore population. But despite that, their caseload added per day only reduced from +6k/day to +4k/day, over the two weeks since this happened. Too little too late, their medical infrastructure was already reeling, even before March 27th ; and their current lockdown is like bandaid over a gangrenous war wound.
So what does this show ? two countries with 5 and 6 crore populations, one who started aggressive testing early, and was able to manage without lockdown; and the other who started aggressive testing late, and who never had a lockdown until too late, paying the price by struggling to keep the spread and deaths at bay. Crucially, both of them have the capacity, but even more crucially, the timing in deciding to scale up testing was way off in once case.
All this implies -
(1) There are always going to be millions of people across the world (not just in india) who contract the virus, get a mild infection, suffer fever/cough/cold and autorecover, and continue staying at home ; who never ventured to any CoVid hospital and reported their condition because they did not have 'great difficulty to breathe'. This is because everyone has been told to inform and approach a hospital only if the condition is severe. These people will never appear in any stat. So ? So what ? the importance (and focus area) of all the plots/graphs and stats that are flying around right now, is not so much as to actually determine the accurate % of penetration of the virus in the population (only academics are interested in this) as much as it is in spotting 'trends' in the way the data is changing. The latter is what helps make decisions, even with the big hole (the people who get infected, autorecover, and never report to hospital) in the entire stats spectrum, across the world.
(2) a country with the size of population of india, simply cannot tackle it the S.Korea way. Since the lockdown was imposed at an earlier stage (relative to italy), the hope is that mass-quarantine will work out (of course at the expense of economy and hunger deaths, which is an entirely separate topic to debate) and help us not go the Italy way; whilst allowing in the meantime, the valuable window to atleast build testing infrastucture. There is no way a country like India can do 455000 tests per day, right from the onset. India is extemrely poor w.r.t
(i) testing infrastructure per 1000 people
(ii) number of hospital beds per 1000 people.
Trying to attack the problem the S.Korea way, without a strict lockdown, will be a disaster of unimaginable proportions, compared to the current disaster we are in.
Let's just hope that :
(i) the newer strategy for cluster-testing of hotspots works out well, given that our testing infrastructure has improved a lot (still poor if we talk in terms of tests per 1000 people per day) in the recent few weeks.
(ii) it is actually true that the strain(s) of virus in india is a milder, less lethal version that in other countries
(iii) all the seemingly wishful theories/claims of indians having better immunity due to : growing up and living in less hygienic environments OR from BCG vaccination OR rampant usage of turmeric & ginger in any indian household for cooking ; actually turn out to be true ; because any hope is a welcome hope at this point.
Last edited by venkyhere : 13th April 2020 at 15:07.
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