[JithinR]

Originally Posted by scorpio2107

I did not mean it literally in the sense of a "bed".

We all have suffered greatly in the past few weeks. The article is encouraging governments to focus more or less only on women. It kind of puts a blanket on everything else. A lot of men have also lost their jobs and lots of families depend on them for their livelihood. By saying focus on women I feel that men are going to be left out (based on the article).

I guess I thought you meant it literally because of the highlighted word in the your first post.

Originally Posted by scorpio2107

Isn't the UN literally saying if you have one hospital bed, and you have to choose between a man and a woman, choose the woman?

As I understand it, they are asking for equal representation of women amongst leaders and decision makers( you can only expect women leaders to understand and empathize with women citizens more than traditional male leaders).

I am not sure of how Unpaid care work will be measured in it's contribution to the economy. Perhaps members who are in the field of social welfare will be able to answer it better.

Increase in instances of domestic abuse has already been highlighted by multiple media outlets/social welfare workers and asking governments to take cognizance of it and address it is the right thing to do.

I do agree that any stimulus packages should address societies needs as a whole but I think what the article points out is that most of these packages will disproportionately benefit men and enough care should be taken to address the needs of women who might not have a job in the traditional sense.

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by aadya

Test them again. Please avoid questions with hostility or sarcasm without adding value. What would guarantee anything? When no body is coming from other countries and more than 2/3rd of the country either ruled out or diagnosed with the disease and quarantined what else you need for guarantee? We probably do more pregnancy test in this country.

My question was aimed at what difficulties the GOI might be having in scaling up the testing infrastructure, when money or resources are not major concern.



India is still in early stages of this disease. Do you disagree?

Sorry if you thought there was sarcasm. I was just asking the question :(

What we are doing is testing and quarantining them in govt facilities. We dont have space if we get many +ve cases. I am not really sure if we have resources for making test equipment and facilities needed in testing environment. Add to that we need more healthcare workers to handle testing.

German chancellor said they are in the early stages. US might also be in early stages. Its scary but thats what it is.

[wheelguy]

Another effect of corona virus. Then, Zika virus forced Tata to rename its hatchback name from Zica to Tiago. Now, Corona virus forced Mini to rename its Mini Cooper SE's wheels' name from Corona-Spoke wheels to Power-Spoke wheels.

Link

[karan0009]

Coronavirus Cases In Mumbai's Dharavi Breach 200-Mark, Total 13 Deaths.

The numbers of coronavirus deaths and total positive cases rose today in Dharavi, Mumbai's jam-packed slum where around eight lakh people live huddled together in shanties. The total of those who contracted the deadly virus in the area crossed the 200-mark; with one addition on Thursday, the death figure reached 13.
According to the local administration, 25 fresh cases detected on Thursday took the total cases to 214. The latest positive cases were found in various localities of Dharavi, including Kutti Nagar, Matunga Labour camp, Azad Nagar, Rajiv Gandhi Nagar, Chamada Bazar, Mukund Nagar and Kalyanwadi.

The 2 square-kilometer area in which daily-wage labourers, migrant workers and low-wage groups live in make-shift houses to escape Mumbai's high real estate rents, has been divided into five read zones and 37 containment area. Those in the red zones cannot step out even for essentials goods and services.

Coronavirus Cases In Mumbai's Dharavi Breach 200-Mark, Total 13 Deaths
Dharavi: Mumbai is the worst-hit city in the country (File)

Mumbai: The numbers of coronavirus deaths and total positive cases rose today in Dharavi, Mumbai's jam-packed slum where around eight lakh people live huddled together in shanties. The total of those who contracted the deadly virus in the area crossed the 200-mark; with one addition on Thursday, the death figure reached 13.
According to the local administration, 25 fresh cases detected on Thursday took the total cases to 214. The latest positive cases were found in various localities of Dharavi, including Kutti Nagar, Matunga Labour camp, Azad Nagar, Rajiv Gandhi Nagar, Chamada Bazar, Mukund Nagar and Kalyanwadi.

The 2 square-kilometer area in which daily-wage labourers, migrant workers and low-wage groups live in make-shift houses to escape Mumbai's high real estate rents, has been divided into five read zones and 37 containment area. Those in the red zones cannot step out even for essentials goods and services.

"The biggest challenge is Dharavi itself... 10 to 15 people stay in one room. How is it possible to enforce social distancing?" city official Kiran Dighavkar was quoted by news agency AFP as saying.

Administration & doctors are trying there best to control the situation. But what can be an alternate for people living in Dharavi? It is impossible to follow social distancing there.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/coro...deaths-2217143

[rdst_1]

Meanwhile, India has finally decided to start consulting experienced epidemiologists. I have mentioned earlier in this thread of a WHO epidemiologist whom we are in touch with on another forum and he has now been hired by ICMR. This guy is of Indian origin and probably they are going to listen to his expert advice and hire more epidemiologists and start taking actions on their plans.

Indian incompetence still shows though. He was supposed to be working on a plan for certain areas of Howrah in West Bengal as he was familiar with the area. The Indian reps whom he is co-ordinating with refused to work overnight and he was kept waiting for the map of the area he requested so he can start formulating a plan. After 10 hours what he received was a screenshot of Google Maps of that area. Though he has since received an apology mail and they are trying to source a map from the local corporation.

[tsk1979]

Very interesting article trying to find the real human cost of this epidemic. They compared deaths during this epidemic with the average deaths during same period. Guess what, in just a few locations, the total number of "missing deaths", i,e, over the average is 36000
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ng-deaths.html

[vivek95]

This is worth noting down. Maharashtra has reported that around 80% of the positive cases are asymptomatic. I believe these are mostly Presymptomatic individuals rather than asymptomatic. Whatever though, these patients will mostly end up experiencing only mild symptoms that requires observation at Covid care centres than hospitals ( Mumbai has a whole list of Covid care centres ).

If the same trend continues over next two weeks or so with very low death rates , I see no reason why we should continue stricter lockdown measures. Mankind can adapt to exist with Covid-19 and go about the routine business. Let wearing masks be enforced strictly but the fact is that, this virus is here to stay. WHO is vociferous about the same. Repeated extension of lockdown is not the solution without scaling up of testing and early isolation or home quarantine measures. There is no point in subjecting our society at large to wide variety of hardships when this disease is mostly mild. Had the scenario been like Italy, its a different story altogether. May be we can reconsider strategies for our country after careful observation over next two weeks. Targeting zero cases is foolishness. Some deaths are inevitably going to happen and new cases will continue to crop up, let's face this. But if all that is going to happen is some mild fever and cough or runny nose or probably nothing at all why not better endure this disease and lead a normal life ?? Ofcourse, this has to be contemplated after another two weeks of strict lockdown or so. I am seeing extensive collateral damage, people with other salvageable conditions are suffering a lot. Whereas Covid-19 patients are mostly making their way out of the hospital, safe. Hope the Government is envisaging a rational strategy after 3rd May.

Even at my hometown Belgaum, Karnataka only 7 out of total 43 positive cases are symptomatic. Rest 36 do not have any symptoms. Does this really warrant preferential treatment to Covid-19 patients while focussing less over on-time medical attention to patients with salvageable critical conditions ?? Does this really warrant subjecting people to economic hardships ??


What do fellow Doctors ( especially seniors ) think about this ?? Time to reconsider the approach to Covid-19 pandemic ??

--Dr. Vivek

P. S - My thoughts are as dynamic as this Sars-Cov2 and its 33 mutations I am willing to learn more and adapt accordingly than sticking to unidirectional thought process.

[The Rationalist]

What we should make out of the present scenario is that there is definitely community spread in India, no two ways about it. Now what are the options? 1) Continue with current plan of strict lock down and scale up treatment facilities, 2) Reverse quarantine elderly and those with co-morbidities, allow international flights, 3) Open up and face the consequences

Issues with plan 1
- How long will you lock down a nation?
- You can't produce doctors and allied workers overnight
- Have to let many people commit suicide due to many issues like poverty, stress, fear
- But we will also save a majority who die from road traffic accidents (1,50,000 a year)
- Bright side is India may become a shining example of stopping Covid at the cost of the
economy

Issues with plan 2
- In India most elderly are staying with their children, so mostly impractical
- There are many with co-morbidities who haven't been diagnosed
- What will be the definition of elderly?
- We will have to quarantine all foreign returnees , do we have that capacity?
- Bright side is the country will be able to work at moderate normalcy

Issues with plan 3
- Indians as we all know will come out en mass
- We will see more deaths and no leader will be ready to take the blame
- On the bright side most will acquire immunity and hence community spread will stop
- India will be back to near normalcy

[venkyhere]

There is no one single answer, simply because, this is a multidimensional problem.

(1) statistics/math side - is the data collection, across the globe, regarding the knowledge about the current state of the spread of the virus, reliable ? Doesn't it involve, some doctor making a subjective decision after examining a person who is alive/dead - "should this guy's sample be sent for testing or not" ? what about the people who get mild infection, recover on their own by staying at home - who has tested them ? no-one. What about the number of these people ? what is the X% of such people in the total infections, out of which (100-X)% is recorded as stats ? how high or low is X w.r.t 50% ? is it something like 90% or 40% ? is there any way to know ? The reason these questions are pertinent, is because; decisions are being made based on current statistics. Is it ok to continue making decisions (maybe yes), without bothering to find out this 'hidden' X% set of people who do not appear in stats ? How to prove it, in case its ok ?

(2) virology side - the true nature of the virus, its current mutation state, its rate of mutation - whether its slow or fast or whether the rate of change is varying, the spreading part - whether its only exhalation moisture droplets or other means like urine/stools from infected people that are released into the earth, whether sewage getting dumped into river systems will carry it from one geography to another, etc etc. On top of all this, what virus strains are spreading in what geogrphies

(3) medical side - whether immune system variance across the globe, based on racial profile, weather conditions etc is equipped enough to fight the same either with a future vaccine or with antibody laden plasma from recovered patients. Whether one type of antibodies from one type of patients will be needed or generally any recevored person can contribute his plasma, whether a single formula version of a future vaccine will work for every person on earth, without side effects to anyone. Are people who are marked as recovered from the virus, truly healthy without any permanent damage to their health, after getting the virus ?

(4) economic side - who can exactly tell what is the state of businesses across the globe ? who is going to sweep their bad decisions over months, years, decades, before corona, under the lockdown carpet ? People who think lockdown was responsible for destroying businesses and losing jobs and livelihood, are they even right ? because if people were dying left right and center, like dominos, in case there was no lockdown at all, anywhere in the globe, would the same businesses have continued in the same vein ? Afterall, it is people who make the economy, not the other way around - something called economy exists, because people exist. Is the above even a right perspective to justify various degrees of lockdowns across the world ?

Over and above - 1,2,3,4 requires multiple expertise in mathematics, virology, epidemiology, human health, economics. There is no single expert who understands all aspects together with equal accuracy, and can see the actual big-picture-truth. There are teams of experts separately advising world leaders on strategic decisions. Are world leaders educated/sharp/tactically-mature enough to weigh the risk-vs-reward options carefully, before making decisions ? Let's hope they are.

If we start peeling the onion, there is no end, questions tumble out, like an unstoppable torrent. The real problem is - we have not even managed to clearly define the problem at hand. Mainly because the virus is such a young one, and also because economics is something no one in the world actually understands clearly (people only pretend to understand it). Hence, the solutions are going to be arbitrary, based on subjective judgement, rather than objective analysis. There is no "correct" strategy, anywhere in the world, currently arrived at, by any country. All are doing trial and error. Some 'appear' to succeed, some 'appear' to fail.

The only thing, we, as ordinary citizens can do is :
(1) pray that someone has a lightbulb moment and nails the problem
(2) the virus (and its multiple strains) slowly adapt to less lethal versions, and becomes like common flu
(3) we find out an anti-viral or vaccine quickly.
(4) god help us, until then, stay hopeful. There is no life without hope. Without hope, humanity wouldn't have survived for many million years.

we are all looking for an accurate solution for a yet-to-be-accurately-defined problem

[Slick]

Originally Posted by The Rationalist

...... 1) Continue with current plan of strict lock down and scale up treatment facilities, 2) Reverse quarantine elderly and those with co-morbidities, allow international flights, 3) Open up and face the consequences

Issues with plan 1
.
.
Issues with plan 2
.
.

Issues with plan 3
.

Good summary of options but to take an actual decision, the decision maker would need a near accurate impact figures on these scenarios.

I assume those would be
1. The approximate number of deaths in each case (Medical deaths as well as deaths as a consequence of the lockdown, starvation.)
2. The probable economic loss in each case
3. ETA on the vaccine/cure, It would be a disaster if we go herd immunity way, lose millions of lives, only to know that a cure was around the corner.

Essentially choosing the lesser of the two evils.

I have voted in favour of the lockdown but now as cases are increasing in spite of the lockdown, I am not sure what is the best option. We won't be having concrete cure after May 3rd.

I hope the lockdown period has been utilized by all Governments to ramp up infra to handle the deluge of cases that will crop up after lockdown is relaxed.

- Slick

[DCEite]

Well, another day, another study. This time on the effect of heat and humidity on the virus. And this time its good news specially for India as we approach the heat wave conditions.

Sunlight kills COVID-19 while warmer temperatures and humid weather significantly damage the virus, measured in terms of the virus' half life or the time it takes to cut its potency in half, according to the latest breakthrough research from the US Department of Homeland Security's most advanced bio containment lab, released at the White House here on Thursday.

"Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both on surfaces and in the air. We've seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well. Increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favourable to the virus," Bill Bryan, chief of the science and technology directorate at the US Department of Homeland Security, said.

In a room at 70-75F temperature with 20 per cent humidity, the half life of the virus is about an hour, according to Bryan. "But you get outside and it cuts down to a minute and a half, very significant difference when it when it gets hit with UV rays," he said.

According to the same research, the virus' half life on surfaces reduces dramatically with a combination increase of temperature and humidity.

When the temperate is kept constant at 70-75F and only the humidity is cranked up from 20 per cent to 80 per cent, the virus' half life is shown to crash from 18 hours to 6 hours. If the temperature is increased to 95F, the half life sinks to barely 60 minutes.

Bryan said this testing was done at DHS' advanced bio containment lab in Maryland, just outside the national capital.

Pointing to charts with data from experiments on the COVID-19 virus, Bryan said the virus half life plunges "drastically" with exposure to higher temperatures and even minimal exposure to humidity.

Bryan said the DHS bio containment lab is the only one in America that has the capability to do the kind of testing that has led to the research on the virus' UV and temperature tolerance.

Source 1: https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/wo...research-75513

Source 2: https://www.theweek.in/news/world/20...-official.html

Source 3: https://www.newindianexpress.com/wor...e-2134586.html


Experts/Doctors, your comments please ?

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by DCEite

Experts/Doctors, your comments please ?

Am neither one, but before we start jumping in joy, do note that none (or very few) non-Indian new agencies are reporting anything on this aspect.

Basically a scientist made a presentation at the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefing on Thursday showing that it is potentially possible to get COVID-19 virus killed by sunlight in two minutes and the virus life is impacted by a stronger set of conditions of heat and humidity, the whole setup was thrown out of the window due to Trump who made a complete gibberish of it (there are a lot of videos/articles by US and global media on this though!)

Folks reading into the above links as well as other India publication news articles might well want to remember the warning from the same scientist Bryan

...Because of the confusion caused by Trump, who at times has appeared to side with protesters demanding the lifting of restriction, Bryan gave the warning: "It would be irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus and that if it''s a free-for-all and that people ignore those guidelines. That is not the case."...

Also, there's no visibility on what happens to the virus inside an infected human; even if s/he spends the entire day under the hot sun. So let's wait till there are more peer reviews and detailed research-based viewpoints on this.

Edit: Above quote source link

[joslicx]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

Am neither one, but before we start jumping in joy, do note that none (or very few) non-Indian new agencies are reporting anything on this.

Also there's no visibility on what happens to the human who has the virus; even if s/he spends the entire day under the hot sun. So let's wait till there is more peer reviews and detailed research on this.

Edit: Above quote source link

There's something from researchers at Columbia. This could help enclosed public spaces like malls, schools, offices, airports etc

https://news.columbia.edu/ultraviole...id-19-UV-light

[Sankar]

Antiviral Remdesivir is a failure in first clinical trials, so there goes the hope for "one of the most promising covid19 drug".

[srishiva]

https://www.jpost.com/health-science...ry-data-624058

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel...lacenta-cells/

They are going to start trials in US with approval from FDA.