[doxinboy]

Guys, anyone keeping track of Dharavi. I read that the case touched 60 now. I shudder to think what is in store in few weeks. I think the center and other states should share the resources and know hows, to help Maharashtra to bring the virus under control. Twitter is depressing these days, I only see everyone fighting over the superiority of their viewpoints over others, the sickening "I told you so" attitude. Its become a habit for me to check on latest news about the virus every few minutes. Who knew that the tiny little dot could change the way we live, perhaps forever? I want to good old days back.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

.

So it all boils down to whether one is a conspiracy theorist or not. I'm not, but I'll change my mind if evidence turns up.

White "bioweapon" is a conspiracy theory, as far as hiding the pandemic is concerned, there is enough evidence in shape of videos from whistleblowers.

The previous SARS virus did not have this kind of cover up, and therefore it was controlled within china itself.

[ckranjan]

Originally Posted by Lobogris

Nobody had any knowledge of this when the first case was reported.
This anti China bias and conspiracy theories are uncalled for. China is also a victim here.

Yeah Right. Chinese people are definitely the victims here but not the Chinese regime when there is ample evidence that they hid information and this is not the first time they have handled this kind of situation badly.

Sadly people like you fall for the Chinese regime propaganda so do many people. But Chinese People are not the Chinese regime. They are as different as chalk and cheese.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by ckranjan

Yeah Right. Chinese people are definitely the victims here but not the Chinese regime when there is ample evidence that they hid information and this is not the first time they have handled this kind of situation badly.

Sadly people like you fall for the Chinese regime propaganda so do many people. But Chinese People are not the Chinese regime. They are as different as chalk and cheese.

More news
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/12/a...hnk/index.html

China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web.

Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
A medical expert in Hong Kong who collaborated with mainland researchers to publish a clinical analysis of Covid-19 cases in an international medical journal said his work did not undergo such vetting in February.

That certainly looks like "not hiding things"

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

White "bioweapon" is a conspiracy theory, as far as hiding the pandemic is concerned, there is enough evidence in shape of videos from whistleblowers.

The previous SARS virus did not have this kind of cover up, and therefore it was controlled within china itself.

I think we can all agree on the 'China suppressed info' bit, even say they continue to do so.

My point speaks to intent, and I'm inclined to think this is a bad PR bungle, until there's evidence that proves more sinister intentions/actions.

[ckranjan]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

I think we can all agree on the 'China suppressed info' bit, even say they continue to do so.

My point speaks to intent, and I'm inclined to think this is a bad PR bungle, until there's evidence that proves more sinister intentions/actions.

With all due respect Bad PR bungle is what Nissan did with Kicks.

Not what Chinese regime has done with a pandemic which has claimed countless lives and put the whole humanity at least a few years back.

Quote "The IHR — which WHO’s 196 members countries are supposed to adhere to — were revised in 2005 precisely because of China’s mishandling of another outbreak, SARS. Like today, China was heavily criticized for withholding information about SARS, in part because of concerns over the economic repercussions of reporting. The virus eventually killed 774 people and infected more than 8,000 around the world."

Quote "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results"

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by ckranjan

With all due respect Bad PR bungle is what Nissan did with Kicks.

Not what Chinese regime has done with a pandemic which has claimed countless lives and put the whole humanity at least a few years back...

I thought it was obvious, but let me spell it out explicitly, because context is always key.

Bad PR bungle (let's call it something more 'weighty', if you will) in the context of 'protecting Chinese interests first', not the magnitude of the event and how it affected everyone else. As much as we'd like to believe and want otherwise, first rule of geopolitics dictates a nation state puts itself first, no exceptions, and very often to the detriment of others. What's that quote about 'No friends, only interests?'

Everything else is messaging and diplomatic soft power, which China arguably sucks at.

There are very few countries that are being 100% transparent about the extent of this pandemic in their jurisdictions. The world's biggest superpower had their Head Of State calling this a political hoax just a few weeks ago (after having enough information available to indicate otherwise), until reality painted a different picture for him.

Intentions obviously vary across the board, and I'll gladly subscribe to the 'China wants to kill all of us!' theory once enough evidence is available to support it.

[ckranjan]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

I thought it was obvious, but let me spell it out explicitly, because context is always key.

Bad PR bungle in the context of 'protecting Chinese interests first', not the magnitude of the event and how it affected everyone else. As much as we'd like to believe and want otherwise, first rule of geopolitics dictates a nation state puts itself first, no exceptions, and very often to the detriment of others. What's that quote about 'No friends, only interests?'

Everything else is messaging and diplomatic soft power, which China arguably sucks at.

There are very few countries that are being 100% transparent about the extent of this pandemic in their jurisdictions. The world's biggest superpower had their Head Of State calling this a political hoax just a few weeks ago, until reality painted a different picture for him.

Ok. So did this whole hiding things protect the Chinese interests? No

A pandemic is a geopolitical event? No Sir its not.

and Did China suck at messaging and diplomatic soft power?

No it did not. How many countries called out China for this. A very few and the mighty Trump had even to say this at one point of time:

"On Friday, President Trump applauded China. “They’re working really hard and I think they’re doing a very professional job,” Trump told ABC News"

Its not really about hiding the numbers but crucial information like below:

That’s not all. Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, pointed out that while China deserves credit for sharing 2019-nCoV’s genetic sequence shortly after announcing the outbreak, it “has not been forthcoming with additional information about the virus from different samples at different times in different regions.”

Nor have Chinese scientists shared the virus itself with other national labs. And yet this information is crucial for understanding “whether the virus mutated, how, and also about its transmissibility,” Gostin explained.

Please explain to me what geopolitical advantage China gained from hiding the above information?

and if you call the above, geopolitical advantage then the conspiracy theorists are right. Its a biological weapon from China.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by ckranjan

Ok. So did this whole hiding things protect the Chinese interests?

A pandemic is a geopolitical event? No Sir its not.

and Did China suck at messaging and diplomatic soft power?

No it did not. How many countries called out China for this. A very few and the mighty Trump had even to say this at one point of time:

"On Friday, President Trump applauded China. “They’re working really hard and I think they’re doing a very professional job,” Trump told ABC News"

One, I added a point to my post, probably after you quoted it, so you may want to check it out.

Two, You really need to get a broader understanding of geopolitics beyond its dictionary definition. Anyway, here's my responses to your comments:

a. They tried to protect their interests by trying to hide the info and manage the messaging. Success or failure is a consequence, not the starting point. It's naive to assume anyone else would've acted differently or would know the actual outcomes beforehand, or that we'd all blame China any less if they owned up to creating the mess. Nobody tries to hide a mess with the intent of failing.

b. Everything that can affect/alter your position in the pecking order of world influence, is a potential geopolitical event. Pandemics, wars (military, trade, any other type one can name), even economic policy.

c. China was (and to some extents still is) a 'closed' ecosystem and their diplomacy and soft power is nothing compared to other superpowers, say USA.

d. How many countries will hold China accountable ties directly back to how many countries can afford to antagonize them without crippling their own economies and/or hurting their geopolitical standing and aspirations. Why do you think India considers them both an adversary and an ally, for different aspects? It's nuanced, and never really black & white.

e. How does this give them a geopolitical advantage? Are you aware of the aftermath of World War 2? USA got a head-start to becoming the superpower it is because every potential competitor was in ruins while they had a booming economy ready to propel them forward. See the parallels? War and pandemics are not apples, I'll admit that upfront, so yes the comparison is limited to the opportunity outcome, not what caused it.

Read my comments in context of the potential Chinese perspective of this situation, not a defense of them.

[ckranjan]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Read my comments in context of the potential Chinese perspective of this situation, not a defense of them.

+1 to this perspective. and its a war then.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by ckranjan

... its a war then.

It could very well be or lead to one.

Of what kind, we'll find out in due course. I'm personally inclined to think primarily based around economics and trade, supplemented by diplomatic initiatives. Shooting wars are passe, and nobody can really afford one right now or anytime soon.

[fhdowntheline]

Lets not read too much into Trumps flip-flops. His statements are purely commerce based. He may praise China to protect their end of the trade-deal, but then also suspended WHO funding for their incompetence and China-bias. I think this particular action will certainly prompt other countries to re-think their political correctness. I can see that there will be much less 'multi-lateralism' going forward. EU is already on the brink in terms of its overall leadership in the crisis.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

All, I'm taking this discussion to more mundane and more practical here and now matters. Sadly this sacrifice by the people of 3 and now 5 weeks has not been used by several big states even to ramp up testing. Outside of Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi and Rajasthan the other states are simply not doing adequate testing either in absolute numbers or as a ratio to every 100,000 of population. As an example, UP at ~11,000 tests on a population base of 20 crores is too sad to even cry over. Same with MP, AP, WB, JH etc. I think some Chief Ministers have figured that the way to demonstrate the best statistics is to test as little as possible. The less you test, the less cases you will discover, the less CV19 deaths you can officially report. You cant fail the exam you don't sit for.*

They are following the maxim "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

I haven't quoted statistics here as all of us are familiar with the websites where data is available.

*I don't buy the argument that they are waiting for test kits to arrive from China. Its over 33 days since the sleepy WHO even announced it as a pandemic. Is it the sclerotic Govt purchase process?

Cross posting from an earlier post of mine from another thread on CV-19. My biggest concern remains that this huge sacrifice the nation, its people, its Doctors,its businesses are making with the lockdown is being frittered away by most States {other than Kerala, MH, Delhi, Rajasthan, TN} by going slow on testing. This precious time could have been used by all the other States to get their testing numbers up to at least 1 per 1000 population but no sir. As I wrote in my previous post the Chief Ministers seem to have it figured - the less you test the less your official statistics are and the better record you get to show. Honestly, is it so difficult for a State like say Karnataka to have completed 65,000 tests by now? Or for a State like Haryana to have completed 25,000? The Central Govt went ahead with the lockdown without consulting the States but does not seem willing the exercise the heft to get them to test vigorously. While we are rightfully lauding the Govt for being serious about the lockdown {albeit disorganized} as a democracy the politicians and senior bureaucrats owe the nation this answer - why are we testing so little when we are now in the 4th week of the lockdown, 6 weeks since sleepy WHO announced it as a pandemic.

[nagr22]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

This precious time could have been used by all the other States to get their testing numbers up to at least 1 per 1000 population but no sir.... Honestly, is it so difficult for a State like say Karnataka to have completed 65,000 tests by now? Or for a State like Haryana to have completed 25,000?

My wife came across a homework problem in her statistics class and we were fascinated by its relevance to the current situation! Doctors in the forum can tell us whether this is right or not.
Basically the question was about Bayesian theory of probability. If we randomly test a person for a disease (say Covid) and the test comes out to be positive, what is the probability that the person really has the disease?
Lets say we know only 0.2% of population currently has the disease(rare disease) and the testing accuracy is 85%.

It is shocking to find that the answer is only 2.1% !!

Quoting from website

Suppose a patient exhibits symptoms that make her physician concerned that she may have a particular disease. The disease is relatively rare in this population, with a prevalence of 0.2% (meaning it affects 2 out of every 1,000 persons). The physician recommends a screening test that costs $250 and requires a blood sample. Before agreeing to the screening test, the patient wants to know what will be learned from the test, specifically she wants to know the probability of disease, given a positive test result, i.e., P(Disease | Screen Positive).

The physician reports that the screening test is widely used and has a reported sensitivity of 85%. In addition, the test comes back positive 8% of the time and negative 92% of the time.

The information that is available is as follows:

• P(Disease)=0.002, i.e., prevalence = 0.002
  P(Screen Positive | Disease)=0.85, i.e., the probability of screening positive, given the presence of disease is 85% (the sensitivity of the test), and
  P(Screen Positive)=0.08, i.e., the probability of screening positive overall is 8% or 0.08.

We can now substitute the values into the above equation to compute the desired probability,
Based on the available information, we could piece this together using a hypothetical population of 100,000 people. Given the available information this test would produce the results summarized in the table below.



The answer to the patient's question also could be computed from Bayes's Theorem:

We know that P(Disease)=0.002, P(Screen Positive | Disease)=0.85 and P(Screen Positive)=0.08. We can now substitute the values into the above equation to compute the desired probability,

P(Disease | Screen Positive) = (0.85)(0.002)/(0.08) = 0.021.

If the patient undergoes the test and it comes back positive, there is a 2.1% chance that he has the disease. Also, note, however, that without the test, there is a 0.2% chance that he has the disease (the prevalence in the population). In view of this, do you think the patient have the screening test?

This explains why we have to prioritise testing people who have history of travel or contact with positive cases only so that the base probability of people really having the disease will be higher and the tests will be meaningful (it will no longer be 0.2% in the example). If we randomly start testing everyone, the results will have too many false positives due to the fact that the disease is not yet widespread in the population (even if 13 lakh people are infected in India currently, thats 0.1% of population and as per the Bayes theorem example, the tests will turn out to be inconclusive)
While I do not have any evidence to say that the above explanation is the reason behind low testing in India, it definitely makes sense. Can doctors confirm if this is right? Also, is this the reason why majority of the positive cases exhibit no symptoms? Are they false positives???

[vivek95]

I can sense the impending doom on the people in the healthcare sector when it comes to Mumbai. Few days back I highlighted the fact of many private multispeciality hospitals closing doors during this crisis and I have slowly begun to experience the adverse effect of this. I am not talking about small nursing homes but fairly big multispeciality hospitals which can cater to non-covid patients. The pathetic doctor to patient/ nurse to patient ratio and overall inadequate healthcare infrastructure of our country will only be brought to the fore by this pandemic.

We are busy criticising the western world for waking up late but lets not forget those countries have still been able to manage the show, thanks to their robust healthcare system. Violence towards Doctors to the extent of killing them is a favourite sport only in India. No matter how bad situation turns out in USA or Italy or Spain, there wouldn't be violence of any sort but welcome to India.

You will soon see rising instances of assaults on doctors and nurses and vandalisation of whatever hospitals are left functioning here and there. All this with absolutely no support or protection from the Government. You may also start reading news of people dying on roads out of hypoglycemia or say severe dehydration as a result of Acute Gastroenteritis and such other conditions that can be very well managed even at a smallest hospital. Let me not mention about the surge in Covid-19 related deaths, God forbid.

Practical solutions could be Government providing PPE kits in abundance to all the hospitals, accessibility to rapid Covid-19 testing (free of cost), creating larger isolation facilities and thereby ensuring that all hospitals big or small keep functioning w.r.t their Emergency departments and ICUs. I am not talking about ventilators because that's a distant dream. Bigger well equipped hospitals should reserve themselves for Covid patients/all other critical conditions. Smaller hospitals should support us in taking care of moderate kind of ailments yet that are dangerous if left unattended on time. Dialysis and chemo centres be rather open, please. Government is doing its best but we are running out of time.

Till then, let us all sit and pray hard that the summer temperatures indeed has some effect on this damn spiky virus and we are back to normal state ( read whatever pathetic healthcare situation we are in ) and keep our show going.


--Dr. Vivek