[nandadevieast]

Agree Vivek. And one main reason why we can’t directly compare data across countries is the number of tests performed by each country. So each data set only represents a sample size that has been tested.

Originally Posted by vivek95

I think we cannot directly correlate the burden of the disease/pathogen per se and the standards of the healthcare infrastructure for a given place, country and its geographical region.

[adi58]

IMO, lockdown was never going to solve this problem! We should have had done staggered approach like we are doing right now, odd-even cars, shops, offices, malls shut every alternate day and most importantly spreading awareness. Sudden lockdown created fear and panic amongst everyone and that is why we see so much rush as soon as things open.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by poloman

1)Around 85% and 65% were paid full salary in March and April respectively. Less than 5% paid in half.

Glad to know your RWA is paying its staff in full for the services they are still providing. Those 35%, 15% & 5% of staff who are not paid must be those from suburbs of Bangalore, who cannot travel to your RWA since all train & bus services are halted.

Originally Posted by poloman

So there is still some hope and situation may not be as grim as it is made out to be.

Your RWA is not a typical case at all since it mostly employs folks who stay near your RWA. Migrants came to the city for work. Factories are not reopening. Even if they open, it will be at low production and the factory owners have no idea when they will start full production. So the work has disappeared. Migrants workers do not have savings to sustain 2 years to sit out in cities & wait for production to start. Hence they are going back to from where they came and in the absence of trains, they are walking back.

On wages, here comes the flip-flop of lockdown:
Link: Govt withdraws order on compulsory wage payment by firms during lockdown

[poloman]

Originally Posted by msdivy

Glad to know your RWA is paying its staff in full for the services they are still providing. Those 35%, 15% & 5% of staff who are not paid must be those from suburbs of Bangalore, who cannot travel to your RWA since all train & bus services are halted.

Your RWA is not a typical case at all since it mostly employs folks who stay near your RWA. Migrants came to the city for work. Factories are not reopening.

Did not get what you meant here. I am talking about the maids/cooks/nannies employed by the individual residents. We have a data base of them and did the survey to find out their condition. They are being paid even if they are not working for last 2 months.
Only 10% of the helpers are from Bangalore. Most of these people are from Bengal and north India.

[AirbusCapt]

Let me tell you an open secret. We assume migrants are being sheltered and fed by the state. It's by and large false. Politicians of all hues have been cornering food grain supplies which they then distribute on basis of voters card to "their" vote bank. In the process, local voters have an excess supply of food grains (to sell in black) where as the actual migrants are starving. Hence this almost insane urge to head home no matter that it involves thousands of kms of walk.
Your local maid/driver/cook/ayah is most likely swamped with an abundance of food supplies and is getting paid to stay at home (thanks to kind hearted folks) and are making merry.

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

Let me tell you an open secret.

I confirm this. Our maid got foodgrains from the local welfare association, but our apartment complex watchmen did not, and they claim they are not eligible as they don't have "papers" - they are migrants. (both the maid and watchmen are being paid in full).

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by The Rationalist

What were we expecting when we were spending ₹4,00,000 crore on Military and ₹60,000 crore on health?

The figure of 60,000 crore budget of health is misleading. Health is a state subject and this figure of 60,000 crore does not include spending by states. We know that states like Kerala or Delhi do make a lot of health related investments.

Also there is huge investments by private sector on Health which does not get accounted for in the 60,000 cr figure.

States or Private industry cannot invest in Military or defence.

I am not saying whether the investment in Health is enough, that's a matter of opinion; Just making the facts right.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by poloman

How will you explain US and UK topping the death charts if the quality of health system and model were to be the benchmarks? People are fleeing these countries to get better Covid care.

To where are the people fleeing from US? Please understand that US is a large country and there are huge regional disparities in Covid-19 spread. Check the "deaths per million" column in the link. Even big states like California, Florida, Texas, or Arizona have low spread and low "deaths per million".

If I were in the US, I would flee from NY/NJ/East coast regions to any of the above listed states.

And yes, did you know that US as a whole has a lower "death per million population" than Netherlands or Belgium ??

Absolute numbers without context always don't make sense.

Originally Posted by vivek95

I think we cannot directly correlate the burden of the disease/pathogen per se and the standards of the healthcare infrastructure for a given place, country and its geographical region.

Yes, absolutely true. Age of the population, and regional population density (e.g Mumbai, NYC), propensity of the population to follow rules ( a big + in China/Japan/South Korea) also matters. Every country is having its own set of issues.

[fordday]

Originally Posted by poloman

Our association did a survey of around 100 helpers employed in our apartment. They were contacted on phone numbers in our database. Some findings from the survey.

So there is still some hope and situation may not be as grim as it is made out to be.

I did the same check in our apartment and found some more data. All our maids were paid for March. Less than 20% were paid for April.
Their husbands all lost jobs in all cases. Most of the men were working as contract labour in small factories like Ice-cream, Wielding, car workshops, painting labourers etc. None of these people got any support from their employers, which is understandable as the employers themselves must running hungry.

Govt agencies came to these people during the start of the lockdown and took copies of their aadhar card promising ration. As expected no ration came till now.

So your conclusions cannot be extrapolated as the real situation.

Originally Posted by poloman

People are fleeing these countries to get better Covid care.

Fleeing to where? If you are referring to our Indian brothers and sisters coming from there, this is because of emotional need to be with the family and maybe running out of money as odd jobs are much less now.
The same crisis as in here but in more grisly form, starvation and death on the roads.

[poloman]

Originally Posted by fordday

Fleeing to where? If you are referring to our Indian brothers and sisters coming from there, this is because of emotional need to be with the family and maybe running out of money as odd jobs are much less now.
The same crisis as in here but in more grisly form, starvation and death on the roads.

Around 100 Malayalis died abroad compared to 4 in Kerala. So there was a hue and cry among NRKs that their relatives would not have died had they been in Kerala. Many vulnerable wanted to move back. You can read many such stories about NHS apathy if you just google. Elderly were left to die in many nursing homes and care centers in US and UK. Is this the great western health model?

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by poloman

Around 100 Malayalis died abroad compared to 4 in Kerala. So there was a hue and cry among NRKs that their relatives would not have died had they been in Kerala. Many vulnerable wanted to move back. You can read many such stories about NHS apathy if you just google. Elderly were left to die in many nursing homes and care centers in US and UK. Is this the great western health model?

What exactly is the point you are trying to prove? That the healthcare system here is better than US and UK and that shows in the lesser death rates? Please.

Me thinks, the virus took pity on people in the sub-continent ( not just India ) and Russia and spared us some misery. But we made sure that a lot of poor people still suffer.

[fordday]

Originally Posted by poloman

Around 100 Malayalis died abroad compared to 4 in Kerala.

Somehow this comparison does not look like apple to apple to me

I hope you are not pointing fingers that Malayalees were discriminated abroad. Somewhere in this thread I remember seeing how Indians were getting equal medical treatment in the Gulf.

[LobsterB]

Originally Posted by The Rationalist

What were we expecting when we were spending ₹4,00,000 crore on Military and ₹60,000 crore on health?

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

The figure of 60,000 crore budget of health is misleading. Health is a state subject and this figure of 60,000 crore does not include spending by states.

The state contribution for Health and Family Welfare part seems to be 5.3% of their budget at an average (roughly 2,20,000 crores). Assuming the state budget doesn't include the central allocation the total state and central amount can be around 2,80,000 crores. But then perhaps it could as well be 2,20,000 crores if central allocation just flows into state budget figures.

The percentage of their budget spent by different states are shown in the following graph.

During the 2015-20 period, states on an average have spent 5.3% of their budget on health and family welfare. This consists of 0.6% of the budget on capital outlay, and 4.7% of the budget on revenue expenditure. This includes expenditure on schemes such as the National Health Mission, construction and maintenance of hospitals, and payment of salaries and pensions to hospital staff.

Source

Source for state budget size overview

[Aditya_Bhp]

Originally Posted by poloman

Is this the great western health model?

Indian doctors and nurses, are able to handle the huge inflow of patients, better than the western counterparts. Most of the doctors and nurses in India are forced to work for days continuously with bare minimum facilities during their training. The healthcare staff can adapt to the current situation better in India.

Like I said before, India is slowly climbing up the ladder. We currently have like 73 cases per million v/s 4800 per million in the US and around 3300 per million in the UK.

US and UK started to struggle when case density rose to such numbers. But India on the other hand, may even start struggling if we reach 500/million due to the poor capacity of healthcare. We should also understand that if the pandemic is uncontrolled, it can even rise upto to 5000/million. The number of people dying would be unimaginable. With the lockdown being relaxed at a time cases continue to rise, expect to see more deaths. This is why experts recommended lockdowns, to prevent collapse of healthcare.

At the start of lockdown, Kerala and MH were together at the top, but then at the end of Lockdown 3, MH had nearly 100 times the cases of Kerala. Its not just the govt's responsibility to control this, every citizen was expected to stay at home. The people of India did not co-operate with the lockdown and hence the current mess.

[Lobogris]

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

Its not just the govt's responsibility to control this, every citizen was expected to stay at home. The people of India did not co-operate with the lockdown and hence the current mess.

Has it occurred to you that perhaps most people in India are unable to stay at home? About 30% in the cities are daily wage earners or very poor and they need to work in order to survive. In addition they live in shanties or communal lodging where as many as 10 people are crammed together in a tiny space. Many don't even have access to toilets or running water. Then we have people working in permitted essential services which takes another 30 to 50% of the population depending on urban or rural areas. A lot of people are farmers in rural India.

Now we come to the remaining 20 to 30% which includes government and private sector formal employees, business owners and people in middle class onwards. These people could obey the lockdown but even they need to step out to buy food or medicines, get parts to fix a leaking toilet and so on. When you see a crowd in the street, don't assume everyone is out just for pleasure. Many are desperately buying a part to repair something, some are out to visit a bank and so on.

There might have been around 10 to 20% people who flouted the lockdown but for the majority, it was impossible to comply. This has been the case in every developing country but is even worse in high density and relatively poor countries like India. That is why a lockdown was never a realistic solution for India. You can't just pick a solution from Europe and blindly apply it. Do we have adequate housing for everyone? Can we pay everyone even 50% of their salary or income during the lockdown? Do most people have cars in order to travel in isolation? Are our administration and the police efficient and honest to be able to implement such harsh measures without resorting to corruption and abuse of power?

These factors have to be considered when implementing such drastic measures.