[Cyborg]

New study on how the lockdown may have delayed the peak of the virus in India. Much more pain being predicted.

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/...136032497.html

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

You cannot solve for destiny.

This is the most apt thing I've heard in a month.

[mohansrides]

Originally Posted by Cyborg

New study on how the lockdown may have delayed the peak of the virus in India. Much more pain being predicted.

Sir,

Thanks for posting this link. I too saw this today. But, I read it in TOI - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/76369608.cms.

Please do read the comments underneath the TOI article. Here is a screenshot of one comment that made me laugh.




Funny, huh?!! That's because this same peak was first predicted to be in April - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...4.cms?from=mdr

Then the peak was supposed to be in June / July - https://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...le31529932.ece

So yeah, as the commenter is saying, all we are getting is "tareek pe tareek" on the supposed peak of this virus.

[For the young crowd here, the humor of that comment comes from this brilliant movie by Sunny Deol and RK Santoshi.]

Originally Posted by Cyborg

..Harsh reality is there is no returning to normal life as it were until a vaccine is discovered and people manage to get it.

The idea that we are going to be seeing lockdowns in perpetuity has been advanced here before (post #2119). I can see how that may be a possibility. But frankly, I think that the probability of that happening is relatively low. The rate of infection is largely meaningless. The death rate of this virus is quite low. If this was Ebola, then things would be totally different.

They may use the word lockdown just to preserve semantics. But, things will be a lot more relaxed. We have seen the economic cost of lockdowns; and if you go back in this thread, you will find that economics do not mean only money. They mean real suffering, and yes death due to such suffering.

I think that people who are afraid are free to lock themselves up. No compulsion on them to come out at all. But to force other people to be locked up because we want to feel safe is autocratic and stands against every tenet of a free democracy. That is the truth.

But in the off-chance that we decide to lockdown again, I think we should come up with a slab.

If your income is...

a.) below 5 lacs - zero deductions.

b.) 5 to 10 lacs - 10k per month deduction after taxes

c.) 10 to 15 lacs - 15k per month deduction after taxes.

d.) 15 to 20 lacs - 20k per month deduction after taxes.

e.) 20 to 30 lacs - 25k per month deduction after taxes.

f.) 30 to 50 lacs - 45k per month deduction after taxes.

g.) 50 lacs to 1 cr - 60k per month deduction after taxes.

h.) Above 1 cr - 1 lac per month deduction after taxes.

At the time of lockdown, these deductions must be made mandatory for everyone, pensioners included. Jobs or no jobs, we should be required to pay until we are able to demonstrate change in economic status at the end of the tax year. And even then, the change will not apply retroactively; i.e. no refunds.

The money collected should go directly to the people whose livelihoods have been shutdown due to the lockdown - barbers, auto and cab drivers, street-food vendors, signboard vendors, airline staff, hospitality workers, etc.

Migrants and economically challenged people in lockdown areas should be provided free housing in society premises; in the parking areas; in society clubhouses, etc. If someone lives in an independent house, the area inside their compound walls must be open for use by people rendered homeless by a lockdown. And if it comes to it, we should accommodate people in our houses if they have no place else to go.

If we are going to enact autocratic measures, then let us go the whole hog and make sure that the pain of a lockdown is distributed equally. After all, we are forcing people to sacrifice their livelihoods for our safety. So, we should absolutely compensate them from our own pockets.

Cheers

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by mohansrides

Sir,



Cheers

Does "we" include the government? There is no mention of the one body which actually authorises the lockdown.
And please don't say they"listen" to our ideas, our voices, and then implement them.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by mvadg

All documents published on the government websites are in an unusable format. They are either in some sort of image format or a PDF document... This, I believe, is done deliberately.

I don't work for the government but I do work in communications and am sure there is no ulterior motive to publishing information in PDF, just inertia!

PDF is a legacy format, works great for printing, but it's a pain for online consumption. Yet, since Adobe was so successful in pushing this format with their free PDF reader all through the 2000s, many companies, especially of the sort most likely to win government contracts for website design, continue to utilize it by default. Many web design tools just give the PDF generator as a free default and since the Adobe PDF reader is free and easy to install, why not. Age is another factor, most people past a certain age are far more comfortable reading printed sheets than something online. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of secretaries attached to ministries print out circulars and e-mails every morning so their bosses can read them in the car. Plus a lot of shops, vehicles just print out these circulars and paste them on the walls, windshields to display to customers, officials, cops. PDF works well in those cases. One more tenuous 'advantage' of PDF, it's relatively harder to modify the contents without the source file and you can password protect the PDF as well. Which fits in well with the sarkari mentality of 'official document'. It's still not a big deal to modify a PDF, but it's just relatively less easy unlike a word doc or a HTML/XML file.

Forget government companies, even newer companies like mine that work in software and publish documentation for young people to browse online are forced to generate multiple outputs, one of them still being PDF for those one or two big clients who still insist on printing out each version of the the whole reference manual and storing it!

'Experts' have been predicting the 'death of PDF' for as long as I can remember, 20 years at least. It still lives on!

[Turbanator]

^^

I think what mvadg meant was PDF files generated not from a word document but most likely scanned from a print which is stored as image, difficult to copy or edit.

This must be to prevent any edits or misuse of notification. Can’t think of anything else.

[V.Narayan]

Ultimately 'economics' to put it in a high class way or the 'stomach' to put it in a realistic way will overcome all the Covid 19 tamasha. Fact is both the Central Govt and the State Govt's, politicos and babus, in high infection areas (Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat) have no clue what to do and little clue on what they are doing. They may be too arrogant to admit it however.

Their actions, which to me seem more like flapping around in desperation, are not so much to save lives of mere citizens (let's not kid ourselves that we really matter) but to ensure they are not burying their future re-election chances permanently. None of them wants to become known as the Corona-walli Party. The need to earn a living for us citizens and the need to earn taxes for the Govt will at some stage overwhelm and flatten all other curves. The GST collections for April (last released figures) are already at below 40% of what's needed. Let's see what the advance income tax brings. In a few months the Govt might struggle to pay salaries and interest on its debt! - it is bound to happen unless corrective action is taken.

Several in my circle of friends & classmates have contacted CV19 and eventually most of us will. The main thing about looking after your family is to keep your elders protected. This disease is about quarantining the elders (65+) not quarantining the nation. This was known three months ago also.

PS: My views maybe controversial for some. I do not intend to get drawn into a debate. My post of April 2020 below.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

This is just my personal assessment, might seem controversial to some, but allow me to state it.

6 months from now or maybe as early as 4 months from now as a nation we will be debating as to whether a national lockdown of 6 weeks was the right remedy for a super contagious but {at least in India} super mild illness whose fatality total would not even make it to the top ten fatal communicable diseases in India. It is my view, and take it as just the view of one man, that the so called experts over stated its fatality by a factor of 100X or something in that range forcing the Govt's hand. In this and the other Coronavirus thread I wrote in February & March that we are going into over reaction without understanding the context of number of ill people/dead people in a 1.35 billion population.

By September we will be vigorously debating the long term damage to lives, livelihood and the economy by this lockdown. Let's revisit this point on 31st October 2020.

[DigitalOne]

The dictatorship of utterly scared RWAs. Even if the governments (both centre and states) have realized the futility of continued lockdowns, the fear psychosis they have generated among the population is causing immense damage.

One recent example: There is a huge apartment complex (around 600 flats) next to the layout (where I own a flat). Since yesterday there is a Covid case in the big apartment complex. One guy from the big apartment complex operates a small shop in our layout. Our layout RWA has now suddenly and arbitrarily decided that he cannot open his shop for 10 days. His fault? Staying in a huge apartment complex where there is a Covid case. Who will compensate for his loss? If cases keep coming, will he not be able to open the shop forever?

[srishiva]

Guess we need to reconcile corona virus threads.

Should Maharastra, Delhi, Gujarat and TN impose severe lockdowns and make sure essential items keep flowing. Having many days to learn, they should be doing something different now.

The lockdown has been used by some states to control the virus while others have failed. The fear of migrants spreading the virus is not limited to northern and eastern states. It has brought in loads of cases to Karnataka and Kerala (maybe more than 50% of active cases).

The news about establishing new facilities in indoor stadiums and other buildings is worrying. Its not just about infrastructure, but where will the healthcare workers come from ? The private healthcare resources are still not used to fight this.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

. Fact is both the Central Govt and the State Govt's, politicos and babus, in high infection areas (Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat) have no clue what to do and little clue on what they are doing.

Originally Posted by srishiva

Guess we need to reconcile corona virus threads.

Should Maharastra, Delhi, Gujarat and TN impose severe lockdowns and make sure essential items keep flowing.

There are couple of PILs in courts (link, link) to decide whether strict lockdowns should be re-implemented in the badly affected cities . I predict this week we would see the first court ordered lockdowns in at least one of the affected cities.

We will add courts the Centre <---> States <---> RWAs <---> WhatsApp uncles tamasha.

[aaggoswami]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Fact is both the Central Govt and the State Govt's, politicos and babus, in high infection areas (Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat) have no clue what to do and little clue on what they are doing. They may be too arrogant to admit it however.

The need to earn a living for us citizens and the need to earn taxes for the Govt will at some stage overwhelm and flatten all other curves. The GST collections for April (last released figures) are already at below 40% of what's needed. Let's see what the advance income tax brings. In a few months the Govt might struggle to pay salaries and interest on its debt! - it is bound to happen unless corrective action is taken.

Several in my circle of friends & classmates have contacted CV19 and eventually most of us will.

Absolutely spot on Sir. Gujarat has already borrowed money back in April I guess. One light shower and electricity supply in my area goes down, yesterday it was out for 3 hours, and the employees working to restore back the power supply were not wearing any mask, social distancing went for a toss. Plus the heat and humidity also make difficult for us to use mask. No wonder the cases are shooting up and already in a massive way our healthcare is overwhelmed.

In all likely hood, till we have medicine or each and everyone is vaccinated, the probability of us catching Covid19 is high. Economics now has taken precedence over everything and hence Unlock 1.0. May be I need to update myself, but surprising how quickly states ran out of money. I mean not even a quarter they could survive without revenues.

Originally Posted by mohansrides

Jobs or no jobs, we should be required to pay until we are able to demonstrate change in economic status at the end of the tax year. And even then, the change will not apply retroactively; i.e. no refunds.

How can one be expected to pay tax despite not having an income ? Borrow money to pay to government with another impending disaster in banking sector ?

Originally Posted by srishiva

Should Maharastra, Delhi, Gujarat and TN impose severe lockdowns and make sure essential items keep flowing. Having many days to learn, they should be doing something different now.

The lockdown has been used by some states to control the virus while others have failed. The fear of migrants spreading the virus is not limited to northern and eastern states. It has brought in loads of cases to Karnataka and Kerala (maybe more than 50% of active cases).

The news about establishing new facilities in indoor stadiums and other buildings is worrying. Its not just about infrastructure, but where will the healthcare workers come from ? The private healthcare resources are still not used to fight this.

Deputy CM of Gujarat said that there is no plan for another lockdown. Given the fact states were borrowing money for regular operations, I guess they wont come up with lockdown so quick. The lockdown in the first place has already failed otherwise, 50 days were more than enough to bring the cases under control or even eliminate the virus as we went in for lockdown at a nascent stage of cases coming up. That we had to open up while getting huge rise in cases explains that lockdown didnt actually help, so there is very little chance of another lockdown being successful.

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

There are couple of PILs in courts (link, link) to decide whether strict lockdowns should be re-implemented in the badly affected cities . I predict this week we would see the first court ordered lockdowns in at least one of the affected cities.

We will add courts the Centre <---> States <---> RWAs <---> WhatsApp uncles tamasha.

Courts have independence to setup committees from various disciplines. Maybe include people who are offering a lot advice and criticism currently. That will test what the country can do more than what some parties (not only political parties) can do.

I am sure we will run against the inadequacies of our great development since we started liberalization. I feel sympathy and helplessness against the same. We should stop the development against GDP figures and concentrate on much smaller micro per capita results in every area.

Talking about states not having enough money, Karnataka has a 10K crore GST backlog from centre. For people wanting more and more one nation, one thing theory, this should be an eye opening. We will flatten development across the country (for the worst). More money to less committed states through skewed population based calculation when actually people migrate out.

[aadya]

Originally Posted by aaggoswami

Deputy CM of Gujarat said that there is no plan for another lockdown[/url]. Given the fact states were borrowing money for regular operations, I guess they wont come up with lockdown so quick. The lockdown in the first place has already failed otherwise, 50 days were more than enough to bring the cases under control or even eliminate the virus as we went in for lockdown at a nascent stage of cases coming up. That we had to open up while getting huge rise in cases explains that lockdown didnt actually help, so there is very little chance of another lockdown being successful.

Lockdown as any other public initiative in India could not have been a complete success. We can see even esteemed and learned members of this forum taking a viewpoint and standing by it just for the sake of it.

Lock-down had been a huge breather at-least in Bangalore. Now we get the test results as early as 3 hours and at the late as 24 hours. So when I get exposed to a suspect case I need not be in intense suspense for next 3 to 4 days for the reports.

The protocols to minimize the infection and the infrastructure to streamline the admissions and procedure has been done in this lock-down period, due to reduced foot falls and low level of all other diseases,cumulative.

Moreover we have a huge volume of knowledge about this infection and how to manage those patients, at least healthier ones. An antiviral or a Vaccine might be the only long term remedy. In India otherwise self imposed lock-down for people who can afford would preserve them.

Others anyway are used to believe in our fate just like when we drive - Either we be cautious and be lucky or pay for others idiocy. Ostriches being ostriches do not want hear or see, as their organs outside the sand are not intended to do that.

[Sebring]

Same thing happened with Purva yesterday. Heard lots of ambulances and chaos in that area. Sad state

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Since yesterday there is a Covid case in the big apartment complex. One guy from the big apartment complex operates a small shop in our layout. Our layout RWA has now suddenly and arbitrarily decided that he cannot open his shop for 10 days. His fault? Staying in a huge apartment complex where there is a Covid case. Who will compensate for his loss? If cases keep coming, will he not be able to open the shop forever?

[Nalin1]

Originally Posted by Sebring

Same thing happened with Purva yesterday. Heard lots of ambulances and chaos in that area. Sad state

Hi Sebring,

Which Purva was it? In which area?