Pakistan vs India: I can see the future and it is a bright flash

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Morrow: Oct 31, 2010

I mean the news sources I'm listening to are all regularly stating that numbers at crematoriums exceed the official death toll, which is as close to calling bullshit as I think you can get. And I'm usually getting some mention of India in the limited time I'm actually listening.

OTOH, I'm listening to NPR, so I may not be the normal sample.

# ? May 4, 2021 14:09

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# ? May 9, 2024 10:32

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

Zedhe Khoja posted:

yeah giving Delhi a colony to terrorize isn't an improvement. One of the big drivers of the current mode of colonialism is that not having a territory be painted your color on a map means that you can say it's not your problem if the people there are suffering.

Being part of the US didn't save Puerto Rico

# ? May 4, 2021 15:18

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

https://twitter.com/ranaayyub/status/1389325224483581953?s=21

https://twitter.com/akannampilly/status/1389088596389339143?s=21

# ? May 4, 2021 16:37

Grouchio: Aug 31, 2014

The emergency supplies aren't even reaching India? Holy poo poo!

# ? May 4, 2021 18:38

Count Roland: Oct 6, 2013

Flayer posted:

It's crazy how what's happening in India has been reduced to a minor story in the press in the last few days, all of them parroting the official figures. It's diabolical how millions of deaths are going to be swept under the rug while almost nothing is done at a government level to combat it.

In the UK for example (where I'm sure there has been some fudging but generally seems fairly accurate) cases and deaths per day peaked at around 60,000 and 2,000 respectively in the most recent lockdown period. This in a country where hospitals were never overwhelmed and seemed on the whole to be within capacity. India has officially reported a high of around 400,000 daily new cases at its peak (very likely a vast under reporting of the real situation) which would lead to around 14,000 deaths based on the UK model. However India's healthcare system appears to have completely collapsed, testing isn't even vaguely close to being adequate and the strains of Covid19 detected in India seem to be the most virulent yet. I can't see the daily number of fatal cases being any lower than 50k a day at the moment and over the last week or so and possibly much higher.

I guess it is boom time for oxygen suppliers though.

I don't think it's fair to look at Delhi and assume the entire country of over one billion people are in the same boat. We have to look at this based on data, not our guts. If we don't trust official numbers (reasonable) then look for alternate sources, things like excess deaths.

# ? May 4, 2021 18:43

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Count Roland posted:

I don't think it's fair to look at Delhi and assume the entire country of over one billion people are in the same boat. We have to look at this based on data, not our guts. If we don't trust official numbers (reasonable) then look for alternate sources, things like excess deaths.

Local and independent Indian journalists on Twitter are all saying that Delhi is better off than most of the country, and rural India is basically hell on Earth. The capital is unrepresentative, but not in the way you seem to be thinking.

# ? May 4, 2021 18:50

Outrail: Jan 4, 2009; www.sapphicrobotica.com

Grouchio posted:

The emergency supplies aren't even reaching India? Holy poo poo!

The USA does the same thing. Brazil tried to send a bunch of poo poo I clouding experienced people to help with (a flood? Katrina?) and US officials refused. Probably cost a bunch of lives out of pride.

# ? May 4, 2021 19:01

Count Roland: Oct 6, 2013

Darth Walrus posted:

Local and independent Indian journalists on Twitter are all saying that Delhi is better off than most of the country, and rural India is basically hell on Earth. The capital is unrepresentative, but not in the way you seem to be thinking.

Its good that Indian journalists are reporting on how bad things are even as the government seeks to keep people quiet.
What I'm saying is that in a pandemic, and especially in a country as enormous and diverse as India, we must have data to make judgments. Statistical data, because anecdotes simply don't work on this scale. So, I'd very much like to see these, if anyone has such sources.

# ? May 4, 2021 19:47

Badger of Basra: Jul 26, 2007

https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1389939437010882563?s=20

I'm not read up enough on Indian politics to know whether Trinamool is Good or not, but the BJP lost West Bengal.

# ? May 5, 2021 14:54

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

Badger of Basra posted:

https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1389939437010882563?s=20

I'm not read up enough on Indian politics to know whether Trinamool is Good or not, but the BJP lost West Bengal.

That's a complete disaster for the Left Front. And for some reason the suspicion is it was the BJP who heavily gained from the collapse in the left vote. This was a historically great result for the BJP in West Bengal

# ? May 6, 2021 00:39

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

yeah the framing that they did poorly despite trying to win is wrong. it's similar to the GOP winning 20 congressional seats in california and the press trashing them because they didn't sweep; the BJP barely existed in the state a decade ago

the trinamool congress is also recently ascendant. i think it's a big-tent bengali language party; usually wikipedia lists a few basic ideological positions of political parties and this is by far the biggest party i've looked up that does not contain that information, so dollars to donuts it's not inherently ideological. probably just regionalist/anti-corruption/anti-communist populist

they wiped out congress and the communists so their base is probably still dalits and laborers like the two previous parties in the region

# ? May 6, 2021 00:50

WAR CRIME GIGOLO: Oct 3, 2012; The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

Badger of Basra posted:

https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1389939437010882563?s=20

I'm not read up enough on Indian politics to know whether Trinamool is Good or not, but the BJP lost West Bengal.

0 gains 0 losses. Enter the SUCCCCI zone

# ? May 6, 2021 01:57

Beelzebufo: Mar 5, 2015; Frog puns are toadally awesome

Looks like the official death toll is reaching the 4k per day mark

# ? May 8, 2021 00:00

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

https://twitter.com/nicolacareem/status/1390411047253721089?s=21

Yeah, rural India is straight up horrific right now.

# ? May 8, 2021 03:54

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Count Roland posted:

Its good that Indian journalists are reporting on how bad things are even as the government seeks to keep people quiet.
What I'm saying is that in a pandemic, and especially in a country as enormous and diverse as India, we must have data to make judgments. Statistical data, because anecdotes simply don't work on this scale. So, I'd very much like to see these, if anyone has such sources.

This kind of data is difficult to produce even in relatively unapocalyptic times as 2014, according to the article below. If half of deaths aren�t counted (again, during normal times) and if producing estimates of 1/56th of annual deaths took 15 years of interviews, what hope is there for obtaining excess deaths data, as you propose? Should we just not discuss this at all until then, however long it might take?

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28228177 posted:

The mystery of India's unrecorded deaths
12 July 2014
By Cathy Edwards and Suhail Haleem
BBC Health Check

Man in white coat with clipboard interviewing a man outsideMillion Deaths Study
'Verbal post-mortems' with the dead person's family help build up a picture of the circumstances of death
There are estimated to be around 56m deaths per year according to the World Health Organisation - and it's thought half are not registered - so there is a lot of missing information about what people die of. The Million Deaths Study aims to change that by investigating one million deaths in India - and there have been some surprising discoveries.

In a small house near Bangalore, the loud hum of silk spinning machines in the background, Maniamma relates the details of her husband's death a few months ago.

"The day he died he went to see our daughter who lives in a nearby village. While returning, he had some problems - perhaps a minor heart attack. He got out of the car but couldn't walk."

He died at 6am the following morning.

All the details are recorded by Ashok Kumar, a trained fieldworker, who is carrying out a "verbal post mortem", a technique often used to record causes of death in developing countries.

It's part of a huge study surveying and analysing one million deaths in India.

Hospital deaths 'exception'

Knowing what is killing people is vital - it helps save lives by ensuring public health money is spent on the right things.

In the developed world almost all deaths are registered and the cause of death recorded on an official medical death certificate.

By contrast, most deaths in the developing world go unrecorded, and estimates of the causes of death are generally based on people who die in hospitals and under medical supervision.

But hospital deaths are the exception in India.

"India has about nine million deaths [a year], most of which occur at home and in rural areas" - says Prof Prabhat Jha, who leads the study from the Centre for Global Health Research in Toronto.

The Million Deaths Study (MDS) uses "verbal autopsies" or post-mortems - interviewing those close to the deceased about what happened before their death - as a way of addressing this gap.

The million deaths are chosen from a representative sample of areas across India, and the aim is to ascertain the cause of death in each one.

It's a mammoth task - 60,000 homes per year have been visited over the course of 14 years and they are set to reach the millionth death later this year.

Detective work

Trained interviewers like Ashok Kumar talk to relatives of the deceased to build up a picture of why they died.

He asks about symptoms like unconsciousness, breathlessness or fever leading up to the death, as well as lifestyle questions about smoking, drinking and diet.

The information collected on the field visits will then be passed to two physicians who independently try to decipher the cause of death.

If their conclusions don't tally, the case is passed to a third senior physician to analyse.

Million Deaths Study
Physicians look through the death report to try to decipher the cause of death
By looking into home deaths as well as those under medical supervision, the MDS has built up a more complete picture of what people are dying of.

It also means researchers can tailor disease control by identifying diseases common in one place and rare in another, as well as helping spot emerging epidemics.

Making an impact

After surveying their millionth death, it will take another year or two for all the deaths to be coded and analysed.

But early findings have already made an impact.

Million Deaths Study
The study found a much higher prevalence of malaria deaths in certain states
Controversially, in 2010 the team found malaria deaths in India were 13 times higher than WHO estimates.

The WHO's India Office continues to dispute the high malarial deaths figures. However a spokesman said: "The malaria figures estimated by MDS were unexpectedly high, and justify further investigation."

They suggest malaria is often more difficult to diagnose as a cause of death through verbal autopsy - because fever symptoms are common to other illnesses.

'Understand the living'

Now the study's results are helping fight another major cause of death in India - smoking.

By looking at how the dead person lived, Prof Jha explains, you can understand the living as well as the dead.

"We can study, for example, did the dead person smoke, did they drink, and from that, using simple statistical methods, figure out how many people are dying from smoking in India."

By number crunching the data they found the average male cigarette smoker is losing a decade of life in India.

Prof Jha says their findings helped prompt India's health minister Harsh Vardhan to recommend a 200% tax hike on cigarettes for the new government's budget.

In the budget which was announced this week, taxes on cigarettes were raised between 11 and 72%, but the researchers estimate that even this more modest hike could save nearly one million lives.

Dr Sanjay Kinra, a public health expert from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who is not involved in the study, believes the MDS will help improve India's health.

"You need lots of information to plan public health policy, and knowing the key cause of death and basic lifestyle factors is a good start."

The ultimate aim, he says, should be for the Indian government to develop a stronger civil registration system to record the details of all deaths - not just a sample as in the Million Deaths Study.

But he adds that knowing the cause of death does have limitations when allocating public health money.

"Not everything that is a disease kills you - and diseases that don't kill you straight away but cause suffering over many years, like diabetes or dementia, also need a lot of resources."

. . .

mawarannahr fucked around with this message at 04:32 on May 8, 2021

# ? May 8, 2021 04:29

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

https://twitter.com/ranaayyub/status/1391016427457445892?s=21

The BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, previously set the police on any hospital or individual reporting an oxygen shortage in the state.

# ? May 8, 2021 14:52

Count Roland: Oct 6, 2013

mawarannahr posted:

This kind of data is difficult to produce even in relatively unapocalyptic times as 2014, according to the article below. If half of deaths aren�t counted (again, during normal times) and if producing estimates of 1/56th of annual deaths took 15 years of interviews, what hope is there for obtaining excess deaths data, as you propose? Should we just not discuss this at all until then, however long it might take?

No, of course we should discuss it, and encourage action. There's clearly a dire emergency. I just see people speculating numerically, and making very broad generalizations. Here's two articles that make some cursory attempts.

quote:

More disturbing still, India�s soaring official covid-19 count represents the tip of an iceberg. Because of low testing rates outside big cities, say epidemiologists, the actual caseload could be anything from ten to 30 times higher. A national serological survey conducted in December found 21% of Indians were carrying covid-19 antibodies, compared with an official tally which suggested that only about 1% of India�s people had been infected by that time. More recently, local journalists who have cross-checked hospital and funeral records against government numbers have found similar, gaping discrepancies across the country. One report revealed that in the second week of April, when authorities in Vadodara, a city in the state of Gujarat, announced seven covid-19 deaths, the count in two hospitals alone was more than 300. This suggests that India could be facing not 2,000 deaths a day, as the current official count shows, but something much higher.

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/04/28/are-indian-statistics-understating-covid-19-cases-and-deaths

quote:

Fully one-third of tests are coming back positive in Delhi, and 21% across India as a whole, proportions high enough to convince epidemiologists that more testing would reveal many more cases. Sero-surveys, blood tests which measure how many people have been infected with covid in the past, reveal a huge gap, too. A national one in December, when India was reporting a cumulative total of 10m covid-19 cases, suggested that the real number was closer to 300m. And journalists from across India investigating local records from crematoria, cemeteries and even newspaper obituaries have found many times more covid-19 deaths than appear in official health bulletins.

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/04/28/are-indian-statistics-understating-covid-19-cases-and-deaths

Obviously this data is very incomplete, but they're using the methods I'm extolling. If you can't trust the official figures, try to use other data to fill in the blanks. A journalist that says "the situation in this hospital is dire" paints a picture, but one that goes over the hospital's paperwork and finds differences with government numbers is, to me, more valuable, as this sort of data can be compared and contrasted to other data sets. For an individual journalist its hard to make these data comparisons, but newspapers have that capacity. Indian media doesn't seem terribly interested in doing this, so perhaps foreign media or NGOs can fill the gap. The sort of study you linked to is valuable: the lesson there is that studies like it should be encouraged and expedited, and their results listened to. I'm definitely not saying we shouldn't talk about it until we know everything.

# ? May 8, 2021 15:35

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1391238136219512833?s=21

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1391238137804906496?s=21

Holy gently caress.

# ? May 9, 2021 10:05

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

that would just be hindu dead, right? i understand that muslims have different funeral rites

# ? May 9, 2021 12:04

DarkCrawler: Apr 6, 2009; by vyelkin

So Modi is still like 65% in popularity, right?

# ? May 9, 2021 12:13

Zeroisanumber: Oct 23, 2010; Nap Ghost

V. Illych L. posted:

that would just be hindu dead, right? i understand that muslims have different funeral rites

Yeah, Muslims bury their dead like the other major Abrahamic faiths.

25-50k a day...

I can't even really comprehend that number. My brain is doing that old Lovecraft thing where it recoils from the horror.

# ? May 9, 2021 12:56

Count Roland: Oct 6, 2013

This editorial from the Lancet is excoriating India's handling of covid:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01052-7/fulltext

# ? May 9, 2021 15:00

Grouchio: Aug 31, 2014

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1391238138572464129?s=20

DarkCrawler posted:

So Modi is still like 65% in popularity, right?

Not quite that high but his electorate is blaming the central govt and not him for some loving reason.

Grouchio fucked around with this message at 15:22 on May 9, 2021

# ? May 9, 2021 15:20

Zedhe Khoja: Nov 10, 2017; sürgünden selamlar
yıkıcılar ulusuna

Zeroisanumber posted:

Yeah, Muslims bury their dead like the other major Abrahamic faiths.

25-50k a day...

I can't even really comprehend that number. My brain is doing that old Lovecraft thing where it recoils from the horror.

Not just bury em. There's quite an effort to plant em in the ground asap which interferes pretty heavily with casualty counting programs in warzones. Or epidemic zones as the case may be.

# ? May 9, 2021 15:25

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

Grouchio posted:

Not quite that high but his electorate is blaming the central govt and not him for some loving reason.

That's how it always is with strongmen. Once people have bought in, nothing bad that happens is ever the strongman's fault. "Big daddy Modi hasn't failed us! In fact he's there only thing keeping the perfidious actors below him from making things even worse!"

# ? May 9, 2021 15:31

DarkCrawler: Apr 6, 2009; by vyelkin

Cugel the Clever posted:

That's how it always is with strongmen. Once people have bought in, nothing bad that happens is ever the strongman's fault. "Big daddy Modi hasn't failed us! In fact he's there only thing keeping the perfidious actors below him from making things even worse!"

Between Trump and Bolsonaro both still having like a third of people following them has thoroughly educated me on how awful some kind of people just are. So driven by hate that actually actively causing the pandemic to be worse (instead of just bungling the response) is nothing in their eyes. I suppose (some) Indians can kind of be excused though, given the conditions.

DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 16:02 on May 9, 2021

# ? May 9, 2021 15:59

Zeroisanumber: Oct 23, 2010; Nap Ghost

Cugel the Clever posted:

That's how it always is with strongmen. Once people have bought in, nothing bad that happens is ever the strongman's fault. "Big daddy Modi hasn't failed us! In fact he's there only thing keeping the perfidious actors below him from making things even worse!"

I'm reminded of the Peasant's Revolt in England back in 1381 where the peasant's had the monarchy by the balls and when the revolt's leader Wat Tyler went to negotiate with the king they loving murdered him in cold blood and then King Richard II rode over to the rebel lines and said, "I'll be your captain!" And they all went with it because the king was a good guy and it was only the people under him who were bad.

Should've murdered the whole lot of them the second they had the chance but I guess people aren't always able to break out of the world they grew up in.

# ? May 9, 2021 16:01

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Isn't Modi's superficial popularity propped up by an iron grip over the media so nobody can ever really talk poo poo about him publicly? It's pretty hard to lose support like that.

Even the people who see through the government's obvious lies might not be able to put together the whole picture on their own, or pick up on the fact that Modi and his personal decisions are responsible for why India is doing so much worse.

# ? May 9, 2021 16:05

madeintaipei: Jul 13, 2012

Zeroisanumber posted:

I'm reminded of the Peasant's Revolt in England back in 1381 where the peasant's had the monarchy by the balls and when the revolt's leader Wat Tyler went to negotiate with the king they loving murdered him in cold blood and then King Richard II rode over to the rebel lines and said, "I'll be your captain!" And they all went with it because the king was a good guy and it was only the people under him who were bad.

Should've murdered the whole lot of them the second they had the chance but I guess people aren't always able to break out of the world they grew up in.

Plenty of "True Communists" in Gulag wrote letters to Stalin begging for clemecy. "They made a mistake. Surely, once I explain. I cooperated! I'm not like them. They are all guilty, not me!

Who do you think signed your death warrant, idiots?

# ? May 9, 2021 16:37

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

madeintaipei posted:

Plenty of "True Communists" in Gulag wrote letters to Stalin begging for clemecy. "They made a mistake. Surely, once I explain. I cooperated! I'm not like them. They are all guilty, not me!

Who do you think signed your death warrant, idiots?

Reminds me of those �true Americans� tweeting Trump about having their healthcare or jobs taken away when that was what they explicitly voted him in for.

# ? May 9, 2021 18:41

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

madeintaipei posted:

Who do you think signed your death warrant, idiots?

but clearly the king was mislead by his evil advisors

# ? May 9, 2021 19:11

Charlz Guybon: Nov 16, 2010

Cugel the Clever posted:

That's how it always is with strongmen. Once people have bought in, nothing bad that happens is ever the strongman's fault. "Big daddy Modi hasn't failed us! In fact he's there only thing keeping the perfidious actors below him from making things even worse!"

It's the King's advisors!

# ? May 10, 2021 02:46

Zedhe Khoja: Nov 10, 2017; sürgünden selamlar
yıkıcılar ulusuna

SlothfulCobra posted:

Isn't Modi's superficial popularity propped up by an iron grip over the media so nobody can ever really talk poo poo about him publicly? It's pretty hard to lose support like that.

Even the people who see through the government's obvious lies might not be able to put together the whole picture on their own, or pick up on the fact that Modi and his personal decisions are responsible for why India is doing so much worse.

Pretty much how it works in Turkey. Even the opposition deals with the world through a lens that the deepstate and then Erdogan have constructed.

# ? May 10, 2021 10:12

Gatts: Jan 2, 2001; Goodnight Moon; Nap Ghost

So there�s a bunch of poo poo going on in Pakistan. Forces are at work to push Imran Khan out of power. Rumor is he went to Russia and tried to strike a deal with them on energy during this whole Ukraine-Russia war thing going on and certain foreign powers did not like this. Part of his coalition of Govt defected and joined the opposition. There was going to be a vote of no confidence for his Govt due Sunday and pressure for him to resign. The fear is the same corrupt looters are frothing at the mouth to come back to power and rob and pillage the country.

The Army which is often the real power behind the throne is officially �I�m neutral� while if you talk to people on the ground is like �They�re pissed Imran isn�t towing their line and getting too big for himself so want him out.�

But anyway there�s this thing too�

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatvnews.com/amp/news/world/pakistan-pm-imran-khan-full-speech-top-quotes-2022-03-31-767002

A sub rumor going around is that Imran is the one who convinced Saudi Arabia to sell oil in Yuan. Selling oil in currency other than the dollar is minimal today and that majority of it is in USD lends the US it�s power and economic might. So if that�s true, then it also may lend to why there�s effort internationally to oust him.

Either case comedy in Pakistan.

https://fb.watch/c5D3WpcNSa/

Gatts fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Mar 31, 2022

# ? Mar 31, 2022 18:15

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Has anyone kept up to date with the Kashmir situation since 2019? I remember it looking pretty bad but news eventually petered out after communications were cut off, but Mondi being in the news a lot now due to the war reminded me of the whole mess.

I tried to find some reasonably objective articles but most sources are of course either Indian or Kashmiri. This is from 2020 so still reasonably fresh after the conflict and doesn't really address longer-term outcomes: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/1/1/how-2019-changed-the-kashmir-dispute-forever

# ? Oct 5, 2022 10:33

Outrail: Jan 4, 2009; www.sapphicrobotica.com

I haven't seen any GBS threads about India or Pakistan disappearing in a series of nuclear fireballs yet.

# ? Oct 5, 2022 16:20

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

I was under the impression that most of Modi's plans went on indefinite pause when the pandemic hit. I haven't heard anything about that ID law that he was going to use to mass-deport muslims either.

# ? Oct 5, 2022 18:05

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

SlothfulCobra posted:

I was under the impression that most of Modi's plans went on indefinite pause when the pandemic hit. I haven't heard anything about that ID law that he was going to use to mass-deport muslims either.

Presumably the reason you haven't heard about it is that it was passed before the pandemic hit and so there's nothing more to say? The protests against the law were what the pandemic shut down. The law itself is still on the books. I don't think Modi's other plans were put on pause by the pandemic either. Everything's business as usual here as far as I can tell.

# ? Oct 6, 2022 04:27

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Well, I haven't heard of any mass deportations or rounding up newly illegal muslims into camps, so it sounds like it's still on pause for now.

# ? Oct 6, 2022 04:38

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# ? May 9, 2024 10:32

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

I'm not sure the plan was to do any of that immediately, as opposed to laying the groundwork for it in the future.

# ? Oct 6, 2022 08:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Pakistan vs India: I can see the future and it is a bright flash

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