Bharat Rakshak

chola wrote:^^^ False positive for HIV?! Little wonder they abandoned that one. It would scare the public to death and no one would take it.

sudarshan wrote:Active infections down to ~375,000 in India. I remember the peak around 1.05 million a couple of months ago. This indicates that the reservoir for the virus is dwindling, so dropping case load is not a surprise. The number might not be accurate, but the trend is what matters. As for serious infections, that number has been stuck at 8,944 forever now. My guess is they stopped reporting it. As far as active infections go, India is now in holy 9th place in the world. And it also seems India is the only major country which shows a decline in active infections. The real indicator of the end of the pandemic would be zero active infections. So no source exists, from which the virus can spread (unless somebody invokes bat-magic again of course).

SRoy wrote:
People have stopped getting tested.
Unless someone is seriously sick and medically not manageable at home, nobody is rushing to get tested.

Official stats and numbers doesn't mean anything.

Mort Walker wrote:SRoy is correct because people in India are not dying at rates per million as in the west. CFR is probably below 1%. Anyone can get tested anytime they want, anywhere they want. Prevent measures from the Ministry of AYUSH are effective. The people of India have learned to live and conquer coronavirus. Everyone is waiting for the vaccine, even partly effective will drop CFR to less than 0.1%.

If anyone gets a cold or common viral infection, they get tested. My guess is that 1 out of every 5 households has one person who has COVID-19. Having open homes, that is no central AC or heat is probably saving lots of people.

sudarshan wrote:

chola wrote:^^^ False positive for HIV?! Little wonder they abandoned that one. It would scare the public to death and no one would take it.

So there would be some basis for the report by Indian scientists of HIV gene sequences being found in this virus?

President Trump’s chief of staff threatened the F.D.A. head’s job if he didn’t get it done on Friday.

sanjaykumar wrote:That would suggest confirmation of the lower efficacy of the Oxford vaccine.

The battle for survival has got more challenging for coronavirus patients. Doctors are now reporting an alarming incidence of rare and serious fungal infection which is preying on patients either battling Covid-19 infection or those who recently recovered.

City-based retina and ocular trauma surgeon Parth Rana has reported five cases of mucormycosis, an uncommon fungal infection with 50% mortality rate. Two died while two survived having lost their vision. Four were young males aged between 34 and 47 years. On Friday night, a 67-year-old man from Bhuj too was rushed to Ahmedabad in a critical condition. All have reported enlarged eyeballs which literally bulged out of their sockets.

“All the four patients had a history of uncontrolled sugar and they were on strong drugs including steroids. Their immunity was very low. We believe that these two conditions led to the rapid spread,” said Dr Rana. He said pre-Covid-19, mucormycosis infection takes 15-30 days to spread, but in these four cases, it happened within just 2-3 days.

Leading infectious diseases specialist Dr Atul Patel who was part of the national study on mucormycosis fungal infection earlier red-flagged the growing incidence of the serious infection in Covid-19 patients.

“We have recorded 19 cases of mucormycosis infection in Covid-19 recovered patients in the past three months. This is 4.5 times higher than the burden reported conventionally before the pandemic. This is a serious issue and healthcare providers should be extra-cautious as it has a mortality rate of 50%," said Dr Patel.

saip wrote:Here is a 'super-spreader' event close to my family. My bil's brother's family in Baltimore had a get together mostly for famly members for Thanksgiving. His wife is one of those who did not believe in masks. She is pretty clear that no one while in her home should wear masks and always 'asked' that they take off their masks and so at this event none of them wore masks or maintained social distancing obvioulsy. Now 9 people who were there that day tested positive for COVID19. I heard their symptoms are kind of different in each case like high fever, body aches, diarrhea etc. Her husband is now at Johns Hopkins intubated and under ventilator for the past few days. You can draw your own conclusions but to me a mask might have helped.

saip wrote:Missed the quotes, eh?

saip wrote:You can draw your own conclusions but to me a mask might have helped.

Mort Walker wrote:Family/friends social events such as dinners are spreader events world wide. This instance is not a super spreader event. Super spreader events are like those endless people protesting and rioting. Be it the "farmers" around NCR or the naxalites around DC.

At a superspreading event, the number of cases transmitted will be disproportionately high compared to general transmission, Dr Karan says.

And the risk of these superspreading events may balloon in the presence of superspreading people, who pass on their infection more widely either by being in contact with more people or emitting more of the virus.

"I tend to think of it as this: the vast majority of people may not infect any other people, and some people in certain situations infect a lot of people," he says. "One person may infect 10 people, or 15 people or 20 people."

A study that claimed the Indian subcontinent might be the place where the earliest human-to-human novel coronavirus transmission occurred was withdrawn from the preprint platform of the medical journal The Lancet, Global Times reported recently.

Francois balloux, Director, UCL Genetics Institute and Professor of Computational Systems Biology at University College of London, described the paper by Chinese researchers as 'gibberish'. "A piece of gibberish nonsense arguing #SARSCoV2 originated in India, submitted to the Lancet. I can only hope that the process of 'peer review' will weed this one out promptly."

chola wrote:^^^ Protests or not, India's numbers since August had been EXEMPLARY.

I recall when there were fears that India's cases would pass the US in August when the daily cases hovered over 90K. That is now down by TWO-THIRDS (while the US is up over 200% in the same period.)

You cannot hide huge statistical trends like this.

To be perfectly honest, I have never been more proud as a desi during this tough time. What is happening in India lifts my heart even as our family prepares for a maelstrom in the coming months here in the US.

NEW DELHI: The Union health ministry on Tuesday said 29,000 cold chain points, 240 walk-in coolers, 70 walk-in freezers, 45,000 ice-lined refrigerators, 41,000 deep freezers and 300 solar refrigerators will be used for Covid-19 vaccine storage. Providing the details about cold-chain management at a press conference here, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said guidelines for estimation of electrical and non-electrical cold chain equipment and their strengthening have been issued to states by the Centre.

Mort Walker wrote:Superspreader events are typically larger public gatherings and political rallies of any political persuasion.

Mort Walker wrote:Having symptoms does not translate to 100% positivity rate. There are many other viral infections floating around.

I have family members who were tested negative by PCR method after showing symptoms. It tuns out to be other viral infections.

tandav wrote:

Mort Walker wrote:Having symptoms does not translate to 100% positivity rate. There are many other viral infections floating around.

I have family members who were tested negative by PCR method after showing symptoms. It tuns out to be other viral infections.

I had many of the classic symptoms of COVID few months back
1) High Fever
2) Lack of Taste and Smell
3) Body Ache

However
4) But did not have Cough instead I was sneezing constantly

Still having constant sniffles and the occassional sneezing bouts... fitness has gone for a toss though

The RT PCR test came out negative for COVID

Mort Walker wrote:^^^Since Jan. 21, 2020 it has been NJ, NY and MA. Other states would really need to be effed up really bad like those 3 as far as public health is concerned. ND and SD don’t have the incomes and many are rural people working in meat processing. Even then, they won’t beat the top 3 Dem controlled $hitholes.