What exactly is Government of India doing?

[Renegade]

Dying Alone Because Of Covid-19: A Doctor's View

We don't think of dying too often. But when we do, we hope that we pass away peacefully, surrounded by our family, friends and loved ones. However, the global pandemic of the COVID- 19 infection has challenged the very core of this thought.

www.ndtv.com

Take a moment to think of what must the dying patients be going through emotionally.

 

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Can always count on Trump to do what he says. He's pulled funding pending a review. Tedros is taking a hike.

The WHO balance sheet: How it is funded, where it spends

Coronavirus (COVID-19): President Donald Trump has declared he will halt US funding to WHO. How much does WHO get from the US and other member states, including India? Where does it spend? What is its role in India’s COVID-19 battle?

indianexpress.com

According to senior officials in the National Centre for Disease Control, in January when cases were piling up in China, there was a meeting in Delhi in which WHO officials brushed aside government concerns saying “there is no human to human transmission”. “When cases kept going up and moved out of Wuhan, we asked what’s happening? Either there are more sources than just one wet market in one province or there is clearly human to human transmission happening,” said a source.

No human to human transmission !! from these clueless WHO jokers. Had we just followed Taiwan's CDC instead we'd have been in a much better position today.

As far as i can tell India is still working with the WHO but of course some here do not and will not understand our strategy and resort to fear mongering

India has, however, largely built its own strategy, from its reluctance to test to the early travel restrictions to and from China and then the lockdown. While India imposed a lockdown when cases were just 341 (on March 22, starting with 75 districts), its resistance to mass testing is akin to the US’s strategy. India has also taken a call on universal use of masks when the WHO maintained that masks protect others rather than the wearer and need not be mandatory.

Testing is only required in hot spots. Seal them off then the outbreak is contained. The present rate of random sampling is enough to get an idea of spread.

Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020

Why even bother treating them, seal the area off.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1250375513555660800

I don't understand what triggered this off. The family agreed to go into quarantine. But when the health officials showed up there was some argument and things spiraled out of control. There is now no other alternative but to seal that area off.

 

[red dragon]

^^ Been talking about hotspot selection from the day of lockdown...some post earlier even mentioned the word " random sampling" will be talked about a lot... It took the geniuses close to 4 weeks to get into these absolute basic containment measures after destroying the economy completely. Masterstroke indeed!!

 

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Posting the Article link from Today's HT (article author resonated the similar thoughts [through the references of people from the field of medicine] of what our friend @red dragon is telling us off)

ICMR says cases rising exponentially in India

Rising exponentially. WHERE ? only in hotspots

Testing required WHERE ? only in hotspots

The ICMR said there is limitied community transmission WHERE ? only in hotspots

This is not telling people what is pleasing to hear, this is telling people what they need to know WITHOUT causing panic.

What to do with hotspots ? seal them

Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020

^^ Been talking about hotspot selection from the day of lockdown...some post earlier even mentioned the word " random sampling" will be talked about a lot... It took the geniuses close to 4 weeks to get into these absolute basic containment measures after destroying the economy completely. Masterstroke indeed!!

We have a million people in quarantine already, That's called aggressive contact tracing.

Doubling time since lock down has increased from 4 to 6 days.

 

[red dragon]

It is true that the entire world was unfair to India pre 2007 in predicting it to be the AIDS capital of the world. However it changed and nobody apologized.
Hope, it will be the same with Corona. Yes, doubling time has definitely increased, but that's expected with the harshest lockdown in the world. Isn't it?
Hopefully India is doing a lot better than I expected initially. If it's true, I will happily acknowledge my fault.
Have seen so much devastation in front of my eyes till yesterday, it's highly possible that I was only concentrating on negatives.

 

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That shows the effect of lock down. It slows the doubling time. Now its down to management.

The reason people are calling out the low figures is they are unaware of the million in the quarantine already.

It's not just lock down, its the quarantine as well. What other things are we doing ?

Covid hasn’t gone viral in India yet, but some in the world & at home can't accept the truth

India isn’t going through a picnic. But our drains aren’t filled with bodies, hospitals haven’t run out of beds, crematoriums and graveyards not out of wood or space.

theprint.in

Post automatically merged: Apr 19, 2020

https://twitter.com/x/status/1250781104144969729

How to deal with these people ?

Can we have NSA invoked on the organisers. Do the full Yogi thing.

Post automatically merged: Apr 19, 2020

So, in simple words, china can kill millions in India by simply not providing the testing kits (or vials).

U.K. Paid $20 Million for New Coronavirus Tests. They Didn’t Work. (Published 2020)

Facing a global scramble for materials, British officials bought millions of unproven kits from China in a gamble that became an embarrassment.

www.nytimes.com

This isn't the first time this has happened btw.

Nepal, Czech Republic and Philippines also find Covid-19 test kits from China faulty - Tibetan Review

(TibetanReview.net, Apr01’20) – Nepal’s Ministry of Health and Population has instructed that the Covid-19 Rapid Diagnostic Kits imported from China by a private contractor not be used after doubts emerged about their reliability. These imports constituted up to 90% of all rapid diagnostic kits...

www.tibetanreview.net

Chinese company sold sub-standard test kits: Spain, Czech

Spain, which is the worst affected country after Italy, reportedly found out that rapid coronavirus test kits purchased from a Chinese firm could only identify 30% of the virus, according to a report in Spanish newspaper El País. Microbiology experts in Spain, as per media reports, believe that...

economictimes.indiatimes.com

Buyer beware yes ?

 

[red dragon]

Returning home from Madrid by road, started 4 in the morning, have to cross 2 entire countries!!

Post automatically merged: Apr 20, 2020

Lost 8 kg in last 3 weeks or so. Thanks to Corona.

 

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https://twitter.com/x/status/1251848619646279681

He has an argument to counter the lower testing numbers criticism

https://twitter.com/x/status/1251146967607947269

Gangakhedkar said, don't go by how many we test, instead see our positivity rate. A low rate means it is not spreading in the wider population and we only test highly suspect cases.

 

[rdst_1]

Today Delhi's CM Arvind Kejriwal said that out of 736 cases tested nearly 25% were positive and all were asymptomatic.
Don't you think, just to overcome fear and return our lives back to normal, we need a lot more testing done. Because otherwise, we might continue sitting at home despite us having contracted and recovering from CoVID. I think Germany started giving 'Recovered' statua cards to patients who have recovered. With mass testing, we'll be able to get back up much faster.

 

[Arjun]

WHO said there is still not known if anyone recovered has immunity.

 

[rdst_1]

WHO said there is still not known if anyone recovered has immunity.

On the other hand, people are being treated with antibodies from recovered patients as well. I know WHO has said this, but there are so many asymptomatic cases out there and even those guys must be coming in contact with the virus again and again and nothing is happening to them.
The studies might have been inconclusive, because they haven't gotten lots of time or a control group to do the studies yet, but one can draw intelligent inferences by looking at the real world scenario.

 

[red dragon]

Yes, nobody knows when to declare a patient cured serologically ( IgM is very non specific and lots of people have it already without ever being tested RT PCR positive, I am IgM positive and my RT PCR was negative for at least 6 times) For all practical purpose clinical recovery should be considered complete recovery at this point.
The way things are going, it is high time to take some calculated risks. The lockdowns everywhere is taking a major toll now, even here at Praha, a much milder lockdown is causing some major public outrage.

 

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Today Delhi's CM Arvind Kejriwal said that out of 736 cases tested nearly 25% were positive and all were asymptomatic.
Don't you think, just to overcome fear and return our lives back to normal, we need a lot more testing done. Because otherwise, we might continue sitting at home despite us having contracted and recovering from CoVID. I think Germany started giving 'Recovered' statua cards to patients who have recovered. With mass testing, we'll be able to get back up much faster.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1252246752222052353

Positivity rates vary across the country



Where it increases is where we increase testing

 

[rdst_1]

Yes, nobody knows when to declare a patient cured serologically ( IgM is very non specific and lots of people have it already without ever being tested RT PCR positive, I am IgM positive and my RT PCR was negative for at least 6 times) For all practical purpose clinical recovery should be considered complete recovery at this point.
The way things are going, it is high time to take some calculated risks. The lockdowns everywhere is taking a major toll now, even here at Praha, a much milder lockdown is causing some major public outrage.

But clinical recovery can be ascertained for only those who had to be hospitalized or showed some symptoms and recovered after taking OTC medication.
But what about the ones who are asymptomatic. I guess we will have to wait for better tests or we might even never develop a good enough serology test.

 

[red dragon]

^^ Very true, that's the biggest challenge. There won't be any test more sensitive than RT PCR other than quantitative assays ( not possible in an epidemic)
That Indian ventilator posted above is absolutely useless for patients with type 2 respiratory failure with no spontaneous respiration ( majority of covid 19 patients requiring intubation, as low 02 sats are universal among all patients with covid positive SARI and can't it can't be the only criteria for ventilation, USA was doing it, resulting in more harm)
Many other countries have tried briefly with similar half assed devices with zero results.
I can't explain why it won't work without explaining the basics of normal respiration and mechanical ventilation ( which are not at all appropriate for a tech forum), but please don't spread these idiotic ideas as new inventions. Those devices are just like bipap machines of yesteryears, even worse. Even high flow nasal oxygen delivery systems are way more effective ( and cost a LOT more)
Antibody tests ( referred to as rapid test in Indian media) ARE NEVER TO BE USED FOR ANY CLINICAL JUDGEMENT. THEY ARE JUST EPIDEMIOLOGY TOOLS.

 

[booo]

That Indian ventilator posted above is absolutely useless for patients with type 2 respiratory failure with no spontaneous respiration ( majority of covid 19 patients requiring intubation, as low 02 sats are universal among all patients with covid positive SARI and can't it can't be the only criteria for ventilation, USA was doing it, resulting in more harm)
Many other countries have tried briefly with similar half assed devices with zero results.
I can't explain why it won't work without explaining the basics of normal respiration and mechanical ventilation ( which are not at all appropriate for a tech forum), but please don't spread these idiotic ideas as new inventions. Those devices are just like bipap machines of yesteryears, even worse. Even high flow nasal oxygen delivery systems are way more effective ( and cost a LOT more)

Real engineering posted an interesting video about ventilators. worth a watch.

 

[rdst_1]

Real engineering posted an interesting video about ventilators. worth a watch.

I am guessing this covered pretty much most of what the doc was trying to say. The video is very well made and definitely worth a watch.

 

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The way things are going, it is high time to take some calculated risks. The lockdowns everywhere is taking a major toll now, even here at Praha, a much milder lockdown is causing some major public outrage.

From what i can tell it isn't the lockdown per se that is causing outrage rather its when officials show up to quarantine people that there is opposition. Which can be violent at times.

Manipur, AP & Goa are C9 free

Goa only had 7 positives and has not had one in over two weeks.

54 districts from 23 states or UT's have not reported any new cases in the last two weeks.

 

[rdst_1]

^^ Very true, that's the biggest challenge. There won't be any test more sensitive than RT PCR other than quantitative assays ( not possible in an epidemic)

Are the 'quantitative assay tests' you mention different from the molecular 'fast track diagnostic' assay tests that companies like Abbott and Siemens seem to have developed.

Siemens Healthineers

 

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How does increased testing take care of asymptomatic carriers ? people that are asymptomatic will not get referred for a test to start with in any country.