27 March 2020
This comes from a very fast and furious turn of events, an exchange where a colleague went from disbelieving numbers put out by various bodies and from my end for Covid19 in India, to questioning how the Chinese could not have the numbers they have, being the source point of this pandemic and being what they are and all that! I can tell you, this was before USA scaled to the summit of the Covid19 peak of positive cases overnight beating even China.
I am at the core of my analytical existence a self professed diviner, following a heuristic process that can never satisfy evidence based medicine or statistical sciences. In Post Truth World, my calls have come to be more and more spot on, only because of the nature of the times, where Data fudging, tailoring and default failures to capture and more are endemic, with so many prodigious slips between cups and lips! Just take an example of two tweets from USA, one where a physician suspects he is suffering because a patient who tested negative later died of ARDS and clinically he should be Covid19 case, the other of a son informing that his father arrested and was revived, his mother asked to undergo home quarantine, with local centre saying that testing is available only for hospital cases. So in both instances Covid19 statistics take a hit. Few statisticians can grapple with this Black Swan event in modern history, because of how it unfolded in the full glare of public knowledge, with social media and mainstream media agog with this since January, even though the cynicism with Chinese reporting is justified and exceptional. So till Italy was overwhelmed West was flattering itself, like how Indians are with their 24000 tests so far and 650 positive, making a strike rate of 2.7%, when compared with world leader USA at 484000 tests with 65000 positive for a rate of 13% as quoted by @Varun_Jhaveri, OSD to CEO Ayushman Bharat, who makes a case for India being ‘special’. If you see how the timeline is staggered country wise, statistics frozen, and without deciphering comparable testing criteria, type of test( Serological indicators or DNA markers), you know you are dealing with an artifice. Yet, I don’t blame this specialist, since he is doing what he can with the data at hand.
Now globally we have crossed half a million mark of reported positive cases. From this we know confirmed deaths attributed to Covid19 are 24000. This makes Covid19 mortality rate 4.8% globally as of now, which turns more grave if you consider that out of 364619 active cases at this moment, 800IST, 19534 are critical, which is 5%. That means nearly 100% of those critical die? It launched a serious ethical and clinical debate amongst physicians whether they should label Covid19 as DNR ( Do Not Resuscitate) or not. Consider Indian figures carefully, from this reliable link which works from WHO data only and you see how India is not showing a pattern, stuttering and starting as it were, with cases alternating between triple digit one day to double digit growth the other! https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ Even better, 100% of India’s current active cases are classified as ‘mild’!
Now contrast with the Chinese story. China says officially and through back channels, a time line from mid December to mid January when cases came baffling authorities and medical professionals, not minding the whistleblower physician. Skepticism comes to fore that Lunar Festival in 3rd Week of January which sees massive movement of populations from urban clusters to their rural hamlets was ‘contained’ by Chinese authorities. That despite being ‘natural propagation’ for first 40 days, Chinese have over the next 40 days contained it by a massive clamp down, their peak reached two weeks back and after that they fell off a cliff to zero new infections for last 6 days? That they managed somehow to mop up cases that had penetrated other provinces and contained the contagion to Hubei and more specifically to Wuhan? Now consider Japan, a maritime neighbour, with the Diamond Princess anchoring off her coast, and look at the numbers she has provided to WHO. Under 1400 cases, with under 50 deaths, Japan has a model where there is no lockdown, where people are practising safe distance, safe personal protection measures, and strict quarantine. Is Japan too an outlier or bluffing? Then look at South Korea which was innovative with drive in and booth based mass testing and massively curtailed her fresh rate of infection through informed quarantine and management, which has lowered from 500 cases a day ten day peak (from 27-2-2020 to 06-03-2020) to low 100s for the past three weeks. It reveals that aggressive testing and informed quarantine and lock down measures of social distancing with limits to public exposure can work dramatically and produce results in as short a period as 10 days! Does India’s own handling of Wuhan evacuees reveals how effective planned containment can be from the hotbed of Wuhan to a ITBP/Army Medical facility offer evidence of it!https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/indians-evacuated-from-wuhan-free-to-leave-itbp-camp-after-testing-negative-for-coronavirus-1647383-2020-02-17
Now while Japan and Korea have racial and temperamental (cultural) affinity to China, as functional societies they are vastly different. If these countries were able to gain a handle on Covid19 through discipline and scientific approach with efforts in hygiene and sanitation, which is documented by the Western press, undocumented China with select videos of using drones in sanitising operations, with reports of ‘presuming’ clinically Covid19 cases, with iron clad quarantine and lockdown, could have contained it similarly between 23 January to 03 February? After all, unlike Japan and Korea, China is a totalitarian regime too! Read two accounts of China’s Lock Down system provided by an Indian and a Chinese from these links that offer glimpses of their efficiency: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/bengaluru-beijing-detailed-account-indian-self-quarantine-china-120215, https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1241391602523705351.html
Behavioural analytics offers more clues than the fog of unsure statistical data. Japan was pushing for Tokyo Olympics to go on as scheduled, the postponement came at the pressure of Western countries now grappling with the pandemic. China has announced yesterday that restrictions over Wuhan would be lifted next fortnight like those across the country were a fortnight back! Of course China has levels of restrictions, she has only lowered her highest clampdown level. Her factories have resumed operations, some are at 30% and others in the critical medical supplies sector have ramped up to 60% in the last one week. China hopes to go full throttle by mid April. So her pronouncements and her subsequent deals with EU, Iran, Russia, ASEAN and her ‘donated aid’ to South Asian, African and Pacific Rim regions which begin deliveries around that time indicates that she has contained the epidemic situation that started in Wuhan within 120 days. Is this a bluff? Is this orchestrated? The sheer disbelief at how China managed this humungous task is making even otherwise professional scholars succumb to heresy, scurrilous prejudice and conspiracy theories!
So I recall the song from the classic Sound of Music, ‘ How to solve a problem called Maria?’ I know after umpteen screenings of the evergreen movie, Maria was not the problem at all. So how to solve the problem of China and it’s contagion?
Do watch this first of what will be a series of short films on Wuhanhttps://youtu.be/XU9FVqwO4TM
This is a critical report of initial missteps https://youtu.be/uE6SXsrspUg
indiarubberman.com 