| Fellow Indian here who's been tracking this since Feb. Highlights of what I think are the biggest risk: The number of tests being performed in India are 20x less than most other countries, though it has ramped up in the past few weeks, there was a free flow of international travel till then. My fear is that because the virus is asymptomatic, there are a lot of active carriers freely moving around. Most companies in India also find WFH an alien concept, even in tech, so it seems like most people still have to go to work. I believe that the urban density in India is too high to stop something like this even from a lockdown. Also the lockdown would only help the middle class, there is a large section of urban poor that depend on daily wage that can't stop working. They depend on this money for food and shelter. Overall, the avalanche is imminent, and I believe that the situation could be dire in the cities. As tests ramp up the true impact will be seen but I fear that we'll always be behind the curve on this because of the difficulty of mobilizing testing at such scales. The only way we can avoid large scale impact is if the virus finds it hard to survive in the heat, now that summer is in. Temperatures are rising but there is no consensus on whether that hinders the spread. |
Personally, I'm hoping against hope that the heat really does slow this virus down. I don't really have much faith in the policies that the various developed nations have enacted to deal with this particular threat. Not really the fault of the leaders, This situation's just something that has not been seen previously. No experience with it at all. I do think governments are emphasizing the wrong things and not being comprehensive. But so are the people. We're buying toilet paper, but leaving soap on the shelves? But overall, governments at least seem to concede it is a threat at this point.
If the heat won't help us? We're in trouble. If India's heat doesn't slow it down, we're gonna be living with this virus for a good long time. Everyone should be rooting for India and Africa at this point. Cut off the rest of the world from those two places so that we can see if the spread is, at least, impaired a little by the heat or the humidity.