[dartharva]

The paper in question: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444648/pdf/mai...

It is indeed very interesting and worthy of consideration that Indians and other people from poor countries with lesser hygiene may be more immune to COVID infections.

India's government lifted its infamous lockdowns at times when the number of active cases only seemed to be flying upwards and had no anticipations of coming down anytime soon. In a poor, extremely overpopulated country with high rates of overcrowding and very low hygiene standards, coupled with rampant unemployment and economic distress, anyone could have only expected the situation to worsen. And it did - the country's GDP shrunk by almost a quarter and cases continued to pile up... until they didn't. The number of active cases miraculously peaked mid-November and have been in a healthy downward trend since. While developed countries like the UK seem to have their number of active cases shoot up exponentially, many states in India are experiencing a net decrease in cases to very safe levels. Even infamously overcrowded states like Uttar Pradesh are displaying impressive levels of recovery.

One has to reckon there must be something more to it than just government interventions and change in attitudes.

[derbOac]

I'm always skeptical of these studies because I suspect there's more documentation and reporting biases in more socioeconomically stressed areas. That is, my guess is cases are less likely to be accurately documented in India than, say, the US or Germany.

Having said that, there's molecular biological evidence of cross immunity to other forms of coronavirus so there might very well be something to it.

I've wondered along these lines if keeping kids out of schools might in some ways be counter productive, by decreasing exposure to other coronaviruses or other pathogens that increase immunity.

I've often wanted to see if, eg, parents of young children, or people working with young children (teachers, pediatricians, etc) have less severe outcomes from sars-cov-2 than matched controls.

[anoncake]

No country has experienced exponential growth. Exponential growth is unbounded and impossible with a finite population. The number of total infections is better described by a logistic function (epidemiologists use more sophisticated models of course, but the shape of the curve is similar).

About 28% of the Indian population has been infected (15-22% according to more pessimistic estimates). In some areas it's even higher, 41% in the slums of Mumbai.[1] The virus is running out of hosts. That is not a miracle, it's completely expected.

[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/indias-covid-19-case...

[viraptor]

> peaked mid-November

Typo? We're not mid-November yet.

[tyingq]

They did have a peak in mid September, perhaps that was the intended word.

[dartharva]

yes. Apologies.

[dartharva]

Edit: mid-September, not mid-November.