Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by apoorvagk 1859 days ago
> I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives.

I am sorry for the losses you and your friends have experienced. I came here to provide a contrarian view just so that the readers here do not get a skewed view of what is going on.

I agree with you that the actual deaths are at least 10X and possibly 100X more than the official numbers. But nobody in my family has been tested positive with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19 or any other illness in the last 2 years. I know many friends and colleagues too whose entire families have been safe in this pandemic. There are a few who have lost a family member to COVID-19. Some of them got infected and recovered. But most of the people in my circle and their families are safe.

4 comments

>But nobody in my family has been tested positive with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19 or any other illness in the last 2 years.

My immediate family could quarantine because we are relatively well off. We can order online and most of our jobs are tech as well.

Other friends and families including doctors can't afford to stay locked down. The first wave was withering down, life was returning back to normal. All modi had to do was to sit down and shut up. But he thought his getting elected was more important so he organized election rallies and let the kumbh mela happen with 12 million people gathering.

It's even worse than that: the Kumbh Mela was organized one year earlier than it would normally be, and Modi/BJP are partly responsible for that.
OP said relatives, which adds extended family.

Even by worst estimates ~50% of population has been infected, so not surprising to find families which are not infected.

My distant family members have been tested positive but no one has died. The parent is definitely stretching it.
There's a big difference in prevalence/spread of covid across economic classes. Without knowing which one you belong to, this is not a great data point.
It is a good data point.

Ganeshkrishnan said he didn't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives. He didn't say such families didn't exist, just that he didn't know any. It is valuable to provide information that such families do exist.