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by andrewflnr 1176 days ago
Don't forget sheer number of people.
1 comments

India is almost the same size but doesn’t seem to have this pattern.
China is much more urbanized, India's population is still majority rural. And China also has a more robust public health system, which means that more cases get detected in the first place.
Yeah, probably not sufficient on its own, but I bet it's a factor. It amplifies the others.
The big question is why doesn’t it happen more often via India?
Quick guesses:

Maybe Indians have less contact with wildlife (due to different settlement patterns, or religious or cultural restrictions on eating wild animals?), or less average physical mobility (more expensive and inconvenient long-distance transportation), or a climate less conducive to certain modes of virus transmission?

A smaller fraction of the population working or commuting in huge indoor spaces?

Maybe (contrary to Americans' intuition) Chinese public health surveillance is both more effective and more transparent than Indian, leading to a measurement bias because some disease outbreaks that arise in China get better-documented?