Dr Ashish K. Jha on the horror unfolding in India:
India reports another 400,000+ cases, 4000+ death day
A sustained level of horribleness
And its not correct
True number surely closer to 25,000 deaths, 2-5 million infections today
Lots of ways to estimate but here’s a simple one
Look at the crematoriums
During non-pandemic year 2019
About 27,000 Indians died on typical day
Crematoriums handle that level of deaths every day
Additional 4,000 deaths won’t knock them off their feet
Crematoriums across the country reporting 2-4X normal business
So best estimate 55K to 80K people dying daily in India
If you assume baseline deaths of 25-30K
COVID likely causing additional 25K to 50K deaths daily
Not 4,000
What about infections?
Lets start with Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR)
In India, at least 1% right now
You might say — woah, that’s high
In US its about 0.6% and India has a younger population
BUT
Indian healthcare system has collapsed,
People dying for lack of oxygen
So IFR of 1% is reasonable, may even too low
Which would put daily infections at 2.5 to 5M / day
So here’s the bottom line
India can’t be experiencing 4K deaths a day
If it were, it would barely be blip in the background
Instead, seeing crematoriums running 24/7 and running out of firewood
Means the # of deaths from COVID at least closer to 25K, may be much more
There’s an old saying in global health
You can ignore, fail to test for, or undercount whatever disease you want
But you can’t ignore the dead
In India, the dead are telling us the disease is much worse than the official statistics
And we have to listen
Fin
Originally tweeted by Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) on May 9, 2021.
We’re not listening.