Hacker News Reader

Comment by gspr | Hacker News Reader

> Further, there's a great amount of scrutiny into whether anyone's sick (see the reports of doctors getting beaten up even by the cops).

What? Why are doctors being beaten up? I don't understand.

View on HN

It's very stupid, but a (very) few people see them as potential spreaders of the disease. Public health workers going into the community to find infected people have also been attacked. Also, until recently, suspected COVID patients had to be in hospital -- no home isolation allowed -- and some of these patients (or their relatives) thought that venting their anger on doctors would help.

Unfortunately, the law of large numbers in India means that a "very few" can mean tens of thousands of people.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-52151141

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-13/doctors-c...

> a (very) few people see them as potential spreaders

One problem is that although only a very few will see it this way, other people would be cautious about being caught up in it. This could affect the way they behave because if they think that somebody died in their house from this disease then they won't want to advertise that at all (eg by blowing horns) in case they were subsequently targeted. The fear is likely worse than the reality but behavior like this is driven more by fear.

However I can understand that ramraj07 says it seems unlikely on their street as it would surely be difficult in a close community to hide a van coming to take Auntie-ji away.

In North American long term care facilities, this is exactly what's happening. In Canada, a ban was put in place to prevent health workers from working in multiple long term care facilities - it was found that infectious material was making its way via health workers from one home to another, all full of high risk populations.

Add in the fact that many hospitals in North America are short on PPE, and some are even preventing nurses and care personnelle from wearing PPE (or to bring their own, etc) - and you can see how much of an issue this can be.

Of course, beating up the doctors is a bad idea, but the roots of the idea that health workers are potential spreaders isn't all that far fetched.

Few isolated incidents mostly in slum areas where rumors spread of a government conspiracy of targeting muslims. This government's anti-minority image did not help.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/assam-mla-held-for...

> What? Why are doctors being beaten up? I don't understand.

The anti-vax crowd in India tends to be on the violent side of things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com