Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by mulvya | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

mulvya

The CFR in Mumbai is half that of earlier waves.

See https://postimg.cc/Xpn7hthc

-----

Delhi looks more severely affected, likely due to its air pollution. See https://aqicn.org/city/delhi/

View on HN

I'm from India. I extremely doubt that the air pollution has anything to do with this. Our healthcare system has completely collapsed. People are struggling to find medical oxygen and are dying outside hospitals without getting any care. Hospital are literally begging for oxygen on Twitter every single day. Significant number of these could've been saved if the Government had prepared for this by improving the healthcare infra. Instead they overconfidently declared victory, kept on hiding data, organized religious and political rallies. The worst is that it has just gotten started and would keep getting worse in the coming days.

At least 2 car factories stopped to let oxygen to hosiptal.

The Maruti Suzuki plant shutdown is from May 1 to 9. Which means it's starting from today and hasn't provided any of their oxygen to hospitals so far. Too little, too late.

At this stage, it's evident that the primary mode of SARS-Cov-2 transmission is through aerosols, not droplets nor fomites.

The level of air pollution affects the duration of suspension of bioaerosols as well as the performance of the innate immune system. Low humidity is also linked to higher transmission.

See

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.04.21249249v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.20215236v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.20057216v...

The level of air pollution is relatively the same now as it was last year for the first wave though. The air pollution isn't helping things but if it were that one thing, why would the second wave look any different from the first?

> The level of air pollution is relatively the same now as it was last year for the first wave though.

No, they are not. See table 1 of https://www.orfonline.org/research/air-pollution-delhi-filli... - it hit a low point in October, but was much better during lockdown and relatively better post-lockdown although trending towards worse levels.

Delhi has screwed up badly. In the South Indian states, in Karnataka and especially Kerala, Oxygen is well provisioned. Karnataka is also ramping up further everyday. Looks like someone in the Delhi state govt forgot capacity planning.

A disease that affects peoples' breathing and you don't think air pollution has anything to do with how severely the outbreak has affected people?

Delhi weather is also extremely hot right now, with highs of over 40degC, and lows of at least 30degC, six out of seven days a week. While it's a dry heat, heat stroke might still be a factor in the higher death rates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com