India and COVID-19

Sivaraj Kumar
Mar 25, 2020
3 min read

COVID-19 threat is real and India has announced it is locking down its country from 25th March 2020.

I wanted to share my opinion on the following two things.

1) Why Italy has more deaths due to Covid-19 in the world?

2) Why Covid-19 in India might save more people from dying?

I have to be clear here. It's just my opinion based on some facts. You can disagree with me. I might be wrong too. If you disagree just please let me know why.

1) Why Italy has more deaths due to Covid-19 in the world?

Many people have been saying COVID-19 is not as deadly as SARS including me from the beginning. SARS outbreak in 2002-2004 caused 774 deaths globally but deaths due to COVID-19 is 17k+ now and climbing.

What's going on here? Why so many deaths?

Very obvious answer here is COVID-19 has spread more across the world compared to SARS. So we are seeing more deaths.

MORTALITY RATE

SARS : ~ 15%

COVID-19 : Less than 3%

Now another question arises. Let's see some data.

As you can see, China has more COVID-19 cases than Italy but when it comes to no. of deaths it is other way around. Why?

The answer will be obvious if you see the population pyramid.

"A population pyramid illustrates the age and sex structure of a country's population and may provide insights about political and social stability, as well as economic development. The population is distributed along the horizontal axis, with males shown on the left and females on the right. The shape of the population pyramid gradually evolves over time based on fertility, mortality, and international migration trends."

Italy has less no. of young people so older people are most likely to get infected. And it is the older people who seem to be dying because of COVID-19. (Italy is the world's second country to have most no. of elder population. First is Japan.)

Italy has said only 12-13% of the people have actually died because of COVID-19. Remaining ~87% people have died because they were already suffering from other illness. COVID-19 just pulled the death trigger for them.

Now.... Why should you give a damn?

Let's talk about India. India is good at making babies. No offence. But we really are good at making babies. Just see the data.

More Babies = More Young People

So only young people are most likely to get infected. But don't forget that India was very good at making babies in the past. Babies which were born in 1950s are no longer babies. So even though India has more no. of younger people, numbers are scary here.

Shit! If COVID-19 spreads all across India we will see more no. of deaths. Worse than Italy.

It is true that we have more young people so only they are most likely to get infected. So no. of recoveries will be high but no. of deaths will be also high. I might be wrong.

So it is necessary to lockdown our country. It is kinda late but Modi has done the right thing today. Stay inside and stay safe.

Now moving onto the second question,

2) Why Covid-19 in India might save more people from dying?

which is something me and my brother were discussing yesterday for fun.

Less no. of people will die in India, thanks to COVID-19.

In 2018 alone 150,000 Indians have died in road accidents. That's 400/day on average. Nearly 17/hour!

Most of the road accidents are due to poor maintenance of Indian roads as you can see here.

Due to COVID-19, India has now asked people to stay at their homes. Now we are saving at least 300 people every single day! That's great right? (I'm worried about obesity though)

I couldn't understand 2019 road accident statistics mentioned in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways website. Maybe someone can help me understand.