Thread by @HaryaxPathak

India's #COVID19 Story - A look at the numbers:-

While our "esteemed" media houses are engaged in a war with the entertainment industry and governments (State and Central), COVID-19 seems to be taking a step back in their list of priorities.

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Sure, there are a few reports that say we had a failed lockdown, or that India is the worst faring country in terms of cases or deaths.

Are we really?

Comparing absolute numbers is the easiest, but they never show what the real picture looks like.

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Let's take a look at few gross numbers regarding India first.

Total Cases: 4.6 million
Total Deaths: 77k
Daily New Cases: 97k

These are the few numbers any media house will show you and say that India is the worst performing country.

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We love comparisons in every field we lay our eyes on. Especially with USA. So let's compare a few numbers there.

USA Total cases: 6.6 million
USA Total deaths: 198k

So, compared to USA, based on gross numbers, we are steadily catching up to them.

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Soon, we'll overtake USA and become the "worst affected" nation in the world. You look at gross numbers and that's what they'll tell you.

Let's dig in a little deeper and really understand what an infectious disease means in context of population and numbers.

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Lets's look at a few more numbers.

Total Population
India: 1380 million
USA: 331 million

Population Density
India: 464/sq km
USA: 36/ sq km

India's population is over 4 times larger than USA, and we have a population density almost 13 times than that of USA.

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What does that mean?

An infectious disease like COVID-19 needs people to spread. The more people, higher the spread. The more closely packed, higher the spread.

Naturally, in a country like India, the disease was going to spread far and wide in huge numbers.

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And looking at the gross numbers, it does seem like that. Doesn't it?

No.

Merely 0.33% of India's population has been infected. Even if we consider ICMR's latest sero-survey, the figure rises to approximately 0.45%.

For USA that figure comes to 2%.

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That was the total number of cases. What about fatalities?

Case Fatality Rate
India: 1.67%
USA: 3%

USA has a higher incidence and higher case fatality rate than India even though population statistics suggest India should be worse off.

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Let's see some health services data as well. According to WHO, the doctor-population ratio of a country should be atleast 1/1000.

India barely touched 1/1000 in 2018.
USA, meanwhile, stands pretty at 2.77/1000.

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COVID-19 has seen us scrambling for hospital beds and ICUs.

As per WHO data,

India has 5.3 hospital beds per 10,000 population.

USA has 28.7/10,000.

USA has more doctors and facilities for their population, yet their COVID statistics are worse than India.

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With the help of these numbers, I can atleast say that India is not the worst affected country. Yes, 4.6 million cases is still a huge number. But with context and perspective, it's not that bad a number.

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India has done a good job at handling this pandemic. Not a great job. The government could still have done better. But with the resources and information at hand, yes, it has been satisfactory, to say the least.

This doesn't mean it's over though.

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This pandemic is far from over. We are still seeing a surge in cases, we still have to follow the guidelines. Wash hands, wear masks. Practice social distancing. Just because the news media are not reporting it, doesn't mean this pandemic has ended.

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