Kerala, a state of 35 million, has only had 4 deaths? Why couldn't we have done the same?

[Destinysdaughter]

For those of you praising Boris and the Government for their handling of this crisis, please read this. Kerala, a state in India has only had 4 deaths! Lead by a woman, she became aware of the impending crisis and took immediate action. Can anyone tell me why the UK couldn't have done this?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19

[okiedokieme]

Reported cases. If they don't test people how do they know. Also we are recording everyone who dies and tests positive for coronavirus as a case when in some circumstances the cause of death was not linked.

[Hercwasonaroll]

Gosh Kamma that does put rather a different spin on things. Median as well so not affected by extremes of age either way.

[Kamma89]

Median age

[Kamma89]

The average age in India is about 26, Africa 19, UK 40! This can't be ignored.

I'm not giving the UK & this awful, incompetent government a free pass but age is, so far as we know, the biggest deciding factor still for this disease.

[user3412891298]

My family lives in Kerala, and I have observed how Kerala's response has been to Covid, compared to the UK. I think finding reasons to undermine Kerala's achievements is a bit silly - they clearly have done a great job.

• They knew in January that this was going to be a major risk (mainly due to the experience of the Nipah outbreak last year, which was far more deadly at a 90% chance of death on infection).
  
• The first students came to Kerala from Wuhan at the end of January. They were isolated right away (meanwhile, students from Wuhan were coming into the UK with no checks).
  
• They have less testing numbers because there is no wide-spread community spread - the disease is widely believed to be controlled.
  

There was a new case last week from someone who travelled from another part of India - but there are checkpoints on all borders to prevent this from happening. (when the country opens up, this is going to be a problem, however)

• In my personal experience, the healthcare system (even for the poorer population) is very very good. There is a good supply of doctors and nurses through the education system (which is also very good with a 100% literacy).
  
• They have successfully treated people with Covid, including a British tourist who lives in Norwich! This was way back in March.
  

www.edp24.co.uk/news/norwich-man-brian-lockwood-survives-coronavirus-becomes-india-celebrity-1-6635101

Overall, they seem to be doing a great job at it, and I think they deserve all the credit they are getting.

[Stuckforthefourthtime]

The key for Kerala is their recent experience with the Nipah virus - also respiratory and much more severe. Similarly, much of Asia had only recently experienced SARS and MERS. They were caught on the hop, but this time they were much more ready.

Germany and many other European countries were more prepared, better resourced, less focussed on the initial costs of lockdown and also had some luck (e.g. in Germany a much higher percentage of the early infected were young Vs in many countries where it hit the old earlier and got into care homes and hospitals faster).

[Mlou32]

I very, very much doubt that they've had anything like only 4 deaths.

[LangClegsInSpace]

Conditions are never like for like. Every country is different and within every country different states and provinces are different and areas right down to counties, districts, parishes and postcodes are different. And below postcode level different settings are different.

We should be seeking out best practice wherever it happens and we should be learning whatever we can and applying it wherever we can. And that will look different in every setting.

[MangoFeverDream]

Also isn’t India where they manufacture hydroxychloroquinine? They use it as an anti-malarial so I’m sure doctors know how to prescribe and manage side effects better than most doctors. Would be nice to know

[MangoFeverDream]

That weather / sun train of thought doesn’t work for Iran though does it? It always seems like there is an exception to every possible pattern

Iran is a huge country with a huge variation in climate due to altitude. Can actually be quite cold there

It’s pretty clear to me that countries that lock down early, track and trace and implement good prevention methods including masks have much better control

Not clear at all. Japan didn’t lock down and or do hardly any testing. They do social distancing and mask wearing well though.

[Moondust001]

Jaxhog FFS I've been to Kerala and it is not, as you state, a "totalitarian regime"... I'm just
incredulous at how many pp are wanting to excuse this government's response which has been so poor compared to many so called undeveloped countries!
I am not seeing anyone defending the UK government. I am seeing a lot of people quite rightly pointing out that comparisons are nowhere near like for like, and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise. If you want to criticise the UK government there is plenty of valid critique to offer, but you do that criticism a disservice trying to make comparisons where there are none.

And when you went to Kerala, was it as a tourist? Contributing to the wealth inequality that exists? How much did you actually learn about Keralans? How many poor towns and villages did you visit? Did you go into schools and health clinics? Do you actually know how people live, or did you not get past the beach / houseboat? Have you actually lived there?

And Kerala is not a country. It's a state. Of India.

[Clavinova]

One thing Kerala did do was to highlight, track and trace a large cluster outbreak from a religious event - South Korea did the same with a Christian religious group for balance - I really can't see the UK government going down that route - fraught with problems.

www.ndtv.com/kerala-news/coronavirus-over-300-from-kerala-attended-islamic-sect-event-in-delhi-nizamuddin-tracing-intensified-2204197

[mindutopia]

Kerala is a really unique place socio-politically, very unlike the rest of India. They have a very community focused socialist style government - communities work together on, there is incredibly high levels of literacy and girls’ education, they have really excellent success in a lot of areas of public health where the rest of India struggles. So it’s on one hand not surprising: if there was going to be a part of India that would tackle this sensibly, it’s Kerala. It’s also fairly rural and probably has less social inequality than other areas.

Realistically though, because it’s rural, there will absolutely have been more than 4 deaths. They just won’t have been officially recorded. This will be the case for all of India (I used to live there). Even in normal circumstances, we had people dying (I worked for a health clinic) and I can’t imagine the government noticed or cared about those deaths. I can’t imagine it would be different now.

[LilacTree1]

Age “ The U.K. government could have done far more in Jan & Feb to build up testing & tracing capacity but, distracted by Brexit and Johnson’s chaotic private life they did absolutely nothing until it was far too late and we are suffering the consequences of their negligence”

Or...if you look at Matt Hancock’s Wiki page

“ On 31 January 2020, COVID-19 was confirmed to have spread to the UK, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hancock said the government was considering "some quite significant actions that would have social and economic disruption”

I think they have used this as an excuse to control behaviour, see what people will put up with, destroy the NHS while pretending to save it - and not even bother testing hospital discharge patients going to care homes.

[LangClegsInSpace]

oralengineer advice sheets for what? There weren't any reported cases of this virus in October, let alone a test. Got a link for those screenshots? It would be good to see the context.

They were slow to announce pandemic. They dithered about and were wholly unconvincing with their initial briefings.

WHO timeline here:

www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19

'Pandemic' isn't a thing, it's just a rhetorical word.

WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30 when, outside of China, there were 82 cases and no deaths. This is the highest level alert they can give. It's technical language for 'pandemic'.

On January 30 we had 0 confirmed cases and 0 deaths.

Some countries continued to whinge at them to say 'pandemic' and they resisted for a while. They said they were concerned that calling it a 'pandemic' would lead to countries giving up on containment measures like testing and isolating cases and tracing and quarantining contacts.

They gave in on March 11 because they were so concerned by the lack of action from some countries with rapidly escalating levels of infection. They used the word despite its lack of technical meaning in an attempt to get certain countries ('You know who you are') to take it seriously. Because apparently 'Public Health Emergency of International Concern' doesn't sound very serious

By March 11 we had 456 confirmed cases and 9 deaths. We had just decided that all this testing and contact tracing was a bit too hard so we'd stop doing it. We'd just settle for 'flattening the curve and delaying the peak'. Same amount of death and serious illness, just more slowly.

March 12, Boris tells us 'many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time' and Vallance starts talking about herd immunity.

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-statement-on-coronavirus-12-march-2020

www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5

So WHO were right the first time. Declaring a 'pandemic' just led to our government giving up.

Kerala had the exact same amount of time and warning as we did. They had their first case 4 days before us but they put systems in place so they were ready for it and they have relentlessly stayed on top of it.

We had plenty of time and plenty of warning, we just fucked it up. Jenny Harries said we didn't need to follow WHO advice because it was for low and middle income countries.

[Cornettoninja]

@jhj67, I think there is still something in hydroxychloroquine in combination with a specific antibiotic but it’s not a magic bullet because it causes cardiac arrhythmia. Given the profile of our most vulnerable to covid a lot of them are risking being killed off by the potential cure. Not to mention that covid has been found to be affecting hearts (very close to the lungs and also full of ACE2 receptors from what I understand).

There are other drugs that look promising and have a wider population who can take them without risking huge side effects.

[IcedPurple]

That weather / sun train of thought doesn’t work for Iran though does it?

Northern Iran - which is where most Iranians live - is pretty cold in winter, which is when the virus took hold.

[jhj67]

economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/pharmaceuticals/four-drug-mix-for-covid-19-can-work-wonders-say-kerala-doctors/articleshow/75100976.cms?from=mdr

[jhj67]

Well, I still think hydroxychloroquine is an effective cure (despite being buried in the media) and they seem to be using it in kerala:

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/with-hydroxychloroquine-in-favour-as-a-cure-govt-firm-eyes-production-line/articleshow/75107400.cms

www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2020/apr/27/despite-risks-nearly-5000-health-workers-take-anti-malarial-drug-hydroxychloroquine-2135717.html

or, if not a magic bullet, at least it deserves more investigation and awareness than it is getting in the (western?) media

[Destinysdaughter]

Jaxhog FFS I've been to Kerala and it is not, as you state, a "totalitarian regime"... I'm just
incredulous at how many pp are wanting to excuse this government's response which has been so poor compared to many so called undeveloped countries!

[oralengineer]

WHOs advice sheets published in October2019 are very different to the Hollywoodesque broadcast of Test Test Test in mid February. They did a full turnaround on nearly every part of the advice.
They were slow to announce pandemic. They dithered about and were wholly unconvincing with their initial briefings.

[Showchin2]

The U.K. government could have done far more in Jan & Feb to build up testing & tracing capacity but, distracted by Brexit and Johnson’s chaotic private life they did absolutely nothing until it was far too late and we are suffering the consequences of their negligence.

And it's still going on...still no quarantines at airports yet, bloody Boris encouraging people to return to work but omitting to mention the wearing of face coverings, not enough testing, no tracking and tracing etc, etc....

[AgeLikeWine]

The U.K. government could have done far more in Jan & Feb to build up testing & tracing capacity but, distracted by Brexit and Johnson’s chaotic private life they did absolutely nothing until it was far too late and we are suffering the consequences of their negligence.

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

Not even then really. Germany has a manufacturing base that includes the chemicals needed for testing. That made a big difference initially, they could build an entirely different strategy based on the availability of tests.

[AgeLikeWine]

I’m not trying to defend the U.K government’s handling of the pandemic in any way, but you really cannot compare a developed country with an elderly population with a state in a developing country with a much, much younger population.

Comparing the U.K. with Germany, on the other hand, is valid, and reflects very badly on us.