Gonna be interesting. Many countries have banned flights from India (Canada has). Gonna see many people try alternate transit points (ie. Hong Kong).
Yeah i've been seeing the reports each day one by one more and more countries are blocking India travel. The UK (where i'm located in Meatspace) had India variant cases tracked back to February but still left it one whole week between announcing the travel ban and enacting it.
Why do today what you can do in seven days time, eh?
The general gist of what I've picked up from reports about India is the first wave was relatively low level so it put them in a sense of false security. With the vaccines beginning to roll out that false sense of security was then reinforced and then festivals and political rallies for upcoming elections were also allowed with low/no restrictions in part due to and in part again reinforcing that false sense of security... then whammo there is a double mutant and its too late they are now in a reactive position rather than a proactive one. Reacting, unfortunately, takes time. Time, is something they do not have, it has already happened.
One by one we are seeing the old initial assumptions which allowed complacency fall by the wayside:
"It doesn't hurt kids too bad so leave the schools open and let them carry on as normal."
P1 emerges, which has claimed the lives of 1,300+ babies in Brazil, reports indicating it has killed thousands of children under the age of 9.
"3% death rate, It's not that deadly so what does it matter it's like 'Flu isn't it?"
B.1.1.7 in the UK emerges which was 70% more deadly than the original COVID-19 (data suggests that makes it a global death rate of 5% rather than the original 3% if it became the dominant version).
"Younger people don't have to worry, the death rate for them is less then 1% let them catch it and get natural immunity."
B.1.617 emerges, a double mutant ripping through india with reports of it being able to cause serious illness in people in their 20's and 30's leading them to need intubation in a health system so overloaded there is hardly enough oxygen available to run through a ventilator, let alone enough ventilators for all who need them...
I don't believe it was just the local attitude which lead India to this position (although it may have been the major contributor), there were global factors too which the world will have some powerful lessons to learn from in how this came to pass, beyond just the attitudes of the locals, and how situations such as this can be better approached in future to ensure better coordinated global responses... but no matter what the positive benefits may come from it is, it's a tragedy it has happened in the first place.
As long as we, as in the population of the world, continue to approach this as what it is - a global pandemic where even if one country gets an upper hand and manages their local crisis well, it is still at risk from those other countries around and connected to it by air travel and migratory animal transmitters etc - I hold hope we will not get to a point where we see one of these variants, or another one which has not yet evolved, become the dominant strain which then causes further issues for those places which have been able to manage their internal epidemics either all the way through this.
Time for a song:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M
