India Sealing Off Villages Exposed to a COVID-19 Superspreader

A 70-year-old preacher in India died of coronavirus and he may have infected up to 40,000 villagers. The villager have been quarantined. Five other villages have been sealed off.

A week after his death, 19 of his relatives have tested positive. At least 550 people came into direct contact with the preacher over the last few days.

This could be similar to the super-spreading of coronavirus COVID-19 in South Korea by a religious sect. The South Korea situation caused 9000 people to become infected. However, South Korea has world-leading coronavirus testing and coronavirus mitigation. India is far more vulnerable.

One of the worst-case COVID-19 scenarios for the world would be to have community spread in India and a high infection rate for the slums.

SOURCES – BBC News
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

20 thoughts on “India Sealing Off Villages Exposed to a COVID-19 Superspreader”

  1. This is not going to help the Sikh win any favors. India has been moving right, into the hands of Hindu nationalists, for a while now and minority pressures are increasing.

  2. If China re-opens before a vaccine, the spreading will be worse. Mecca is closed for business, including the regular stream of Umrah worshipers. The Hajj, in July, seems to be on ice for the moment.

  3. Fortunately the Saudis are pretty familiar with all the problems that come with the Haj (virii, stampedes, etc) and closed off travel.

  4. I noticed that even though traffic is reduced to perhaps 25% of normal, the a-hole drivers are still there.

  5. I suspect dietary iodine may be beneficial. Japan and Korea consume a lot of sea weed which tends to have high levels of iodine. This may be a factor in the shallow trajectory of infection. Of course, this is just conjecture. Also, in the areas closer to the ocean in China where people eat more seafood death rates from the infection were lower.

  6. Even if he wasn’t a Muslim, the more it spreads, the more likely it is to reach India’s Muslim population. (But a large reservoir of cases is bad for the rest of the world regardless.)

  7. Yup more like 97/3. Most economic game theories have things breaking down when bad actors exceed around high 4s percent, although it varies depending on how many “punishers” exist. Punishers being people happy to spend $2 to harm a bad actor by $1.

    In this situation 3% is often all you need to make things bad though…

  8. I don’t think you are right about the Muslim thing. Islam isn’t popular in and around Amritsar. From another link:
    “Mr Singh, 70, visited Germany before going home for Hola Mohalla Sikh festival
    He died from coronavirus and a week on 19 members of his family tested positive”
    What would a Muslim do at a Sikh festival ? unless of course he had a death wish.

  9. Not that I think there is a funny part about it, but from what I know about India I would say, we will never know. As it is, even in well organised countries we will have to rely on a lot of guesswork.

  10. I was hoping it wouldn’t be a Muslim. If the disease takes off in a big way in India it could make the sectarian situation there even worse. Fortunately it looks like Modi is handling the situation correctly.

  11. Disease transmission approximately follows a pareto distribution ~80/20-law. The 20% worst a-holes cause 80% of disease transmission.

  12. Muslims have been spreading it faster due to their group worship practices and their trans-nationalist orientation. Just imagine what could happen during the Muslim Haj season with so many going to Mecca. Countries around the world could be put at severe risk.

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