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
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB-6JmlwXt0
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.
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.
Pakistan’s population is much smaller than India’s, and yet its infection count for COVID-19 is much higher – and in spite of that, their govt has been dithering and not deploying resources to combat the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qePmuWH6IY
I think with India you only need 1% of people to cause 99% of the problems… Maybe even smaller…
Fortunately the Saudis are pretty familiar with all the problems that come with the Haj (virii, stampedes, etc) and closed off travel.
If they re-open before a vaccine comes out, it’s a surefire spreading opportunity
I noticed that even though traffic is reduced to perhaps 25% of normal, the a-hole drivers are still there.
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.
maybe even 99.9/.1, extreme fat tailed. See this video on how a few can infect everyone else. All it took was one person in China to start this whole mess.
https://twitter.com/TectonixGEO/status/1242628347034767361
Mecca has been closed for a while. So is rest of the kingdom.
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.)
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…
It could be more like 95/5.
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.
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.
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.
Disease transmission approximately follows a pareto distribution ~80/20-law. The 20% worst a-holes cause 80% of disease transmission.
Is the real fun part. Let’s see how fast this spreads through India
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.