Actually I wouldn’t presume to say what’s really happening from four thousand miles away. But there have been several videos/articles from a lockdown sceptic point of view which do presume to say this – for example here, here and here. All of them make the same general point. The absolute numbers of cases and deaths in India are high compared to other countries, but India has a vast population, if you look at the rates of cases and deaths per million then India is not at all high compared to other countries. They generally include a chart a bit like this one:
I have included the UK and the current frontrunner in deaths per million which is Uruguay.
At first sight this seems like a strong argument, especially as the Indian figures look like they may be peaking. But it ignores two massive points.
First – this is based on official data – it is widely accepted that the actual cases and deaths from India are much greater. The rate of testing is very low so cases are not picked up, people die at home without the government knowing, cemeteries are reporting demand far exceeding local deaths etc.
Even if the official data is somewhere close to reality the outbreak is highly concentrated in certain states. Just five states out of 38 ( Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi) account for over 50% of cases.
The population of Indian states also varies dramatically, so a better illustration of the concentration is probably confirmed daily cases per million population. This is illustrated below (two very small states with populations less than a million have been excluded. The top five states are: Goa, Delhi, Kerala, Puducherry and Chhattisgarh.
If you examine the five highest death rates for individual states with populations over a million they are comparable to the highest rates in any country (currently Uruguay at 16.66 deaths/day/million). They are the same as the states with the five highest confirmation rates except that Uttarakhand replaces Kerala.
| State | Population (millions) | Official average daily death rate over last 7 days |
| Goa | 1.46 | 25.93 |
| Delhi | 16.79 | 23.70 |
| Puducherry | 1.25 | 10.28 |
| Uttarakhand | 10.01 | 10.23 |
| Chhattisgarh | 25.55 | 9.73 |
| Uruguay * | 3.46 | 16.66 (Rate on 3rd May) |
Add that the real death rates are almost certainly much higher and that these numbers are still growing (although the rate of growth is decreasing in some states) and there can be little doubt that these states have a very big problem.
In Moderation 