Inconsistencies and Contradictions

Case fatality rate or more casually death rate is a prism through which many of us are evaluating the Covid-19 situation. The evaluation resides on a principle where how alarmed we should be is proportional to death rate. Since Omicron seems to have lower death rate than previous waves, we are choosing to be relaxed about it. The principle is essentially seen in personal terms. If death rate is low, chance of I or my dear ones will perish is low. I wonder whether this association between collective measure and individual assessment is correct. What it means for me that death rate is 2%? 2% death rate means out of 100 Covid cases, 2 will die. It does not tell anything about which two. Seen from personal lenses, one can be either among 2 who are succumbing or 98 who will be surviving. Individually, there are only two possibilities that I either die or survive after contacting the virus and becoming ill. One will try to argue that but these possibilities are not equally likely. That i...

 4th round of seroprevalence survey by ICMR in June-July 2021 has revealed that nearly 2/3rd of Indian population has antibodies. The presence of antibodies is assumed to indicate prior exposure (though not necessarily manifested with disease symptoms) to Coronavirus. Exposure to virus can be seen as indicative of low probability of Covid-19, at least for the short-term. Very high seropositivity, more than 70%, suggests low probability of occurrence of severe Covid-19 outbreak.  Table 1 After feeling somewhat relived over national estimate, if we look at state-level results, there is a variation of seropositivity levels. (Table 1) Seropositivity is highest in Madhya Pradesh (79%) and least in Kerala (44.4%). It has been noted with hint of surprise that Kerala and Maharashtra do not have very high seropositivity despite bagging the attention for their high Covid-19 numbers for sustained duration.  We must understand that one should read these state level numbers with some ...