From Wolfgang in B.C.

I have relatives in India and they just emailed me that the government is opening up 80% of the country as of June the 8th.
Here is what it said:

On Saturday, India’s government announced plans to end a national lockdown that began on 25 March.
This was expected – the roads, and even the skies, have been busy for the last 10 days since restrictions started to ease for the first time in two months. Many businesses and workplaces are already open, construction has re-started, markets are crowded and parks are filling up. On June 8th, hotels, restaurants, malls, places of worship, parks will also reopen

There is only advice: The day the government began to ease restrictions, Mr Kjeriwal tweeted, urging people to “follow discipline and control the coronavirus disease” as it was their “responsibility”.
Because the alternative – of curfews and constant policing – is unsustainable.
“My worry is more the circumstances of people – it’s not as though they have an option to practise social distancing,” Dr Menon says.
And they don’t – not in joint family homes or one-room hovels packed together in slums, not in crowded markets or busy streets where jostling is second nature, or in temples, mosques, weddings or religious processions where more is always merrier.
The overwhelming message is that the virus is here to stay, and we have to learn to live with it – and the only way to do that, it appears, is to let people live with
Doesn’t that make a lot of sense?? They tell me “distancing” was never really practiced in India because it is really not possible in most places. Also India has 4x the population of the US and using the US numbers (which is suppose to be way ahead in medical services compared to India) India would have to have 400,000 plus dead and yet it only has 5200. How is this possible??

Look at Dharavi, the largest slum in Mumbai. 1 million people live in a 2 sq km area. That is 10x the population density of Manhattan, New York. If the virus was really as contagious as they say, wouldn’t thousands be infected and dying in the streets by now? Yet it has only 60 dead so far.

Social Distancing and Lockdown in Dharavi

Shoppers crowd a street in the Dharavi slum area of Mumbai, India on April 23, 2020. India continues in nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. (Photo by Himanshu Bhatt/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

This is India:

Now compare this to Germany (my brothers lives there) where a family of 5 (mother, father and 3 children) were fined 1000 euros ($1500) for walking too close together in a park and not practicing “distancing”

Who is the crazy one?? Backwards India or the so called “advanced” West??

Cheers and be well,
Wolfgang