There was a spate of models, most emanating from economists and other self-styled experts in the West, that predicted that India would have a million or (much) more infected by now and large numbers of people dead. All of them have proved completely bogus.

Of course, there is a lay argument which suggests that the problem lies with the data itself since testing for COVID-19 is abysmally low. While India has tested some 0.58 people per 1000, the corresponding figure for a country like Italy is around 33. The argument that greater testing will reveal a bigger incidence of COVID-19 is blameless, particularly when there are a fair number of asymptomatic or very mildly symptomatic cases. But the possibility that more people could be infected in India does not imply that the number of COVID-19 deaths is hugely under-reported. For one, there is no evidence to suggest this – in fact, there is nothing to suggest, like in some Western countries, that there has been a spike in the overall mortality rate. Also, indeed, death rates vary dramatically from country to country. To conclude that India “must” have a higher death rate because of its poverty and its poor health infrastructure – as some Western observers and traditional India-skeptics have maintained – could be partly a result of deepseated prejudice. It is also a result of the failure to understand that both the spread and the death rate of the coronavirus is governed by factors we do not fully understand.

We do not know, for instance, why Iran has suffered so much, while neighbouring Iraq is relatively unscathed. We do not know why Paris, Rome, New York, and Madrid have suffered so much in comparison to say Ho Chi Min City, Bangkok, Baghdad, or Chennai. Researchers are looking into a slew of factors – such as genetic, TB-vaccine related, varying temperatures in countries, and demographics – to explain the variations. But from the looks of it, there are exceptions to each of these theories, which points unerringly to one fact: we don’t know the truth yet and the coronavirus remains whimsical in its ways.

Meanwhile, there are two things to be kept in mind. There is no room for complacency as there may be a rapid growth in both the incidence and the death rate of COVID-19 going forward. At the same time, there is no cause to sign up for the prejudiced view that our numbers are all wrong.