What happens in India ...

... doesn't stay in India. 

A view of Katmandu. Lovely, but no place to be in a pandemic.

At least that's what occurred to me when I saw via the BBC that:

Nepali health officials say the current daily positivity rate is nearly 50%, meaning that one in two people are testing positive for Covid.

There's a lot of back and forth between India and Nepal, a lot of itinerant laborers. Those of us who've visited the country may think of it as the exotic gateway to the Himalayas, but interchange with the Indian colossus to the south keeps the economy afloat. It's not a place with much effective government; the emerging Covid crisis has brought down the most recent one. And it's not a place with much health infrastructure. When I got pneumonia in Katmandu, I felt mighty lucky to go a British clinic.

The international aid agency Mercy Corps has workers on the ground:

“In March, as few as 70 people a day tested positive for COVID-19 in Nepal. Today, this number is more than 100 times higher - a daily record of 9,070 cases were recorded on Thursday - and is overwhelming Nepal’s fragile health structures.

"The communities we are working with are petrified. They have seen their friends and family members in India fall ill, many tragically dying, and now are seeing the very same situation hit Nepal as some 400,000 migrant workers return home with no money in their pockets and the virus spreads rapidly. ...

"Nepal’s medical system is weaker than India’s, reliant on India for crucial supplies like oxygen cylinders, which India itself is short of now. Nepali hospitals are already running out of beds, and caseloads are expected to continue to rise. Less than 10% of people have received at least one vaccine dose, and Nepal is entirely dependent on other countries such as India to deliver vaccines. ..."

Nepalis are a tough people; they have to be. Around here in the U.S., we can begin to believe we're coming out of this coronavirus shit show ... but so much of the world is just now seeing the disease take off.