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Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

reuters.com

181–190 of 410 posts

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#181

This outbreak is a litmus test for the competence of countries. It's already shone a bright light on the fragility of global supply lines, cheap travel and open borders. These are the aspects of life most likely to change after this is all over.

>These are the aspects of life most likely to change after this is all over. People will forget about this in a year and go back to life like it's always been. Short term convenience trumps everything except short term negative consequences.

Sometimes, I wonder if even that last part is the case. A lot of people do absolutely insane things for short term convenience.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Italy is the second oldest country in the world after Japan, how do they have 800 deaths compared to 16 in Japan? Something about those numbers seems off. Is it because Japan's elderly population tend to live in rural areas compared to Italy's or something else societally related?

Sanitisation habits. https://jakubmarian.com/a-study-reveals-how-many-europeans-w...

I'd be surprised if 57% of Japanese men washed their hands properly, judging by what I see when I'm in a mens room in Japan.

I'm inclined to go with the other comment nearby that says not to trust any figures coming out of Japan as a better explanation for the disparity.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#183

This outbreak is a litmus test for the competence of countries. It's already shone a bright light on the fragility of global supply lines, cheap travel and open borders. These are the aspects of life most likely to change after this is all over.

>These are the aspects of life most likely to change after this is all over. People will forget about this in a year and go back to life like it's always been. Short term convenience trumps everything except short term negative consequences.

No. I remember 9/11, and this feels worse. The world won’t be the same for a decade. Are you too young to remember when you could just walk straight onto a plane without being searched? Those days never came back.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#184

It's been making the argument that Korea's aggressive testing has allowed them greater control over the epidemic. Of course, there are a variety of other factors at work. Italy is the second "oldest" country in the world after Japan so Coronavirus infections just would be more deadly there. Also a lot of the Korean infections were confined to a single city in Korea (though the Italian infections also had an epicenter…

If Italy is the second oldest country in the world after Japan, how do they have 800 deaths compared to 16 in Japan? Something about those numbers seems off. Is it because Japan's elderly population tend to live in rural areas compared to Italy's or something else societally related?

Japan for whatever reason has a pretty low testing rate. It's impossible to know if that is a confounding factor or not at this point. Their infection count/death count and test count are remarkably similar to the USA.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/12/21175034/co...

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#185
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.65% / 1.75% ~ 2.09, so the difference in age profile might explain a factor 2 in the mortality ratio of Italy vs South Korea. The actual ratio is currently 7.9: 827 out of 12462 cases in Italy (6.6%), 66 out of 7869 cases in South Korea (0.84%).

Maybe co-morbidities or general health per age is better in S. Korea.

It's all the kimchi.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These are the aspects of life most likely to change after this is all over. People will forget about this in a year and go back to life like it's always been. Short term convenience trumps everything except short term negative consequences.

No. I remember 9/11, and this feels worse. The world won’t be the same for a decade. Are you too young to remember when you could just walk straight onto a plane without being searched? Those days never came back.

I remember 9/11, saw the second plane hit with my own eyes. Other than airports and flying being more inconvenient nothing fundamental really changed as I saw it. People still traveled, people still flew and so on. Now you just budget an extra hour before a flight.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#187
post #67
post #33

> South Korea has since reported 67 deaths out of nearly 8,000 confirmed cases, after testing more than 222,000 people. In contrast, Italy has had 1,016 deaths and identified more than 15,000 cases after carrying out more than 73,000 tests on an unspecified number of people. Surely the testing is a huge factor. Test more people you'll find more people infected, so the fatality rate will get smaller. If you're like th…

Singapore is probably doing as best as any country could hope to. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/12/8145224... Also, as an American, I'm embarrassed by my country's response and by how my president addresses the nation. PM Lee shows how you talk to your country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mYs1Uyx3c8 His original address five weeks prior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dExr76Wckr8

JAMA article about Taiwan - they made changes after SARS to have a faster response and what they did worked to contain the spread even though there is a large flow of people to/from China. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762689

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe co-morbidities or general health per age is better in S. Korea.

It's all the kimchi.

How long can the virus survive in a container of kimchi? I truly would like to know.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#189

TL;DR S. Korea traded privacy and freedom for security.

If that’s truly the case, privacy and freedom kind of need to step up their game. I feel like parts of asia are handling this much more responsibly than the US and Europe.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#190
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you could also say that for people 80 and above, this epidemic will more than double their already significant chances of dying this year...

That's a really hard thing to say this early. For all we know many 80+ people are asymptomatic and most older people aren't negatively affected at all by covid 19. It seems really dangerous to conflate actual mortality rate with mortality rate among the confirmed cases. Those numbers will be drastically different with diseases that have many asymptomatic carriers.

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