Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success • Hacker News Board

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#61

Post by FriendlyNormie » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

zamfi wrote: post #20

narrator wrote: post #11

Yup

> Bill Gates has literally been preparing the last 20 years to make enormous amounts of money on a forced vaccination program Is this one of those conspiracy theories I’ve been hearing about? Bill Gates’ foundation has been giving away money for decades. If you think he’s planning to make a bunch of money off “forced vaccination”, you’re stuck in the past — Gates doesn’t care about making more money, he cares about g…

Your comment only appeals to people who already agree with you, therefore it’s useless. If you want people to take you seriously then you can begin by addressing any of his points rather than fixating on the word “money” as if that was his entire argument. I can’t see his comment because he edited it but I’m assuming he provided plenty of evidence such as the timing of Event 201 and its focus on coronaviruses. Maybe you can begin by convincingly addressing that. If you weren’t aware of Event 201 before reading my comment then you should stop sharing your opinion on this issue anywhere.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#62

Post by dazc » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #38

FlorianRappl wrote: post #7

South Korea demonstrated from the beginning on how to deal with this (despite their slow start - which still is super quick compared to most western countries). But its completely wrong to think they passed it. They also have massive impediments at the moment. Back to normal? Far from it.

I am stuck in my flat in Spain for the 5th week now. Just read they extended it another two, to 8 in total. I am wondering how other countries can be a bit more relaxed (UK and Belgium are allowed out for an our for exercise), or in the case of Sweeden a lot more relaxed, and are still managing to flatten their curves.

The original guidance in the UK was to limit exercise to one hour but the actual law doesn't have a time limit.

From what I see, people are generally behaving responsibility regards social distancing and, I assume, this is just a gamble our Govt took?

Without making sweeping generalisations also, it isn't so common for young adults to spend much time with parents/grandparents/older relatives. So, I reckon, that's one big risk factor that is less of an issue here?

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#63

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #60

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took a long time to decide it was a national priority. At the point when Korea started heavily ramping up its testing program, most Western countries took roughly the same approach they took during SARS, where they contact traced and tested only the few cases they knew about with the expectation that'd be enough.

I am unable to find any reliable data that shows the ramp up of testing capacity after deciding its a national priority by country. What is the basis for 'similarly quickly' ? Sibling comment to your original comment seems to suggest US wasn't able to 'similarly quickly' due to lack of onsite manufacturing. Even the article suggests this, > The country was testing people for the virus at the fastest pace in the world

I can't find the data off the top of my head, but in the middle of March the US was able to ramp up from barely 1k tests a day to 100k within a week or two. It's my understanding that Germany went comparably fast.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#64

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #35

teapourer wrote: post #27

To be clear, the Korean government officially still recommends social distancing. They are especially worried about the family picnics mentioned in the article, and have officially closed many public parks in response. To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak.

I'm actually slightly worried as Singapore seemed to have handled the crisis quite well with only 1000ish cases for the longest time, but have now had cases balloon from only around 1350 total cases two weeks ago to 6000 today. Certainly, a lot of it has to with migrant workers and their living situations, but it also underscores how even when you have things under control, the virus can spread rapidly when your guar…

Same thing is true for Japan. Everything seems fine for a while, and suddenly the numbers explode.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#65

Post by WillPostForFood » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #58

WillPostForFood wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is am extremely stark example of the value of maintaining manufacturing capacity in your country. Korea can makes tests, so they have tests. Seegene, a company that makes Covid-19 testing equipment is in Korea. They just needed approval and to ramp up manufacturing. For most countries, like the US, we don't have the manufacturing ability anymore, so we have to go beg and buy tests while we figure how to make again…

Afaik, the shortage in US is mainly of raw materials and commodity items like pipettes. How did Seegene ramp up its raw material pipeline so quickly. Really fascinating success.

Korea has a broad swath of medical manufacturing capacity. A large part of the supply chain is already there, so it is easier for them to ramp up. You can double or triple output just by putting more shifts into the factories. Then you start retooling, repurposing to really ramp up.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#66

Post by Nokinside » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #55

Nokinside wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't top mitigation/supression until there is herd immunity. You can get the immunity only two ways 1) enough people have been gone trough the disease or 2) vaccination. South Korea must use mitigation/supression until they have enough people vaccinated or it flares up again. Complete eradication without immunity is not feasible unless you isolate whole country from the rest of the world permanently.

You don't have to completely isolate the country from the world. You just have to do testing and quarantining to ensure that infectious people and things aren't entering the country.

That's true but it's very hard to keep the system 100% tight. Governments can't prevent human trade or drug trade either.

Just something like 1 infected entering per day or week means that you must keep up suppressing and tracing.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#67

Post by ajross » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #47

ajross wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but once the outbreak is at a low enough level, and you have sufficient test bandwidth, you can manage it via testing and tracing. Everyone who gets sick, with anything, gets tested (in some variants of the plan every everywhere gets tested every N days). If you find a positive, quarantine them and test everyone they came in contact with. Repeat. This reduces the rate of spread by catching community transmission…

> But it depends on having a very large available pool of rapid testing Not necessarily. You can just aggressively quarantine - basically the strategy in China. > so you can't do it when you have thousands of cases per day At what scale? Iceland was able to do it with ~200 new cases per day per million. The majority of US states haven't had spikes this high - nowhere in CA has even come close to that. For some reason…

> Iceland was able to do it

Iceland's per capita new infection rate peaked higher than basically any nation in the world, and while it's dropping comparatively rapidly it hasn't reached a stable baseline yet. I don't think this is a good example at all.

While it's clear their lockdown "worked" (in the sense of recovering them from a disastrous peak), I think it's still very much an open question as to whether their testing capacity will sustain this success.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#68

Post by Reason077 » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #46

teapourer wrote: post #27

To be clear, the Korean government officially still recommends social distancing. They are especially worried about the family picnics mentioned in the article, and have officially closed many public parks in response. To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak.

The article and discussions about Korea seem to mainly revolve around testing and contact tracing. These are complex and expensive, and substantially more difficult to manage in a country like the US which is 7x the population, and is somewhat decentralized (50 states). Meanwhile, the on the street observations in the article are: masks, masks, masks. Masks are cheap and easy. So let's start with masks, masks, masks…

> “masks, masks, masks.”

Exactly. I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we (western/European countries) didn’t have such an aversion to wearing face masks, even in a time of pandemic?

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#69

Post by Chunklight » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #64

colmvp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually slightly worried as Singapore seemed to have handled the crisis quite well with only 1000ish cases for the longest time, but have now had cases balloon from only around 1350 total cases two weeks ago to 6000 today. Certainly, a lot of it has to with migrant workers and their living situations, but it also underscores how even when you have things under control, the virus can spread rapidly when your guar…

Same thing is true for Japan. Everything seems fine for a while, and suddenly the numbers explode.

Mysteriously right after the Olympics were postponed.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#70

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #68

WillPostForFood wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article and discussions about Korea seem to mainly revolve around testing and contact tracing. These are complex and expensive, and substantially more difficult to manage in a country like the US which is 7x the population, and is somewhat decentralized (50 states). Meanwhile, the on the street observations in the article are: masks, masks, masks. Masks are cheap and easy. So let's start with masks, masks, masks…

> “masks, masks, masks.” Exactly. I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we (western/European countries) didn’t have such an aversion to wearing face masks, even in a time of pandemic?

No one has done a controlled study on this, so no one really knows. It ranges from zero to many.

The reason government and medical signaling on the subject has been so mixed is that it isn’t apparent they are very effective, especially the jury rigged cloth masks that people are using.