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

bloomberg.com

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

#71

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.

But people are still working and their economy is still running. This is a HUGE improvement over what we have currently in the USA.

That's because they intervened early with large scale testing, contact tracing, and social distancing.

The problem is contact tracing only works when the number of new infections is manageable, though. That's why it's so critical to react early and aggressively. Once it becomes unmanageable, the only solution is mass quarantines until the numbers are manageable again.

The best analogy is a fire. If it's just embers, one person can stomp it out. If you wait for it to become a forest fire, then it requires drastic measures.

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

#72
post #48
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sweden has a pretty high number of COVID-19 deaths, so I'm not sure if I'd like to follow their model.

It is expected that 70% of the population will get coronavirus then we will have herd immunity. The lock down is about stopping the healthcare systems getting overwhelmed (that will cause unnecessary deaths). That's the way I understand things.

The same number of deaths will occur are likely to occur in the long term unless Sweden's ICU beds get full.

If anyone has an alternative interpretation I am open to hearing it.

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people are still working and their economy is still running. This is a HUGE improvement over what we have currently in the USA.

The current narrative is that anyone who thinks this quarentine is poorly managed is a Trump supporter. This couldn't be further from the truth. They have made it political.

Who's "they"? From an outside perspective (UK) everyone seems to be making it political - Trump especially so.

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

#74
post #35

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…

It will be fine as long as the medical system is prepped to handle surge/moving overflow smoothly/pulling in and sharing resources etc. Remember most positives won't require hospitalization (~50% wont even show any symptoms, 40% will have mild symptoms). And compared to few months back readiness/awareness levels at hospitals is much higher.

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

#75
post #38

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.

There is no evidentiary basis for the extreme lock-down Spain is using.

While this disease is pretty contagious, you are pretty unlikely to get it walking around outside or going for a run. Especially if everyone is wearing a mask.

It's possible you could catch it by running through a cloud of an infected persons breath, but the risk is low enough that we shouldn't ban outside activities.

The vast, vast majority of infections occur from sustained contact (>15min) within a few feet of someone.

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

#76
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

case rate, not infection rate. They are one of the few nations in the world that are credibly even close to catching half their infections. The US is probably missing 90% (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.06.20055582v...)

To that point, their death rate is lower than the Bay Area.

To a second point, Iceland is under a very weak lockdown, if you can even call it that. Their elementary schools remain open.

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

#77
post #40
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This video has a good explanation of why the Spanish policy is ineffective. https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-joh...

I didn't watch it, but a couple of the bullet points look pretty untrustworthy.

Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.

It's a fair bit nastier, certainly in some cases, or the hospitals wouldn't be full.

The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%

How can we be sure until we have widespread testing?

At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

Again how can we be sure of this? It all seems very speculative.

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

#78
post #38

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.

If people are having less social interactions per day, on average, it will still slow down the spread compared to everyone behaving as before. There's a continuum between no measures taken and complete lockdown... I'm personally very much looking forward to being able to see friends.

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

#80
post #4

This worries me. South Korea's mass testing alone was not enough to contain the coronavirus outbreak; they relied on social distancing measures too: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southk...

South Korea: 234 deaths 8042 recovered. China: 4632 deaths, 77k recovered[1]. Their treatment protocol is an order of magnitude better than every other country. What are they doing that we're not? This is a huge glaring discrepancy. What's the difference between their treatment protocols and everyone else's? [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The "recovered" numbers in other countries aren't even close to accurate.

Countries with large outbreaks are only testing people with severe symptoms. Korea is testing anyone who comes near someone with the virus. So are catching close to everyone who has it.

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