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

#171

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

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.

To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak.

South Korea has had fewer deaths than other nations, South Korea has a semi-open economy now. What better model for managing the outbreak is there? (The condition of Europe and the US look very dismal) It's kind of strange seeing this claim with no substantiation beside "repeat" apparently staying on the top of HN for a while.

South Korea hasn't entirely averted the danger and is clearly still keeping it in mind. The virus is going to be around for a while and normalizing life is needed and it seems South Korea has to the testing and contact tracing infrastructure needed for this. What is the counter-argument?

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

#172

Post by mattmanser » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

ImaCake wrote: post #149

op03 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ~50% wont even show any symptoms It is closer to 20% A lot of articles stating more are mis-interpreting those numbers from prospective studies. It is possible that the authors of such studies would downplay false positives as well.

I think they don't know yet, even the US were saying it might be 25-50% a couple of days ago. For example the testing of the aircraft carrier, one of the few cases of total population testing, showed 60% asymptomatic cases but had a young population, and it's not clear from the information we've heard publically if some of those will develop symptoms later.

So at the moment no-one really knows for certain.

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

#173

Post by randomsearch » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #171

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.

To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak. South Korea has had fewer deaths than other nations, South Korea has a semi-open economy now. What better model for managing the outbreak is there? (The condition of Europe and the US look very dismal) It's kind of strange seeing this claim with no substantiation beside "repeat" apparently staying on the top of HN for a…

I think it’s too early to judge success. Most countries haven’t even been through one wave yet. We’re going to have to live with this for years.

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

#174

Post by TrainedMonkey » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

ImaCake wrote: post #149

op03 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ~50% wont even show any symptoms It is closer to 20% A lot of articles stating more are mis-interpreting those numbers from prospective studies. It is possible that the authors of such studies would downplay false positives as well.

50% keeps recurring because multiple mass testing efforts found that half of tested people were asymptomatic. However, that is mostly a function of a long incubation period. A significant portion of the infected developed symptoms later.

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

#175

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

Jeema101 wrote: post #71

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #12

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.

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,…

Clearly we (in the US) need quarantine now when things are out of control (and we need adequate PPE equipment for those working and financial support for those not working, two things that seem to be failing, likely to our extreme detriment).

But once the "fire" has burned far enough, we will testing and contact tracing. And so we need to be getting these up and running NOW so they will be ready when the "fire" has subsided sufficiently (and hey, we are failing on this too).

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

#176

Post by acdha » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

corkmask wrote: post #156

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's off by 1.5x (IHME model predicts 60k fatalities attributed to COVID-19), surely that's miles better than the what - 50x predicted at the start (I recall seeing 2mil fatalities passed around by Imperial for the US)? 40k deaths is a little less than a week of natural deaths in the US, for scale.

at what multiplier would you consider being skeptical about what he says. your comparison of the 2 mil which was the worst case scenario months ago, and now irrelevant, with 40k which was his prediction from 10 days ago is wrong.

You have to read the study’s details, not just the number in the headline. The IC report’s highest number was looking at what would happen if strong countermeasures were not taken, and they subsequently were — it’s like criticizing the justifications for mandating seatbelts because so many fewer people die in car crashes now.

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

#177

Post by gdulli » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

pcr910303 wrote: post #91

Very surprised to find out country (city) in HN's top page! For people who are interested in current Korea's situation: There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday. The number of new cases have been consistently falling since April 14th. 'Intense social distancing' was stopped yesterday (April 19th), and the Korean government is planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May 5th. Schools a…

> There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday.

> Korean government is planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May 5th.

Are the people divided about whether it was a good idea to wait until new cases got this low before making decisions about moving forward? Or is there very broad support for the kind of discipline it takes to wait until May 5 despite the cases being so low already?

Have people's opinions about the appropriate level of response become politicized? Have the facts and statistics and science of it all become politicized?

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

#178

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #127

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The coordinated mainstream media. Again, the narrative is if you think the US media is partisan you’re a Trump supporter. The entire US media ecosystem is owned by only 6 companies. It used to be hip to distrust the media but now it makes you a Trump supporter or conspiracy theorist??

It's never been easier to spread your message to the world, so I would think that the "true", honest, good, non-evil, non-coordinated mainstream media would also exist in some form. Where are they?

Independent journalism has never been better. Personally I don’t get my news from “retired” intelligence agents and CIA directors, but I guess I’m a conspiracy theorist in that way.

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

#179

Post by noobermin » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:39 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…

Tbh, SG should have never let people come particularly from countries with covid outbreaks during March. While spreading across the dorms is a big part of the internal spreading, it's clear the outbreak that started in March were clusters involving people coming to sg from abroad.

Almost everyone shut down travel from China (particularly Wuhan) but no one shut down travel from Europe during March. Biggest mistake ever. I don't know enough if it was tourists or whether it was returning Singaporeans but they should have instructed them to remain where they were for the sake of the country.

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

#180

Post by smileypete » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #70

Reason077 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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.

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

Can't remember seeing any controlled studies on the efficacy of social distancing either.

Many of the healthcare professionals in the countries that dealt with SARS are calling for universal mask wearing. I'd much rather trust their intuition and judgement than governments and media outlets passing the buck to the WHO.