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

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

#211

Post by hinkley »

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.

Do we know yet whether the clusters of fatalities among families are due to higher exposure rates or some genotypic susceptibility to the worst effects of the illness?

Or is that just that the family clusters are good news copy (ugh) and over-represented?

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

#212

Post by glandium »

raphlinus wrote: post #84
WillPostForFood wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you summarize or link to the time in the video where it is addressed?

I recommend watching the whole video, as it is by far the clearest argument in favor of the "herd immunity" approach I've seen. The problem with the approach is that it assumes several things that, shall we say, there is not yet evidence for. 1. The disease is relatively mild, certainly less than an order of magnitude more fatal than influenza. 2. It is possible to protect older people and other vulnerable population…

About 1. not even counting death, we don't know what the long term effects on the lung capacity of the people who recovered are. Also, everyone reports "80% of mild cases", with a definition of mild that includes things that reasonable people would definitely not call mild. Essentially, as long as doctors don't tell you you have to be on O2, you have a mild case. People with mild cases may well end up with damaged lungs.

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

#213

Post by joe_the_user »

narrator wrote: post #195
joe_the_user wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between their treatment protocols and everyone else's? It's mind boggling anyone has to ask now this has been going on so long but here goes. 1) They had an approach plan beforehand because they had observed the previous SARS epidemic and took the danger seriously. 2) They had "quarantine hotels" freely available for those who were positive to prevent them from infecting others. (Seattle has a f…

The thing I don't get is this explains how people didn't get sick. What it doesn't explain is how so many got better after getting sick compared to other countries.

The fatality rate of countries with active epidemics is skewed by a variety of factors:

- With exponential growth, most cases will new and so not become potentially lethal. This can lower the observed fatality rate (I think this explained Germany's original "great" rate which doesn't look at great any more).

- With cases rising quickly, most countries don't have infrastructure or the time to increase testing (US testing is failing on multiple levels but even France, Spain and Italy are just overwhelmed with the sick and testing is less important).

- With cases rising quickly, the fatality rate increases as hospitals are no longer able to provide adequate care.

- Different countries have different age-profiles and the disease hits the elderly harder (but once hospitals break down, the odds for the young decrease).

South Korea's fatality rate is similar to the ostensible fatality rate of Turkey and Luxembourg but likely for different rate. We probably won't have a complete idea what's happened until these events are done.

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

#214

Post by rhino369 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #175
Jeema101 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

There doesn't seem to be much of a plan in place to test and contact trace in the USA. As you said we need to be getting these up in place now. And they should already be in place in areas without a lockdown.

But I don't see much evidence we are really trying to do that.

I also wonder if its possible to test and trace if its every minor city in the country in low numbers. We will have a million patient zeros.

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

#215

Post by botten »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #182
collyw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

According to healthdata.org (IHME), Sweden has 79 ICU beds. If this is true, it seems that slowing the curve may not be worth it with so few ICU beds available. https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden

Sweden has more than 79 ICU beds.

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

#216

Post by bamboozled »

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…

Japan apparently has a much lower death rate and number of infections too.

Should we trust those numbers? I'm going to say no.

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

#217

Post by cpitman »

matwood wrote: post #94
BurningFrog wrote: post #79

Meanwhile, the US still has very little testing capacity, with no signs of if and when that will change. One problem with the death of journalism is that no one is even reporting on this.

On a per capita basis yes, but the US has done more tests than any other country. Once the US doubles testing capacity again it will be on par with other large countries.

What this effectively means though is that we are still tightly scoping who can get tested in the US. My mom is a primary care provider in the DC suburbs, and their hospital system is still limiting tests to medical providers and first responders. People who "obviously" have Covid-19 are just treated, and mild cases are sent home without testing.

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

#218

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

RobAtticus wrote: post #202
teruakohatu wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but no one shut down travel from Europe during March. Biggest mistake ever The USA did shut their border to a lot of Europe in early March. But at the time the WHO opposed border closure.

Kind of - it closed the borders for Europeans traveling to the US, but did little to manage Americans returning from abroad. Given March is winter in the US (thus less tourism), I would imagine the majority of Europe -> US traffic at the time is Americans returning home, that's a rather weak closure.

What countries refused re-entry to their own citizens?

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

#219

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

mindslight wrote: post #185
stcredzero wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we (western/European countries) didn’t have such an aversion to wearing face masks My wife and I were one of the few people wearing masks at the start of the pandemic, before the closing and work from home orders came. We were harassed by random people shouting at us. Also, I don't really get the societal penalty for disaster preparation. It's completely illogical. Jus…

My best theory so far is that when it comes to telling people what they themselves need to do (as opposed to inactionable general fear), mainstream media narratives are based around telling audiences the easy answer that they want to hear - eg you don't have to do anything to prepare, and those that do are wrong. Obviously this has always been an ongoing quality (eg no need to oppose the Iraq war since it's just), bu…

Contrast that with the chorus of "the fake news media is blowing everything out of proportion"...

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

#220

Post by brewdad »

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.

I've also seen a tendency for people to disregard all of the other social distancing measures now that masks are more common. Squeezing up next to someone to grab a bunch of parsley rather than waiting 5 seconds for them to move on. Tons of face touching from adjusting masks too.
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