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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

#231

Post by jariel »

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…

" These are complex and expensive, "

It's infinitely cheaper than shutting down the economy and the massive ensuing bailouts.

"on the street observations in the article are: masks, masks, masks. "

There is no evidence that masks are a solution.

Just the opposite: contact tracing is definitely a primary driver of success.

We should have enacted aggressive contact tracing and widespread testing a long time ago, and recommended 'surgical/cloth' masks for public but strongly discouraged N95's as there are limited quantities and those need to go to the front lines.

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

#232

Post by beagle3 »

pps43 wrote: post #183
beagle3 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed] about cherry picking. The limits of their scheme was acknowledged and discussed in the paper. What cherry picking are you referring to that wasn’t addressed?

This paper? "I think the authors of the above-linked paper owe us all an apology. We wasted time and effort discussing this paper whose main selling point was some numbers that were essentially the product of a statistical error." https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaw...

While Gelman does point out to issues that may invalidate this paper (test specificity, mostly, and noisy weights, potentially) there does not seem to be any "cherry picking" involved.

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

#233

Post by hadtodoit »

bamboozled wrote: post #216
joe_the_user wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that case I wouldn't trust any country not to fudge the numbers. As far as Japan goes, I believe the numbers are close enough. They have a very high population of elderly and smokers. People would be dropping like flies and making a lot of noise about it if the numbers were far worse.

Social distancing, wearing masks, staying home when sick, cleaning all fomites frequently are things the Japanese were doing before this pandemic culturally, I imagine those actions are in over drive now.

I'm reminded of when the subway tunnels in Japan flooded and the water was so clear you'd have thought it was a swimming pool. Even Chinese netziens commented on how absurdly clean Japan is when the pictures emerged.

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

#234

Post by greedo »

stcredzero wrote: post #119
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?

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…

I was in a similar position at work. I was continually pointing out from mid-January onwards, that this was a serious issue that might spread world-wide. That we should at least conduct some tests/drills to insure that our business could function remotely. I was treated like a third head had grown atop my shoulders.

Jump to mid-March, when the pandemic was obvious to anyone with the least amount of curiosity, and the same group was saying "It's just a flu." The only thing that was socially acceptable to discuss was how many guns you might need in an apocalypse.

Denial is a powerful opiate.

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

#235

Post by hooo »

randomsearch wrote: post #173
joe_the_user wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They didn't even have a lock down like in other countries and still managed this.

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

#236

Post by greedo »

stcredzero wrote: post #223
neurologic wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I don't really get the societal penalty for disaster preparation. It makes a lot of sense: if you're preparing for a disaster, you won't go down with everyone else when disaster strikes. This creates some feeling of resentment which caused people to lash out at you.

you won't go down with everyone else when disaster strikes. This creates some feeling of resentment which caused people to lash out at you. A well known psychologist was castigated a few years back for his likening people to lobsters. Yet here we have a perfect example of people acting like the proverbial lobsters who drag the escaping lobster back into the pot.

Crab pot metaphor.

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

#237

Post by hadtodoit »

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.

I think you are diminishing the amount of traffic between Europe and US on any given day. Closing the borders to Europe may very well have saved us from catastrophe. Numbers exploded everywhere in March.

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

#238

Post by yongjik »

gdulli wrote: post #177
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…

As GP said in another reply, the incumbent party won a landslide victory in recent congressional election (180 out of 300 seats), so it seems South Koreans generally approve how the government handled it. (Of course the timing was fortuitous for Moon: had the election happened ~45 days ago things would have been very different.)

Even for the opponents, it seems the majority criticism was that the government didn't do enough - somehow they're very angry about not blocking visitors from China. (Many conservatives have a strong pro-America, anti-China sentiment, and frequently accuse the president of being the opposite.)

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

#239

Post by greedo »

James_Henry wrote: post #56
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…

Also, they are very meticulous about taking their shoes off before going into a home and about keeping their floors clean. Which may be more important, especially in dense locations, than we might be realizing. A Chinese study found that the virus was probably being moved around by people's shoes https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article

They tested in hospital/ICU areas. I think the odds are much higher in such an environment. Obviously medical workers should keep from transferring viral material to their homes, but to imply that this is being transferred by non-medical personnel is inaccurate.

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

#240

Post by greedo »

yfzhou wrote: post #99
daveFNbuck wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China has been doing mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine for all foreign arrivals like this: https://twitter.com/nishantsharma87/status/12424610259510845... However, the latest cluster in Heilongjiang involved an asymptomatic student returned from USA, completed 14 day quarantine, tested negative before and after, but still went on to infect her family and neighbors who infected more at the hospital. Total confirmed ca…

The simplest explanation would be that the student was infected after quarantine.
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