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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

#271

Post by baud147258 »

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?

Well, it was impossible to buy masks for much of the lockdown in France, so…

But banning the sale of masks isn't the most stupid idea we had in France, I'd say it was forbidding jogging from 10h to 19h in Paris was the worst, with all the joggers clustering from 8h to 10h and 19h to 20h

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

#272

Post by tinus_hn »

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…

In any case, harassing people for wearing a mask is stupid.

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

#273

Post by FlorianRappl »

Hamuko wrote: post #48
collyw wrote: 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.

I don't think the number of deaths in Sweden (around 1500) is that high. Sweden has 10 million people. Some sources report it as 10% (of all cases), but I would be very cautious with these numbers. We know since quite a while that the number of reported cases can only act as an upper barrier, which may be between 10 and 15 times too high.

In Germany you are only tested under some conditions. I know many people that had quite a few symptoms and have not been tested even though they wanted to get a test. Only the ones that got severe problems or had relatives with a positive test. The conclusion is that we only know the death count quite well, the rest is mostly guess work.

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

#274

Post by bkor »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #256
misun78 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As again with political analysis, I am seeing downright inconsistencies and biases in judging responses to this pandemic, based on what side one is on. Do you apply the same remarks to the POTUS as well?

Responding to your original post: > Not to make this too political but can't the same logic be applied to the POTUS too? Changed tone and done a decent job using the fed muscle to beef up on ventilators and testing. What am I missing when I hear contradicting analysis around politicians, presumably based on which "side" one is on. We should be consistent in acknowledging that no one (at least in the US) got the sever…

> then goes and says that he wants to re-open the country by Easter

From what I noticed (it's been a while) the reporting on that was a bit weird. The statement was more like "I hope it'll be fine by Easter". That's still a weird thing to say, but less strange than what was reported.

The way statements were made to the public seems to be different per country. E.g. in NL the prime minister said something like "we need to take this very seriously and it will take a long time". They showed a similar presentation from France, were the statement included stuff about "fighting a war". So despite needing to say similar things, the messaging can differ quite a bit per country. In US the statements seem quite strange; dismissing the importance as authority figure seems dangerous and irresponsible.

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

#275

Post by bkor »

jariel wrote: post #231
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…

" 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 rec…

> There is no evidence that masks are a solution.

Masks are not meant to solve/prevent Corona. It's meant to slow down the spread of the virus. It needs to be used in combination with other measures such as social distancing.

Unfortunately the Dutch government keeps saying that masks do not help, sometimes they suggest that a mask can make things worse. The reason behind this seems to be to prevent people from stealing masks from hospitals, something that seemed to have happened in every country.

That said, please check the effectiveness of masks. It doesn't need to be perfect, just slow down the spread.

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

#276

Post by bkor »

quicklime wrote: post #228
collyw wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

>> The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1% > How can we be sure until we have widespread testing? I think we can be sure that this is an incorrect number, with the data we have right now. At least 8448 people have died of COVID-19 in New York City, and if only 0.1% of the infected die, then we have 8,448,000 infected New Yorkers. This is the entire population of the city (including those who fled t…

> At least 8448 people have died of COVID-19 in New York City

Just to add: be very careful to compare deaths across countries. Every country seems to count deaths differently. Some only count it if you didn't have any other condition. E.g. you had something with your lungs? That death might not be reported.

In Netherlands they compared the amount of people dying per week. There was a sudden huge increase of deaths. It seemed to indicate the number of deaths for Netherlands was 2x as high as they were reporting. Though they did report the deaths with a very clear remark that the numbers were highly likely to be too low. Unfortunately such remarks were often ignored by the public, leading to eventual distrust of any figure. Interestingly, the press at various times did make it clear that the figure could be unreliable. Seems people often just read a headline :-p

PS: My point is that the 8448 might be greatly higher. Depends on how the 8448 was collected/reported.

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

#277

Post by randomsearch »

joe_the_user wrote: post #191
randomsearch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"I think it’s too early to judge success." Uh really ? South Korea suppressed an epidemic and strengthened the tools they had for suppressing epidemics, maintaining economic strength and social cohesion. How are they not best position in the stage of managing the epidemic (the appropriate term used by the ggp). Oh, I know one really bad answer people are ready with - they didn't let the virus burn through their popul…

Well, for one thing, people were saying the same about Singapore, but the number of cases there has grown exponentially. A pandemic isn't over in a few months, we have to look at it over years.

For example: behavioural scientists tell us that people will only stand one major lockdown; using that lockdown early to keep deaths to a minimum initially may not be the best strategy. So thinking about the long-term is essential.

Not saying you're wrong that South Korea has a good track record to this point. I am saying you're wrong to extrapolate that out to the likely arrival of a vaccine programme in 2021.

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

#278

Post by tooltalk »

yongjik wrote: post #238
gdulli wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You don't have to be a conservative to see how the gov't screwed up early on -- the SK gov't went against the advice of the Korean Medical Association to restrict travel from China; instead the current Moon administration made a political decision to keep their door open to China to please Xi JinPing of China. The problem for the minority party was their link to Shincheonji, a cult responsible for the majority of all coronavirus cases, and they really had to keep their head down pretty much throughout the whole ordeal.

I consider myself a newbie and neutral on SK politics and had dismissed all the criticism of Moon being a commie and all before, but I'm starting to see through the garbage now.

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

#279

Post by lm28469 »

tomxor wrote: post #95

> U.S. has swelled to more than 700,000 while Korea [...] have slowed to just over 10,000. Comparing absolutes is not very useful so I thought I'd double check this. The difference is obviously less when normalized but the US is still an order of magnitude worse than SK: USA: 700e3 / 328.2e6 * 100 = 0.213% SK: 10e3 / 51.64e6 * 100 = 0.019%

Looking at the graphs shows a whole other story though. South korea is on the way down for weeks now, the US are still on the way up. (active cases)

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-kore...

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

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

#280

Post by varjag »

collyw wrote: post #270
varjag wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eventual arrival of a vaccine may allow the states who are flattening the curve to have lower total amount of casualties.

True, but it doesn't sound like it's going to happen any time soon. There was no vaccine for SARS.

SARS was contained relatively quickly however, while the countries doing the mitigation looking potentially into many months of flattening.
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