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How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

npr.org

191–200 of 287 posts

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, Taiwan did not have huge flows of mainland Chinese soon after the outbreak though. They closed the border to all travelers with PRC passports in mid-February. They did take some drastic measures that have worked.

To add to that. mainland China banned citizens from traveling to Taiwan as individual tourists 2019 July because of other reasons. So yes Taiwan did not have huge flows of mainland Chinese. https://time.com/5639832/china-bans-travel-taiwan-tourists/

But they did, for business. There are also millions of Taiwanese that either live or work in the PRC. Taiwan was one of the major international destinations for flights from Hubei and not coincidentally one of the first countries with cases outside China.

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#192
post #21

Again another article that doesn't even mention the use of masks and hand sanitizer. The cost of the epidemic now goes into the trillions, self-made cotton masks are cheap compared to the economic damage. They can be disinfected in boiling water and if everybody uses them they will help to stop the spreading of the virus. In all the countries mentioned in the article people wear masks when in public, often just again…

Cloth masks may be counter productive https://dx.doi.org/10.1136%2Fbmjopen-2014-006577

This paper is being misinterpreted everywhere in this very misleading fashion. See this blog post Raina MacIntyre (the first author) wrote to clarify this: https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/impact-ppe-shortages-healt...

People misrepresenting this study are doing tremendous harm, it has to stop.

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#193

A physician from Korea recently did an AMA on Reddit and said: 'It is hard for anyone to predict what will happen in the future in this volatile situation. However, South Korean experts think that if the situation doesn't get better within the month, it will last up to 6 months. If the situation exacerbates within 6 months, it's apparent that this will become a much more difficult scenario than previously imagined. T…

"it's hard to predict" and "if this then that" doesn't really help and just adds to peoples anxiety and paranoia.

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#194

All countries which the rest of the World relies on production of masks, gloves, plastic items, electronics, medical equipment have done well. The rest of World which includes once capable nations (who have now outsourced everything and now don't have capacity to produce even bandages for their population) is now screwed. Lesson learnt: Self reliance is key.

Yeah, if only WW1 never ended, we'd all have plenty of masks!

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#195
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read repeatedly (and heard on the radio several times) that wearing a mask if YOU are infected will help protect other people, but if you are not infected then it has no known protective effect ie. is not thought to be any more protective than not wearing one. Do you have any evidence to back up you talk of masks? (And if YOU are infected you should not be out anyway) Edit: I was thinking of non-medical situatio…

This advice is completely contrary to anything that happens inside a hospital. Nurses and doctors are wearing surgical masks (and N95 masks plus face shield if performing actions that may generate aerosols) to protect themselves from getting sick while treating patients. The problem is that you can have COVID19 and be contagious without showing symptoms. Mandating everybody to wear some sort of mask should reduce tra…

I am hopeful that the US public may warm up to masks in public in the future. It seems likely this would cut down on the spread of seasonal flu and common colds.

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#196

All countries which the rest of the World relies on production of masks, gloves, plastic items, electronics, medical equipment have done well. The rest of World which includes once capable nations (who have now outsourced everything and now don't have capacity to produce even bandages for their population) is now screwed. Lesson learnt: Self reliance is key.

> Self reliance is key. I'm not a student of politics, but I wonder if self-reliance also makes a country more willing to start unnecessary wars. If so, I'd wonder which strategy has a higher death count.

Economic and financial warfare that the US is waging on Russia clearly shows that a country has got to choose between self-reliance and obedience.

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#197
post #177
post #146

"South Korea has used data from surveillance cameras, cellphones and credit card transactions to map the social connections of suspected cases. " None of these things are available to health departments in the United States unless someone voluntarily allows it. The United States has a weak federal containment strategy when it comes to pandemics since most of the decision making is left to Governors. Louisiana allowed…

Every cell phone user has to be tracked so the cell network knows how to route their calls. Result: https://twitter.com/TectonixGEO/status/1242628347034767361 (edited for better link)

Where did this researcher get the anonymized mobile phone location data points from ?

Also, I think it's important to clarify that:

"Every cell phone user has to be tracked so the cell network knows how to route their calls ..."

... would be more accurate if we said:

"Every cell phone has to be tracked ..."

Many pieces of the cellular network have no idea who the handset (or other device) is assigned to, or who is using it - they just know that that SIM card is up on the network, and needs to be routed appropriately ...

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#198
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with use of masks in the US is that we do not have enough masks and we need them all for health care workers. If there aren't enough masks for health care workers, doctors and nurses will stop coming to work people won't be able to get medical attention the death rate will sky rocket because of lack of simple medical procedures, there will be panic in the streets, etc. For this reason our media seems to b…

You are confusing "masks" as "surgical masks" aka. N95. He is meaning just the regular masks with no filtering whatsoever, that are very easy to manufacture. Hell you can even make them yourself. The N95 however, are quite difficult to build and require specialized machines to manufacture the filtering part, somebody linked a good article to it a couple days ago. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/8…

To be clear, surgical masks and N95 masks are different things. Both are in short supply in the US.

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#199

So have Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia (440 million people). They've all had fewer cases than Luxembourg so far. I've yet to see a good explanation for it, other than maybe the premise about seasonal temps and humidity (northern vs southern hemisphere). There's no evidence they're massively lying about their numbers (which would show up in the form of a demolished hospital system and thousands dead of pneumo…

I have wondered that for a while, especially since countries like Malaysia had outbreaks long before Italy. Originally I thought: https://simonsarris.com/sunlight (note: data last updated March 16) But there are several axes that could matter just as much as quarantine/lockdowns: Humidity, sunlight (as proxy for vitamin D levels, or simply UV), pollution (which also affects sunlight), median age (47 in Italy, 30 in M…

I'm really starting to think there might be something to this. In the US, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop in places like California, Texas and Florida and the days keep going by and we are not seeing anything like the death toll New York is having. California had some of the very first cases in the US and took in at least one cruise ship of infected people. Florida's governor has been openly defiant against shutting the state down and they only have 29 deaths so far. If ever there was a place in the US where virtually every single inhabitant is vitamin D deficient it is New York City, even in the summer time.

Re: How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

#200

They took proactive measurements when the rest of the world was still looking at how things would develop. Making tests well before they had their first case. When my country got its first cases they were still saying it isn't that contagious and everything is fine.

They had conducted hundreds to thousands of tests before the first case in the country was detected.
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