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South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

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Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#31
post #16

South Korea has got over the hump of death count growth NOT because they are preserving the open society, but because they act swiftly. In fact, they acted in late January. When did U.S. acted upon? U.S. squandered 2 months and wait till WHO declared this is a global pandemic. And they have tested 140k of the cases now and more, how many cases has U.S. tested so far? Not even close. What about contact tracing? Have y…

> What about contact tracing? Have you hear South Korea let confirmed cases leave the hospital with fake name + addresses? U.S. has. [1]

Not trying to defend their actions but I’d bet they were trying to avoid being put on quarentine in the hospital to later receive a hefty bill to pay.

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#32

> Contrast this with developments in the few days since Italy put its entire country under quarantine, active cases have risen from between 5,000 and 6,000 to over 8,500. Stopped reading there, it's not worth my time. It takes up to two weeks to develop any symptoms, so remarks like that are either misguided or intentionally misleading.

[deleted]

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#33
post #22
post #9

The US can't follow the South Korean model because the US does not have the testing infrastructure for it: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-co... This article presents it as dueling narratives: open versus authoritarian. This implies that, as of now, the US has some choice. But we don't. We screwed up testing when it was small and containable, and now it's not.

I think the idea is that if we go in lock-down for 2 weeks, infections can get back to a manageable level - and then we can open up by testing like mad.

Two weeks is barely enough for infections growth to stop (I.e. second derivative) as evidenced by Italian numbers. It’ll take months to bring total infections back down to something reasonable.

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#34
post #16

South Korea has got over the hump of death count growth NOT because they are preserving the open society, but because they act swiftly. In fact, they acted in late January. When did U.S. acted upon? U.S. squandered 2 months and wait till WHO declared this is a global pandemic. And they have tested 140k of the cases now and more, how many cases has U.S. tested so far? Not even close. What about contact tracing? Have y…

> What about contact tracing? Have you hear South Korea let confirmed cases leave the hospital with fake name + addresses? U.S. has. [1] Not trying to defend their actions but I’d bet they were trying to avoid being put on quarentine in the hospital to later receive a hefty bill to pay.

I wouldn’t want to pay for a prison stay either... the system has all the wrong incentives.

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#35

On a sort of related note, I presented this as an "Ask HN": Why don't [iWatch, Garmin, Fitbit] wearables have a thermometers? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22581703 I know "core temperature" is hard to take at the wrist, but I'm sure _something_ could be done. Wouldn't this benefit entire nations if the technology could be invented to have hyper-local influenza and pandemic forecasting?

My Garmin has a thermometer, but its purpose is to track barometric pressure. It doesn't accurately reflect my body temperature. When I go running below freezing, it usually drops down to around ~2* C. It may accurately reflect the temperature of the skin on my wrist but it's useless for telling me that I have a fever.

I think the accurate readings would come when you're at rest sleeping, not hiking in freezing cold. The motion sense capability of these wearables would take that into affect. Garmin has a O2 sensor that comes on only when you sleep, it would make sense this would maybe do the same.

It looks like this tech does exist in rudimentary form, for females, and it's specifically tied for fertility tracking.

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#36

> Contrast this with developments in the few days since Italy put its entire country under quarantine, active cases have risen from between 5,000 and 6,000 to over 8,500. Stopped reading there, it's not worth my time. It takes up to two weeks to develop any symptoms, so remarks like that are either misguided or intentionally misleading.

Median is 5 days¹, and they've maintained ¹ https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period...

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#37

They are coming back again ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-kore... ). Numbers are lagging indicators, and the virus grows exponentially. They are going to go up again

That's... not really guaranteed, but you'd have to keep up the same level of vigilance indefinitely.

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that if we go in lock-down for 2 weeks, infections can get back to a manageable level - and then we can open up by testing like mad.

Two weeks isn't nearly enough, and nobody is on true lockdown yet. Two weeks from now people are going to be questioning why we did the lockdowns, because they will appear to have had no impact at all. The general public still doesn't realize that it's going to be two months before the shelter in place and general social distancing rules start to make a difference. Even then, after months of lockdown, it's just going…

I didn't realize that. Man, we're so fucked. Batten the hatches.

Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#39
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they have to do it EARLY. It is useless to compare or even worse suggest these solutions now.

EARLY is key. Experimenting theories in a scenario like is so risky - difficult to understand why the UK went that way.

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Re: South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling

#40
The coronavirus containment stories in South Korea and Singapore are being brought up a lot, but both are essentially completely irrelevant to the situation in North America or Europe. South Korea has 9 international airports and a single literally impassable land border; Singapore has one airport and one tightly controlled border crossing bridge. Containment under these circumstances is a somewhat tractable problem. It's comparable to, say, Hawaii, which currently has 13 cases despite the widely incompetent American government response.

Europe has hundreds of international airports and uncountable open border crossings. Containment was never really a possibility in Europe. Containment in mainland North America was even less likely. Even if governments wanted to close borders between states/provinces, there's no mechanism to do so.

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