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South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

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Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only CDC allowed "non official" tests.

This is the real problem. Both the CDC and the FDA stopped everyone else from making progress on testing and we only started getting more tests when labs decided to disobey them. Cockups like this really should lay to rest the idea some people have that the federal government is a panacea for everything. This is very similar to one of Warren Buffett's quote about investing in companies: “I try to invest in businesses…

The problem I have with this attitude, as it plays out in the United States, is that people accept this idea as true, and so then they de-fund things until they operate poorly, they vote with apathy so you end up with idiots in control, and basically the prophecy fulfills itself.

All these things about idiots being in charge is, as Buffet said, true of companies as well. Nothing is a panacea.

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#82
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the massive explosion in cases in Denmark, going from 514 to 1573 in two days, closing the borders is probably wise. For a country with just 5.9 million people, that's a recipe for collapsing your healthcare system if the cases continue to increase like that for much longer. There are not many medical systems on the planet that could handle that per capita case load increase in such a short amount of time (spec…

Depends on why the increase in cases? Just because succesfully traced and identified a group of cases, it doesn't tell you anything about the growth in the true number of infected. There are 10 people in hospitals in Denmark for COVID19. None dead. By the publicised numbers Sweden is hit about the same as Denmark; yet they choose a much more moderate approach.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_D..., it's 23 in hospital vs 801 total identified cases. That a hospitalization rate of only 2.8%. I wonder what accounts for the massive discrepancy from other countries.

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#83
post #5

The situation in Stockholm, Sweden right now is: “You who have symptoms similar to coronavirus will not be tested in the future. This applies regardless of whether you have been in the areas that were previously exposed to infection or had close contact with someone you know is ill in covid-19.” There are no test kits. Hospitals have run out of face masks. And it’s only just getting started here.

One could built UV-Lightmasks. A transparent hose, add UV-LEDS to sterilize the flowing air. Dry the air at the start with silica gel. All that is needed then is a battery. The silica gel can be heated every once in a while to loose any moisture bound it and sterilize virus particles attached to it.

Might as well make it a fully closed rebreather gear(note: CO2 removal is more important than adding oxygen)

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only CDC allowed "non official" tests.

This is the real problem. Both the CDC and the FDA stopped everyone else from making progress on testing and we only started getting more tests when labs decided to disobey them. Cockups like this really should lay to rest the idea some people have that the federal government is a panacea for everything. This is very similar to one of Warren Buffett's quote about investing in companies: “I try to invest in businesses…

> Cockups like this really should lay to rest the idea some people have that the federal government is a panacea for everything.

IMHO, a major reason South Korea improved so much in recent decades is, when we had idiotic/evil leaders, we didn't say "What did you expect from the government? The government can and will be run by idiots, so you should not depend on it."

Instead, we said "How come our government is run by these murders and idiots? This is unacceptable! We demand a government we can depend on!"

You keep saying the government is run by idiots, you get your government run by idiots. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#85

Will Korea sell us tests? Will anyone? Has this been discussed anywhere?

Jack Ma just donated a bunch.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fhvvzl/chinas_...

And as the situation in the US worsens to a certain point, I'm sure China would officially send supplies too like it's currently doing with Italy and Iran. Question is whether Trump will accept that.

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#86
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are test kits in the UK, but the same policy applies. Why? Because it no longer matters, the containment effort for individual cases is now over. Now we move on to more mass actions to delay and slow the peak of the epidemic - anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test.

>anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test. In an ideal world we would already be doing this. I know that some people have to show up to work even if they're sick, but even at my job where we have unlimited sick leave, and are encouraged to use it, people still show up coughing and sniffling. I don't get it. If your employer encourages you to work from home when you're sick, and you…

> know that some people have to show up to work even if they're sick, but even at my job where we have unlimited sick leave, and are encouraged to use it, people still show up coughing and sniffling.

yes, the 'overzealous hero employee' archetype is very real. The Coronavirus aside I just wish this would generally become socially unacceptable. Not just during a pandemic but in general sacrificing health or sleep or some reasonable balance of life for work should not be celebrated.

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#87
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the containment effort for individual cases is now over" Most countries didn't even attempt containment, as far as I can tell. Leaders seem to have surrendered to mass infection at the opening of the battle. It seems pathetic and criminally negligent. It's an intentional trade of hundreds of thousands of lives (potentially millions) in exchange for some unpredictable economic gain. This could conceivably make sense…

I had a tweet from Flightradar24 show up on my timeline earlier: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1238102765081186306... It kinda hit me immediately why this whole containment thing wasn't really working out. And this was March 12! How on earth do we tell people to not go outside, but months after it all started there are still thousands of airplanes flying. Honorary mention for the countries that sent milita…

Keep in mind a lot of those flights are flying empty due to use it or loose it rules.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-some-airlines-ar...

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it wasn't "the market" that solved this problem. it was the employees, including the ceo, at that company who felt a duty to the rest of the country, not to some market opportunity, that effected the result. bureaucracies, including corporate ones (see: innovator's dilemma), are typically not nimble enough to respond to rapidly changing circumstances. it's not a market vs government (false) dichotomy.

I mean, the CEO and the employees are literally part of the free market.

I suspect that the CEO and the companies employees gave two shits about your precious free market when they decided to implement a crash program to develop tests.

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#89
post #42
post #5

The situation in Stockholm, Sweden right now is: “You who have symptoms similar to coronavirus will not be tested in the future. This applies regardless of whether you have been in the areas that were previously exposed to infection or had close contact with someone you know is ill in covid-19.” There are no test kits. Hospitals have run out of face masks. And it’s only just getting started here.

There are test kits in the UK, but the same policy applies. Why? Because it no longer matters, the containment effort for individual cases is now over. Now we move on to more mass actions to delay and slow the peak of the epidemic - anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test.

I suppose limitations on testing are going to make the official numbers less useful going forward, not that they were taken as anything but a very rough lower bound so far.

I mean, the Johns Hopkins map shows 13 infections in Ohio, and you have the director of the Ohio Department of Health saying it's 100,000. How do we know if either are anywhere close to right?

Presumably when things get bad it'll be impossible to hide it, as the hospitals will be over capacity. That's already happened in Wuhan and China, and probably Iran and some other places as well.

It would be nice if we had some sort of indication of where a particular region is on the scale from "hardly anyone has this yet" to "we're experiencing rampant community spread" that's more trustworthy/accurate than the official numbers.

Re: South Korea's drive-through testing for coronavirus

#90
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test. In an ideal world we would already be doing this. I know that some people have to show up to work even if they're sick, but even at my job where we have unlimited sick leave, and are encouraged to use it, people still show up coughing and sniffling. I don't get it. If your employer encourages you to work from home when you're sick, and you…

This is a special case of course and I work for a company where we are told to work from home right now regardless of symptoms or not. However when it comes to the common cold that is something that will be going of for weeks and return several times for some people, just the light symptoms. No fever but some coughing and sneezing. For some job roles and in some companies with good culture it works great to work home…

I disagree that the solution to "missing out too much" when you're sick is to go to work anyway and risk infecting co-workers.

According to the CDC, the average adult gets the common cold 2-3 times per year with symptoms lasting 7-10 days[1]. So it's more like 2-4 weeks per year, but I would imagine that number would decrease if you didn't have people coming into work sick in the first place (again, I recognize not every job will allow for this). Hong Kong's flu season apparently ended early this year due to the self isolation of sick people[2].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/features/rhinoviruses/index.html

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/ad7ae6b4-5eab-11ea-b0ab-339c2307b...

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