South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling(aier.org)
aier.org
South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling
https://www.aier.org/article/south-korea-preseved-open-infection-rates-are-falling/
45 comments
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 to flare up again as soon as the rules are relaxed.
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 to flare up again as soon as the rules are relaxed.
I didn't realize that. Man, we're so fucked. Batten the hatches.
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.
Things change, I get right now the US does not have the choice but this thing is not going away and choices have to be made as to how to deal with it. Raising awareness of other options that are successful is a good thing. Constructive criticism can help.
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 you heard South Korea let confirmed cases leave the hospital with fake name + addresses? Or knowing that family members may have infected and still going out to the public? U.S. has. [1][2]
That's the difference you can maintain a society. Lock-up is the second last resort. And then you will have to follow U.K. to let it be.
[1]: https://people.com/human-interest/nj-woman-with-coronavirus-...
[2]: https://www.kcra.com/article/father-of-missouri-coronavirus-...
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 you heard South Korea let confirmed cases leave the hospital with fake name + addresses? Or knowing that family members may have infected and still going out to the public? U.S. has. [1][2]
That's the difference you can maintain a society. Lock-up is the second last resort. And then you will have to follow U.K. to let it be.
[1]: https://people.com/human-interest/nj-woman-with-coronavirus-...
[2]: https://www.kcra.com/article/father-of-missouri-coronavirus-...
> 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.
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.
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I heard that South Korea had/has a very large supply of very accurate coronavirus tests. Probably lots of testing is also why their death rates are low (not only hospitalizable cases are counted). Maybe a significant motivator in these decisions is whether or not you can test a lot of people?
A large number of available and accurate tests definitely mattered. But that is not merely enough, someone had to make decisions and coordinate the efforts. I have no idea who that was, but they did a great job.
they weren't only testing everybody on a massive scale, they also assigned a team of like 5 people for every positive case to trace everyone they could have come in contact with
> 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.
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.
Yes. It’s comparing apples to oranges. Basing your argument on “Well South Korea has decreasing number of cases, the US is increasing” is an unfair argument. China’s cases are decreasing as well and they used the martial law options.
Median is 5 days¹, and they've maintained <1.5% growth for more than a week.
¹ https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period...
¹ https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period...
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But didn't South Korea too have aggressive location tracking and even made those details public?
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00740-y
So not exactly CCP style lockdown but not a 2019 style free society either. They did make the hard choices necessary to got it in control. But it wasn't as simple as more testing.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00740-y
So not exactly CCP style lockdown but not a 2019 style free society either. They did make the hard choices necessary to got it in control. But it wasn't as simple as more testing.
Preserving privacy may inherently contradict with public interest coming from aggressive contact tracing. This is really unfortunate, but the S.Korea case could be even worse if adequate CDC agents were not granted with the authority to aggregate/join arbitrary private data (very likely against the subject's will).
This was especially important for early actions taken by S.Korea's CDC since a single super-spreader (#31) had contacts with thousands(!) of people within just 2~3 days. I'm 99% sure that Europe and America also have similar cases, but just remains unveiled because they couldn't really do the same thing with the given authority. S.Korea was in a similar situation during the MERS outbreak but now they passed a law to allow such actions.
IMHO, this trade-off is no brainer. The cost is can be controlled/minimized while the economical/societal damages caused by full lockdown is not. And yes, this is also not 2019 style free society.
This was especially important for early actions taken by S.Korea's CDC since a single super-spreader (#31) had contacts with thousands(!) of people within just 2~3 days. I'm 99% sure that Europe and America also have similar cases, but just remains unveiled because they couldn't really do the same thing with the given authority. S.Korea was in a similar situation during the MERS outbreak but now they passed a law to allow such actions.
IMHO, this trade-off is no brainer. The cost is can be controlled/minimized while the economical/societal damages caused by full lockdown is not. And yes, this is also not 2019 style free society.
Italy has already started doing something similar with cell-tower data for people located in Lombardy. There's this article in Italian from a few hours ago [1] with the president of the Lombardy region saying that more than 40% of the population (I guess that from the region as a whole, or only from Milano, I'm not so sure yet) had walked/moved for more than 300 meters outside their place of residence in the last 24 hours, all this information supposedly based on that cell-tower data I mentioned earlier.
[1] https://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/03/18/news/coronav...
[1] https://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/03/18/news/coronav...
I expected privacy to kill people here ever since tech companies refused to name people on campuses who tested positive when they were among the first cases in the area. Keep your priorities in order folks.
Article presents opinions based on a broad and incomplete picture. This might be the most harmful type of publication right now, the author wants to justify his feelings of "The U.S.'s liberty is expendable, but it doesn't have to be" when the reality is the U.S. was not equipped in the ways S. Korea were. He wanted to make a specific point and ignored the obvious facts that would make the point invalid.
What strikes me is how hard it is to get reliable information on what exactly is being done in specific countries.
In particular: did South Korea shut down its schools?
There is "information" everywhere but no precise or exhaustive data on who did what.
In particular: did South Korea shut down its schools?
There is "information" everywhere but no precise or exhaustive data on who did what.
> Actually, there’s a better question: why should the U.S. copy China rather than South Korea?
Because it's too fucking late for the South Korea response. I'm sorry, but asking questions like this at this point is completely useless, and the "wait, woah, slow down" response is exactly the sort of attitude that kept us from being able to pull off what South Korea did in the first place.
Because it's too fucking late for the South Korea response. I'm sorry, but asking questions like this at this point is completely useless, and the "wait, woah, slow down" response is exactly the sort of attitude that kept us from being able to pull off what South Korea did in the first place.
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.
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.
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
It's pretty clear from that very page that SK reached its inflection point somewhere between March 5th and March 8th.
That's... not really guaranteed, but you'd have to keep up the same level of vigilance indefinitely.
The active-case count is flat or perhaps beginning to fall.
infection rate or deaths?
Yes, and S.Korea was prepped and ready with tests when the pandemic hit (or shortly thereafter). They tested their country so they knew who had it and who didn't so they could focus efforts. Because testing is hard to get in the U.S. still, the rates are unknown and the only way to prevent it is with social distancing.
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?
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.
It looks like this tech does exist in rudimentary form, for females, and it's specifically tied for fertility tracking.
Guess which model we (the U.S.) will choose - Chinese model or S. Korean?
Also, very cool chart in the article.
Also, very cool chart in the article.
Article is disingenuous as fuck. Glad to see so many good comments here.
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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.