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

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-18/seoul-s-full-cafes-apple-store-lines-show-mass-testing-success

by undefined1 • 6 years ago

194 266 6 years ago

bloomberg.com

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.md/0Kygf

Robotbeat• 6 years ago

This is an archive of the above article. Thank you!

makomk3• 6 years ago

This worries me. South Korea's mass testing alone was not enough to contain the coronavirus outbreak; they relied on social distancing measures too: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southk...

ajross2• 6 years ago

Yes, but once the outbreak is at a low enough level, and you have sufficient test bandwidth, you can manage it via testing and tracing. Everyone who gets sick, with anything, gets tested (in some variants of the plan every everywhere gets tested every N days). If you find a positive, quarantine them and test everyone they came in contact with. Repeat.

This reduces the rate of spread by catching community transmission before the end of its cycle. And it's worked with other outbreaks in the past. But it depends on having a very large available pool of rapid testing, so you can't do it when you have thousands of cases per day. But a few dozen... probably. It definitely seems to be working in Korea.

But again, it only works once the outbreak is well contained. Stay home.

makomk3• 6 years ago

The trouble is, reducing the size of the outbreak doesn't affect the number of tests needed to do this much at all, and the number of people South Korea has been testing doesn't seem to have increased in quite a while. In fact, it seems to have actually decreased compared to back in March. Like, as far as I can tell, they're still using the same contact tracing and testing strategy that failed to contain it before without additional strong social distancing, and the social distancing is weakening.

api• 6 years ago

That is very labor intensive and isn't sustainable. People will get complacent fast.

usaar3334• 6 years ago

But it depends on having a very large available pool of rapid testing

Not necessarily. You can just aggressively quarantine - basically the strategy in China.

so you can't do it when you have thousands of cases per day

At what scale? Iceland was able to do it with ~200 new cases per day per million. The majority of US states haven't had spikes this high - nowhere in CA has even come close to that.

For some reason, we've only recently started building up the volunteer armies needed to do this (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-coronav...) - this should have been done on day 1.

narrator2• 6 years ago

South Korea: 234 deaths 8042 recovered. China: 4632 deaths, 77k recovered[1]. Their treatment protocol is an order of magnitude better than every other country. What are they doing that we're not? This is a huge glaring discrepancy. What's the difference between their treatment protocols and everyone else's?

[1]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

usaar3334• 6 years ago

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=china+population+%2F+s...

Actually worse than China by that metric, though given credibility issues of Chinese data, let's just say about the same.

rhino3694• 6 years ago

The "recovered" numbers in other countries aren't even close to accurate.

Countries with large outbreaks are only testing people with severe symptoms. Korea is testing anyone who comes near someone with the virus. So are catching close to everyone who has it.

yfzhou2• 6 years ago

Western countries most likely still aren't testing mild patients.

SK and China went for full containment: every single positive case is hospitalized and close contacts are quarantined in hotels so few cases are missed.

While in New York, hospitals are focused on saving critical patients. If you test positive but have mild symptoms, you are usually let home anyway so it doesn't really make sense to test most people who would be taken very seriously in Asia.

varjag3• 6 years ago

China: 4632 deaths, 77k recovered

There are zero deaths and zero cases in Turkmenistan, must have gotten their treatment protocols tight.

joe_the_user5• 6 years ago

What's the difference between their treatment protocols and everyone else's?

It's mind boggling anyone has to ask now this has been going on so long but here goes.

1) They had an approach plan beforehand because they had observed the previous SARS epidemic and took the danger seriously.

2) They had "quarantine hotels" freely available for those who were positive to prevent them from infecting others. (Seattle has a few of these, I've heard but they aren't widespread in the US. The idea of housing people freely is anethema to the US.)

3) They did testing early and often.

4) Their doctors and nurses worked with full PPEs, full anti-contamination suits, so they didn't themselves massively spread the illness.

5) They reserved hospitals specifically for the epidemic and had protocols for sending people to these hotel.

6) They had drive through testing and other testing easily and freely available (the US plan of profiting from testing is just so "I can't even").

7) They did systematic contact tracing with an app for people to discover where infectious people had been.

8) They did social distancing with mask from the start.

-- The US had literally done NONE of this. What the US has done is last-ditch efforts by states after the ostensibly responsible parties (the CDC etc) failed massively. And the Federal government is now literally sabotaging the states.

Benmcdonald__2• 6 years ago

3 new cases of coronavirus in Korea today

1 person has died this year from coronavirus in Seoul

Looks to be near the end of the outbreak for Korea

coldcode• 6 years ago

The US will hit 40,000 deaths today.

dpau• 6 years ago

and 22 million unemployed

FlorianRappl2• 6 years ago

South Korea demonstrated from the beginning on how to deal with this (despite their slow start - which still is super quick compared to most western countries).

But its completely wrong to think they passed it. They also have massive impediments at the moment. Back to normal? Far from it.

3fe9a03ccd14ca53• 6 years ago

But people are still working and their economy is still running. This is a HUGE improvement over what we have currently in the USA.

throw_away• 6 years ago

& just looking at the raw data, they seem to have a waaay better solution than we do: https://imgur.com/a/2T0GVoe

from http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ if anyone wants to compare other stats.

Jeema101• 6 years ago

That's because they intervened early with large scale testing, contact tracing, and social distancing.

The problem is contact tracing only works when the number of new infections is manageable, though. That's why it's so critical to react early and aggressively. Once it becomes unmanageable, the only solution is mass quarantines until the numbers are manageable again.

The best analogy is a fire. If it's just embers, one person can stomp it out. If you wait for it to become a forest fire, then it requires drastic measures.

collyw7• 6 years ago

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.

nradov2• 6 years ago

This video has a good explanation of why the Spanish policy is ineffective.

https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-joh...

Hamuko• 6 years ago

Sweden has a pretty high number of COVID-19 deaths, so I'm not sure if I'd like to follow their model.

dazc• 6 years ago

The original guidance in the UK was to limit exercise to one hour but the actual law doesn't have a time limit.

From what I see, people are generally behaving responsibility regards social distancing and, I assume, this is just a gamble our Govt took?

Without making sweeping generalisations also, it isn't so common for young adults to spend much time with parents/grandparents/older relatives. So, I reckon, that's one big risk factor that is less of an issue here?

rhino3694• 6 years ago

There is no evidentiary basis for the extreme lock-down Spain is using.

While this disease is pretty contagious, you are pretty unlikely to get it walking around outside or going for a run. Especially if everyone is wearing a mask.

It's possible you could catch it by running through a cloud of an infected persons breath, but the risk is low enough that we shouldn't ban outside activities.

The vast, vast majority of infections occur from sustained contact (>15min) within a few feet of someone.

tachyonbeam• 6 years ago

If people are having less social interactions per day, on average, it will still slow down the spread compared to everyone behaving as before. There's a continuum between no measures taken and complete lockdown... I'm personally very much looking forward to being able to see friends.

nicoburns• 6 years ago

If people really stay apart from each other when exercising (anecdotally that does seem to mostly be the case here in the UK), then it's not really going to spread the virus in any meaningful way.

koyote• 6 years ago

This is something I have not seen discussed or explained anywhere:

Spain has such a hard lockdown and yet even after 5 weeks there are still thousands of cases every day. How are so many new people getting infected? The same has been true in Italy.

ldng• 6 years ago

On the other hand, they have something like 65 re-infected people. Could it be that they have a different/new strain ?

Edit I don't see why the downvotes. It is easily fact-checkable. Those 65 persons were hospitalized for their symptoms, considered treated and released and about 2 weeks later showed symptoms again.

3fe9a03ccd14ca53• 6 years ago

We need to wait until we have antibody testing to get a clear picture about this.

A theory is that these asymptomatic cases simply had latent virus in their nasal passages (thus testing positive), and not actually be building any antibodies from an infection.

bb2018• 6 years ago

Yeah - Id love to know if there are any cases where someone was sick enough that they were treated, recovered, and then got sick enough they need actual treatment again.

jeremyjh2• 6 years ago

About half of the reinfected have symptoms.

Aretas77• 6 years ago

Won't this reignite the spreading of the virus? Like, they missed a few people who were asymptotic and not tested, and are roaming the streets with other people?

microcolonel• 6 years ago

No, because they test people regularly and do accurate contact tracing. Thanks to a favourable regulatory environment and a profusion of capable people, South Korea scaled up testing and tracing capacity very rapidly. Furthermore, they were socially prepared to do the basic social distancing.

Also, Taiwan has done an excellent job, and they didn't need to perform nearly as many tests. AFAIK there hasn't been a single additional confirmed case in Taiwan for the last three days.

colmvp2• 6 years ago

Taiwan also has a lot of preventative measures, i.e. mandatory mask usage in mass transit systems, government issued masks and mask rationing system, automated temperature checks at various public spaces, mask usage in schools, plastic dividers at restaurants... on top of that they have a very sophisticated scalable method of tracking people who have the virus and ensuring that they are abiding by quarantine rules via tracing the location of their cell phone.

In my city, people are still arguing whether or not people in the mass transit system should be wearing masks.

Benmcdonald__2• 6 years ago

Won't change as Korea never had a lock down and people were always going to cafes/restaurants

SpicyLemonZest10• 6 years ago

Almost certainly. Nobody realistically thinks that we'll be able to reach a steady state where new outbreaks never happen. But they were able to suppress the outbreak in Daegu, so there's reason to be confident they can do it again.

teapourer• 6 years ago

To be clear, the Korean government officially still recommends social distancing. They are especially worried about the family picnics mentioned in the article, and have officially closed many public parks in response.

To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak.

colmvp2• 6 years ago

I'm actually slightly worried as Singapore seemed to have handled the crisis quite well with only 1000ish cases for the longest time, but have now had cases balloon from only around 1350 total cases two weeks ago to 6000 today.

Certainly, a lot of it has to with migrant workers and their living situations, but it also underscores how even when you have things under control, the virus can spread rapidly when your guard is down.

Aeolun• 6 years ago

Same thing is true for Japan. Everything seems fine for a while, and suddenly the numbers explode.

op03• 6 years ago

It will be fine as long as the medical system is prepped to handle surge/moving overflow smoothly/pulling in and sharing resources etc. Remember most positives won't require hospitalization (~50% wont even show any symptoms, 40% will have mild symptoms). And compared to few months back readiness/awareness levels at hospitals is much higher.

noobermin2• 6 years ago

Tbh, SG should have never let people come particularly from countries with covid outbreaks during March. While spreading across the dorms is a big part of the internal spreading, it's clear the outbreak that started in March were clusters involving people coming to sg from abroad.

Almost everyone shut down travel from China (particularly Wuhan) but no one shut down travel from Europe during March. Biggest mistake ever. I don't know enough if it was tourists or whether it was returning Singaporeans but they should have instructed them to remain where they were for the sake of the country.

lokedhs3• 6 years ago

Almost all new cases are from clusters in dormitories for migrant workers. They live very close together in those locations, and things will spread very fast.

Numbers outside these locations are going down because of the recent "circuit breaker" they introduced a few weeks ago.

Nokinside2• 6 years ago

You can't top mitigation/supression until there is herd immunity.

You can get the immunity only two ways 1) enough people have been gone trough the disease or 2) vaccination.

South Korea must use mitigation/supression until they have enough people vaccinated or it flares up again. Complete eradication without immunity is not feasible unless you isolate whole country from the rest of the world permanently.

daveFNbuck• 6 years ago

You don't have to completely isolate the country from the world. You just have to do testing and quarantining to ensure that infectious people and things aren't entering the country.

WillPostForFood4• 6 years ago

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 first while we figure out and ramp up testing and contact tracing.

the first Apple store to reopen outside China had lines snaking out the door as many South Koreans -- almost all wearing masks

At Han River park in Seoul’s Banpo district, families -- also in masks -- were having picnics

including requiring voters to wear masks and disposable plastic gloves while casting their ballots

People are still wearing masks and mind talking face-to-face with strangers

James_Henry3• 6 years ago

Also, they are very meticulous about taking their shoes off before going into a home and about keeping their floors clean. Which may be more important, especially in dense locations, than we might be realizing.

A Chinese study found that the virus was probably being moved around by people's shoes https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article

Reason077• 6 years ago

“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?

socialdemocrat3• 6 years ago

I think in principle hindering spread is much EASIER in the US than in South Korea.

The US has a huge advantage in its low population density and spread out population. That slows down the spread of disease. Not to mention the advantage of a car centric society. In the US you can travel from A to B without exposing yourself to other people. Americans also mostly live in separate houses further reducing the risk of the spread of disease.

All through human history population density has been a major contributor to pandemics. One can see e.g. how New York is much harder hit than LA. LA is low density housing and almost no public transport.

Europe and Asia in contrast is almost all more like New York. IMHO that makes the success in South Korea more impressive not LESS.

We see the same in Europe. The densely populated countries tend to be harder hit. E.g. Denmark has enacted equally strict measures as Norway sooner yet has twice the number of deaths. Norway has an advantage in being more like the US, having a relatively spread out population.

I don't think the decentralization is the main problem at the moment. Germany is also decentralized. It is a federal republic like the US. However unlike the US, Germany has a cooperation oriented leadership where the central government listens to the leaders of the states and coordinate with them.

In the US it seems to be all postering and blame game. It is very hard to evaluate the US results without taking into account its current disastrous leadership. The US is lead by a reality star. Germany is led by a former scientific researcher with a PhD in quantum chemistry. Should we be surprised why Germany is having the best results in the West, while the US is rapidly approaching the worst results?

What saves the US is that there are numerous governors who are good leaders and to some degree counterweight the absurdity of the federal government.

But seriously in what country does the President encourage riot in provinces of their own country? Looking from abroad the US is looking increasingly like a Banana republic. I how things work out fine for everybody. But I am worried.

jariel2• 6 years ago

" 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 recommended 'surgical/cloth' masks for public but strongly discouraged N95's as there are limited quantities and those need to go to the front lines.

cameldrv3• 6 years ago

We are richer per capita, the large population of the U.S. should give us economy of scale (for software development etc), and the lower population density should mean less contacts to trace per case. There's no excuse. We passed a 2 trillion dollar coronavirus bill and there's no contact tracing army? Madness.

joe_the_user5• 6 years ago

To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak.

South Korea has had fewer deaths than other nations, South Korea has a semi-open economy now. What better model for managing the outbreak is there? (The condition of Europe and the US look very dismal) It's kind of strange seeing this claim with no substantiation beside "repeat" apparently staying on the top of HN for a while.

South Korea hasn't entirely averted the danger and is clearly still keeping it in mind. The virus is going to be around for a while and normalizing life is needed and it seems South Korea has to the testing and contact tracing infrastructure needed for this. What is the counter-argument?

randomsearch2• 6 years ago

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.

bamboozled• 6 years ago

Japan apparently has a much lower death rate and number of infections too.

Should we trust those numbers? I'm going to say no.

hinkley• 6 years ago

Do we know yet whether the clusters of fatalities among families are due to higher exposure rates or some genotypic susceptibility to the worst effects of the illness?

Or is that just that the family clusters are good news copy (ugh) and over-represented?

brewdad2• 6 years ago

Spouses wouldn't necessarily share any genetic susceptibility yet there are plenty of stories of husband and wife pairs dying. Whether these stories are over-represented, like most areas of "proof", is pretty much impossible to say for certain at this point.

nikofeyn• 6 years ago

To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak.

but they have successfully managed it. it's just that they're still managing it and are not done.

melling• 6 years ago

South Korea started testing very early:

“South Korea's foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, speaking to the BBC last week, said the key lessons from her country are that it developed testing for the virus even before it had a significant number of cases. "In mid-January, our health authorities quickly conferred with the research institutions here [to develop a test]," Kang said. "And then they shared that result with the pharmaceutical companies, who then produced the reagent [chemical] and the equipment needed for the testing."

LordHumungous• 6 years ago

Does it show the success of their approach? Given that new cases hit the hospitals 2 weeks after exposure it seems like it is far too soon to know that.

Also, over what timeline are we talking? South Korea has fewer deaths now, will that be the case in two years time?

I've seen a lot of articles lately drawing conclusions from the state of the world as it exists now. But this is a highly dynamic situation. Today's assumptions are next month's fallacies. We need more humility.

dominotw4• 6 years ago

how was south korea able to scale up their testing so fast. Where did the extra testing capacity come from. I've been really curious about this but haven't seen any good answers so far.

SpicyLemonZest10• 6 years ago

All rich countries have been able to scale up their testing similarly quickly, once they decided it was a national priority to do so.

dominotw4• 6 years ago

then how come all rich countries don't have 'mass testing success' like the article claims happened in south korea.

WillPostForFood4• 6 years ago

It is am extremely stark example of the value of maintaining manufacturing capacity in your country. Korea can makes tests, so they have tests.

Seegene, a company that makes Covid-19 testing equipment is in Korea. They just needed approval and to ramp up manufacturing. For most countries, like the US, we don't have the manufacturing ability anymore, so we have to go beg and buy tests while we figure how to make again. Seegene alone has been responsible for 80% of the tests in Korea.

dominotw4• 6 years ago

Afaik, the shortage in US is mainly of raw materials and commodity items like pipettes. How did Seegene ramp up its raw material pipeline so quickly. Really fascinating success.

nerfhammer• 6 years ago

The CDC tried to manufacture it's own test but badly botched it, while the FDA blocked anyone from using or developing any other test than the CDC's.

stunt• 6 years ago

Not so long ago, East Asia was hit by another epidemic virus. So they are better prepared than many other countries. They have reserved workforce, researchers, and labs to deal with it in South Korea. Therefore, they were able to mass produce fast test kits so quickly.

The population is also better prepared for this situation. They still remember it and know they have to follow all the advice coming from government and health experts.

Even before the spread of Covid-19 outside China, all East Asians started to use face masks. I'm not saying mask helped them, I mean that just shows how their society still remembers the last time that they were hit by a virus.

socialdemocrat3• 6 years ago

South Korea has far superior legal framework for pandemic compared to most western countries. As soon as there is a sign of a beginning pandemic, the medical professionals automatically get a massive increase in power and can start enacting lots of policies regardless of what politician think.

They where probably better prepared as well. Preparedness varies a lot. In the Nordic region where I am from the Finns have done better than the rest of us because they are a prepper nation. They constantly prepare for the worst.

Finland has enormous bunkers under their cities that can hold the whole population with air filters, water, food stock piles etc. Finland has massive stock piles of medical equipment, even stockpiles of raw materials for making ammunition medication etc.

In many ways I think it has paid for them to not be NATO members. They know they are alone and have to take care of themselves just like in the winter war against the Soviet Union.

In Norway I think we place too much faith in NATO. If it was up to me I would get the hell out and focus on self reliance instead.

pnw_hazor3• 6 years ago

Finland has worries about Russia. South Korea has worries about North Korea. And, Taiwan worries about China.

Interesting that three of the best prepared countries have valid real world concerns about their adjacent neighbors.

While some nations surrounded by oceans and/or friendly countries are taking a beating.

wolfhumble• 6 years ago

In the Nordic region where I am from the Finns have done better than the rest of us because they are a prepper nation. They constantly prepare for the worst.

I am sure the Finns have done a fine job, but I don't think one can say that "the Finns have done better than the rest of us because they are a prepper nation" without studying this in detail. Being prepared is important, but just one part of the equation.

Travelling is also another important part (I am sure there are many others as well). Looking at passenger statistics, the Finnish population seems to be traveling less by air than most Nordic countries as well. I have not extracted domestic flights and if flights are done by the citizens of the country where the airports are located, so these numbers are ballpark figures, but I guess they can give some insight (although domestic flights might cause more rapid spread of virus as well).

Numbers from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...

Looking at the five biggest Airports in each country in: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, I get the following passenger numbers for each country per year:

Iceland: 21,7 flights per person, per year.

Norway: 8,5 flights per person, per year.

Denmark: 6,2 flights per person, per year.

Finland: 4,4 flights per person, per year.

Sweden: 4,4 flights per person, per year.

The passenger numbers correlates relatively well with detected cases when the pandemi hit the Nordic Countries (chose March 4th, arbitrarily); Sweden and Denmark changes place:

====

Iceland – March 4, 1]: Coronavirus cases detected: 26 cases

Population-size adjusted, up to the size of Sweden (biggest country): 730 cases

====

Norway – March 4, 2]: Coronavirus cases detected: 59 cases

Population-size adjusted: 109

====

Sweden – March 4, 3]: Coronavirus cases detected: 52 cases

(Not Population-size adjusted)

====

Denmark – March 4, 4]: Coronavirus cases detected: 14 cases

Population-size adjusted: 25

====

Finland – March 4, 5]: Coronavirus cases detected: 7 cases

Population-size adjusted: 13

====

So when this awful pandemi is over, I think it is important to study all aspects of what happened in each country before one draws firm conclusions. And LEARN from the good stuff, and do more of that! :-)

Sources:

1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/iceland/

2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/norway/

3] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

4] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/

5] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/finland/

refurb• 6 years ago

South Korea has a pretty big biotech industry considering it's size. Samsung has a biotech division as an example.

So they have the know how, and it's just a matter of effort and time to execute.

pnw_hazor3• 6 years ago

"Korean officials enacted a key reform, allowing the government to give near-instantaneous approval to testing systems in an emergency. Within weeks of the current outbreak in Wuhan, China, four Korean companies had manufactured tests from a World Health Organization recipe and, as a result, the country quickly had a system that could assess 10,000 people a day."

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-co...

leesec• 6 years ago

Before the virus affected anyone in Korea the president brought together many heads of industry, and ramped up masks/testing/essential item production.

BurningFrog6• 6 years ago

Meanwhile, the US still has very little testing capacity, with no signs of if and when that will change.

One problem with the death of journalism is that no one is even reporting on this.

SpicyLemonZest10• 6 years ago

Lots of people are reporting on this - I'm not sure where you're looking that you're missing it.

BurningFrog6• 6 years ago

It's entirely possible I have missed something, and I'd love some links!

I'm especially looking for reporting on why it's so slow, what the bottlenecks are, and who's responsible.

Even if there is some good reporting out there, I think this should me one of the main news items in a healthy society.

I have seen reporting on the bungling of the initial testing rollout, like this one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/contamination-...

matwood2• 6 years ago

On a per capita basis yes, but the US has done more tests than any other country. Once the US doubles testing capacity again it will be on par with other large countries.

socialdemocrat3• 6 years ago

I guess after their bandits have stolen testing kids destined to other countries just like the bribed people with suitcases of dollars get masks enroute to various European countries.

I am hoping for the best for the US, but I am quite offended by how the US is scrambling to undo its own mistakes by steamrolling everybody else.

BurningFrog6• 6 years ago

Per capita is all that matters.

cpitman• 6 years ago

What this effectively means though is that we are still tightly scoping who can get tested in the US. My mom is a primary care provider in the DC suburbs, and their hospital system is still limiting tests to medical providers and first responders. People who "obviously" have Covid-19 are just treated, and mild cases are sent home without testing.

symplee• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#Virus_testing...

Shows the following stats:

  Country--------Date-----Tests-------Positive----%-------Tests/mil ppl----Positive/mil ppl
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  United States--18 Apr---3,700,388---720,747-----19.5----11,273-----------2,196
  Russia---------19 Apr---1,949,813---42,853------2.2-----13,287-----------292
  Germany--------15 Apr---1,728,357---132,766-----7.7-----20,786-----------1,597
  Italy----------19 Apr---1,356,541---178,972-----13.2----22,474-----------2,965
  Spain----------13 Apr---930,230-----169,496-----18.2----19,905-----------3,627

grey-area3• 6 years ago

The US was disastrous at testing initially, but now they are doing a lot of tests (several million). Unfortunately given the stage they are at (infections widespread, still no national lockdown, some states opening up again because they think it's all over), it's too late for test and trace.

heartbreak2• 6 years ago

some states opening up again because they think it's all over

This is unequivocally not why some states are preparing to relax the so-called "safer at home" orders. Waiting until "it's all over" was not the goal of safer-at-home. Flattening the curve in order to prevent an immediately overwhelmed healthcare system was the goal. In multiple US states, the curve is acceptably flattened (or is expected to be in the next few weeks), and hospitals have plenty of available capacity. Those states are going to continue encouraging physical distancing, good hygiene, etc. while allowing closed non-essential businesses to resume limited operations.

CathedralBorrow2• 6 years ago

I've been watching quite a lot of US mainstream media these days and I can confirm that this is not true.

For all of MSNBC's faults, their anchors have been repeating testing like a broken record. They even mention how much they sound like a broken record but that testing is simply the most important thing in reopening, and that the US is doing very little of it.

BurningFrog6• 6 years ago

Do they have an analysis of why testing isn't ramping up?

pcr9103034• 6 years ago

Very surprised to find out country (city) in HN's top page!

For people who are interested in current Korea's situation:

There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday. The number of new cases have been consistently falling since April 14th. 'Intense social distancing' was stopped yesterday (April 19th), and the Korean government is planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May 5th.

Schools are planned to open on May 6th, and the ban of churches, bars, etc. are expected to be dropped in the following days (probably tomorrow).

The KCDC is saying that to drop the 'social distancing', there should consistently have less than 30 cases (which is true for a week) and cases which infection routes are unknown should be less than 5% of all new cases. (It was about 5%~10% when it was announced, and AFAIK it's now true.)

There's still some anxiety because people started to become dull to the social distancing movement - so people are worrying that new cases might increase.

modernyogihippy• 6 years ago

What about international flights? Are airports in SK still closed? I'm pretty sure they will have to limit traffic into and out of the country despite easing social distancing.

Otherwise, won't there be a new wave of infections when they let 'outsiders' back in from places where the virus is still running rampant?

pcr9103034• 6 years ago

What about international flights? Are airports in SK still closed? I'm pretty sure they will have to limit traffic into and out of the country despite easing social distancing.

Airports in South Korea has never been closed - South Korea has never banned anyone coming & going outside. A quarantine of two weeks became mandatory since April 1th, but South Korea has never closed Airports or has done a lockdown.

Otherwise, won't there be a new wave of infections when they let 'outsiders' back in from places where the virus is still running rampant?

Definitely that's a concern, 5 out of 8 new cases yesterday were people that were infected from foreign countries. However since South Korea has never closed it's airports, people generally think it's controllable(like it always was).

pcr9103034• 6 years ago

There was the election of the National Assembly on April 15th, and it ended in an overwhelming victory for the party of the government. IMHO COVID-19 has shown how the current government is different to the last government that handled MERS - which was impeached (the percentage of supporters have greatly increased during the COVID-19 outbreak).

gdulli• 6 years ago

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 people's opinions about the appropriate level of response become politicized? Have the facts and statistics and science of it all become politicized?

LeoTinnitus• 6 years ago

I think it has more to do with forcing people in there homes cooped up for weeks on end.

pcr9103034• 6 years ago

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?

People are generally agreeing that it's a good idea to wait b.c. they also think that there's still the possibility that a new wave of outbreak can happen.

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?

The policy of dropping the 'social distancing' was decided by the KCDC (consistently have less than 30 cases / cases which infection routes are unknown should be less than 5% of all new cases) on April 12th when the count has dropped less than 30 for the first time.

The government is still saying that if a new outbreak happens within the next two weeks, the day might be pushed back. It's still very elastic.

Have people's opinions about the appropriate level of response become politicized? Have the facts and statistics and science of it all become politicized?

It's only targeting the people of Seoul, but 97% of all people agreed that the 'social distancing' policy should be dropped sometime soon, but 64% also agreed that April 19th was too fast - hence the May 5th decision.

yongjik3• 6 years ago

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 enough - somehow they're very angry about not blocking visitors from China. (Many conservatives have a strong pro-America, anti-China sentiment, and frequently accuse the president of being the opposite.)

tomxor• 6 years ago

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%

lm28469• 6 years ago

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/

snambi• 6 years ago

How does testing prevent the disease? Also, if someone tests -ve, is that mean he/she is immune to the disease?

vanderburgt• 6 years ago

In this NPR podcast they expand on the methodology applied in S-Korea: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/837905422/the-coronavirus-gui...

aaron695• 6 years ago

show mass testing success

And public masks, good contact tracking, and they say gloves but hand PPE, like alcohol, also I assume a good isolation system that doesn't scare people but seen no reports on this.

Investing on making testing to be cheap and quick has however been something people missed, compared to pie in the sky things like vaccines.

Also compared to masks which are obvious but have been religiously attacked in the West.

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

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