[HN Gopher] Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass test...
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Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success
Author : Reedx
Score : 155 points
Date : 2020-04-18 18:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| FlorianRappl wrote:
| 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.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| But people are still working and their economy is still
| running. This is a HUGE improvement over what we have currently
| in the USA.
| killIdeas wrote:
| The current narrative is that anyone who thinks this
| quarentine is poorly managed is a Trump supporter.
|
| This couldn't be further from the truth.
|
| They have made it political.
| andybak wrote:
| Who's "they"? From an outside perspective (UK) everyone
| seems to be making it political - Trump especially so.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| The coordinated mainstream media. Again, the narrative is
| if you think the US media is partisan you're a Trump
| supporter.
|
| The entire US media ecosystem is owned by only 6
| companies. It used to be hip to distrust the media but
| now it makes you a Trump supporter or conspiracy
| theorist??
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| It's never been easier to spread your message to the
| world, so I would think that the "true", honest, good,
| non-evil, non-coordinated mainstream media would also
| exist in some form. Where are they?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Well, when even some FOX journalists realized that Corona
| was something to take seriously; and Rupert Murdoch
| suddenly cancelled his birthday celebration (no non-
| family guests).
|
| The truth is discovered by following both sides of the
| argument.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| Independent journalism has never been better. Personally
| I don't get my news from "retired" intelligence agents
| and CIA directors, but I guess I'm a conspiracy theorist
| in that way.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Because the indisputable facts are ignored by Trump and
| his supporters.
|
| The US had a small, dedicated team to track animal-based
| infectious diseases (Predict). The Trump administration
| cut funding for it and it was dismantled last year. This
| dismantling was purely for ideological reasons.
|
| South Korea--an extremely market driven and democratic
| nation--also has nationalized health care.
|
| This means nobody has to wonder if they can afford
| testing because the leaders understood what was at stake.
| When Pence was asked this question, it was regarded as a
| political potshot by the journalist and dismissed out of
| hand. I remember this clearly, as I watched this in real-
| time when I was getting a haircut.
|
| South Korea took MERsS and SARS to heart and kept its
| experts in place; allowing SK to assess the danger
| rapidly. They too had their conservative party fight
| tooth and nail to make their administration (liberal)
| look incompetent.
|
| Meanwhile Trump supporters have insisted for months and
| still do. that this was mostly a liberal follow-up to a
| failed impeachment.
|
| The difference between how SK coordinated and how the US
| did not cannot be ignored, and a key difference is that
| the administration in power didn't view their experts
| with suspicion as deep-state or as a money-sink for
| third-world-only issues.
|
| At every step Trump has shown that he does not nominate
| or keep anyone due to their competence in their field.
|
| There's no dispute about these facts. Yet anyone who
| views current events with suspicion only has innuendo to
| back their position.
|
| Therefore, calling out anti-journalists for what they are
| is well-deserved.
| Jeema101 wrote:
| 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.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Clearly we (in the US) need quarantine now when things are
| out of control (and we need adequate PPE equipment for
| those working and financial support for those not working,
| two things that seem to be failing, likely to our extreme
| detriment).
|
| But once the "fire" has burned far enough, we _will_
| testing and contact tracing. And so we need to be getting
| these up and running NOW so they will be ready when the
| "fire" has subsided sufficiently (and hey, we are failing
| on this too).
| rhino369 wrote:
| There doesn't seem to be much of a plan in place to test
| and contact trace in the USA. As you said we need to be
| getting these up in place now. And they should already be
| in place in areas without a lockdown.
|
| But I don't see much evidence we are really trying to do
| that.
|
| I also wonder if its possible to test and trace if its
| every minor city in the country in low numbers. We will
| have a million patient zeros.
| throw_away wrote:
| & 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.
| usaar333 wrote:
| They had really good contact tracing. I'm not even sure how
| much we're attempting this in the US. "Lockdowns" without
| contact tracing is taking the path of "herd immunity for
| essential workers"
| maxerickson wrote:
| A significant part of the lower peak is the earlier
| intervention. There's similar patterns if you compare
| between US states.
| collyw wrote:
| 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.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| 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.
| dazc wrote:
| 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?
| chippy wrote:
| I dont think the guidance ever said an hour, in the UK. it
| did say once a day though. Other places have the hour rule.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/full-guidance-
| on-...
|
| "one form of exercise a day"
| makomk wrote:
| Some reporter asked Matt Hancock how long was a
| reasonable length of exercise, and he suggested half an
| hour to an hour for most people - that's probably where
| it came from. It's not official guidance and certainly
| not a hard and fast rule anyway. From what I recall the
| once a day part is also only a guideline and not actually
| the law in most of the UK (except Wales).
| nradov wrote:
| This video has a good explanation of why the Spanish policy
| is ineffective.
|
| https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-
| joh...
| collyw wrote:
| I didn't watch it, but a couple of the bullet points look
| pretty untrustworthy.
|
| _Covid-19 is a "mild disease" and similar to the flu, and
| it was the novelty of the disease that scared people._
|
| It's a fair bit nastier, certainly in some cases, or the
| hospitals wouldn't be full.
|
| _The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of
| 0.1%_
|
| How can we be sure until we have widespread testing?
|
| _At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden
| will be shown to have already had the disease when mass
| antibody testing becomes available_
|
| Again how can we be sure of this? It all seems very
| speculative.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| We won't be sure of such statistics whether or not we
| have widespread testing. Even for pandemics in the past,
| we just don't know how many people caught them, not even
| a single significant digit. The best we can do is make
| reasoned guesses based on the available evidence.
| collyw wrote:
| That's why I am suspicious of the claims it makes.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Can you summarize or link to the time in the video where it
| is addressed?
| nradov wrote:
| The video is only 15 minutes long. You can just watch it
| in less time than it would take me to summarize.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I recommend watching the whole video, as it is by far the
| clearest argument in favor of the "herd immunity"
| approach I've seen.
|
| The problem with the approach is that it assumes several
| things that, shall we say, there is not yet evidence for.
|
| 1. The disease is relatively mild, certainly less than an
| order of magnitude more fatal than influenza.
|
| 2. It is possible to protect older people and other
| vulnerable populations while the disease spreads through
| most of the rest of society.
|
| 3. After people recover from the infection, there is
| lasting immunity.
|
| If these three things are true (and some other things
| that I'm not going to argue with, including that it will
| take a long time to get a vaccine), then herd immunity is
| a reasonable strategy. But let's look at each in turn.
|
| 1. The death rate in New York City is already 0.1% of the
| entire population. Even under very strict assumptions,
| that we're exactly at the peak of a totally symmetrical
| curve, and that herd immunity results in 50% of the
| population being infected, that results in a lower bound
| of the IFR at 0.4%. Lombardy gives similar results (0.12%
| of the population directly attributed to Covid-19)
|
| 2. Prof. Giesecke admitted that they failed to do so in
| Sweden. It is not clear how this could be done, as
| elderly people do not live in a bubble, but rather have
| lots of workers coming in and out of the facility to help
| take care of them.
|
| 3. SARS-CoV-2 is a new virus, and we just don't have the
| data yet. You can extrapolate from existing
| coronaviruses, which suggest that immunity will last at
| least a year for most people, but there are worrying
| signs (low antibody production, reports of reinfection
| that might or might not be testing artifacts). We just
| don't know.
|
| To me, it was a gamble, and we'll know before long
| whether it pays off. There were some things that bothered
| me about Prof. Giesecke, such as his dismissal of the
| experience of China ("it's a different world"), and other
| things that made a lot of sense. People who want to
| believe will be citing this video as authoritative
| support for their beliefs. If these assumptions turn out
| not to be consistent with evidence, then people will be
| citing this video as a case study in how smart people can
| get stuff horribly wrong.
| glandium wrote:
| About 1. not even counting death, we don't know what the
| long term effects on the lung capacity of the people who
| recovered are. Also, everyone reports "80% of mild
| cases", with a definition of mild that includes things
| that reasonable people would definitely not call mild.
| Essentially, as long as doctors don't tell you you have
| to be on O2, you have a mild case. People with mild cases
| may well end up with damaged lungs.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Every one of the "reports of reinfection" I have seen was
| along the lines of: tested positive continuously for 2
| weeks, then tested negative twice, then tested positive
| again a couple days later. There is no evidence in any of
| the cases I saw that the person was exposed to another
| infected person during that time period.
|
| This should not be called "reinfection" (even though
| there are a bunch of sloppy media headlines calling it
| that) but rather "poor test sensitivity during the last
| stages of the infection".
| collyw wrote:
| There have been a lot of unreliable tests, here in Spain
| at least.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yes, that is the main issue with our strategy in Sweden.
| We failed to keep it away from seniors' homes. The
| strategy seems to have worked just fine otherwise. It
| stopped our hospitals from getting overwhelmed, espcially
| since we managed to contain it in Stockholm for the most
| part. But we did not have resources to test people
| working with the elderly.
| Tarsul wrote:
| it's even worse than not testing enough in care homes:
| "Its advice to the care workers and nurses looking after
| older people such as Bondesson's 69-year-old mother is
| that they should not wear protective masks or use other
| protective equipment unless they are dealing with a
| resident in the home they have reason to suspect is
| infected."
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-
| swede... The responses in the US, UK and Sweden (and
| probably others) are downright criminal and should put
| politicians in jail.
| koyote wrote:
| 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 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.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Sweden has a pretty high number of COVID-19 deaths, so I'm
| not sure if I'd like to follow their model.
| marvin wrote:
| When this is done and everyone is vaccinated, Sweden will
| have at least 5x the number of deaths per capita of their
| neighbors in the west and southwest. And the people of
| Sweden will still have strong support for their
| authorities' decisive response to the epidemic. My
| prediction.
| aga98mtl wrote:
| How would this be possible? Do you believe that less than
| 50% of the population will get it outside of sweden? The
| lockdown cannot continue for a long time. The lockdown is
| just pushing the time frame by a few weeks. In the end
| the same percentage of the population will get it
| everywhere. Locking down is a short term solution to
| stall the contagion while the health system gears up to
| deal with it.
| collyw wrote:
| It is expected that 70% of the population will get
| coronavirus then we will have herd immunity. The lock down
| is about stopping the healthcare systems getting
| overwhelmed (that will cause unnecessary deaths). That's
| the way I understand things.
|
| The same number of deaths will occur are likely to occur in
| the long term unless Sweden's ICU beds get full.
|
| If anyone has an alternative interpretation I am open to
| hearing it.
| varjag wrote:
| The eventual arrival of a vaccine may allow the states
| who are flattening the curve to have lower total amount
| of casualties.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| Or drugs to help the clinical management of the disease
| (which have a chance - not a certainty - to arrive
| earlier than a vaccine).
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| According to healthdata.org (IHME), Sweden has 79 ICU
| beds. If this is true, it seems that slowing the curve
| may not be worth it with so few ICU beds available.
|
| https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden
| botten wrote:
| Sweden has more than 79 ICU beds.
| rhino369 wrote:
| 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.
| zzzcpan wrote:
| This is an ancient understanding though, it ignores aerosol
| transmission. But you are still correct that outside is
| safe, there is absolutely no need to restrict it at all,
| it's confined poorly ventilated spaces that are a problem,
| like almost any building, cars, buses, planes, where the
| virus can concentrate in the air and close range contact
| isn't even needed, just breathing such air is bad enough.
| Wearing a mask is the only thing that helps to not get
| infected in such situations, but doesn't actually help much
| when infected people are wearing them, they still
| contaminate the air with aerosol.
| rhino369 wrote:
| There is no significant evidence that suggests aerosol
| transmission is a statistically significant source of
| transmission.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Some studies suggest covid spreads more by droplets than
| aerosols.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/zeynep/status/1251556084424347
| 649
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/0Kygf
| Robotbeat wrote:
| This is an archive of the above article. Thank you!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| 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.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Do they have an analysis of why testing isn't ramping up?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Lots of people are reporting on this - I'm not sure where
| you're looking that you're missing it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 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.co
| m/investigations/contamination-...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| This article for example was on the CNN front page,
| explaining that the major bottlenecks are test swabs and
| the required reagents and describing a specific FDA action
| which the governor of Ohio thinks would solve his problems.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/health/us-coronavirus-
| sunday/...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| That is better than I've seen.
|
| I'm still missing anything beyond summarizing what
| officials have said.
|
| The Ohio Governor blaming FDA regulations is the closest
| to an analysis in there.
| matwood wrote:
| 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.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Per capita is all that matters.
| matwood wrote:
| Sure. On a per capita basis the US is ahead of SK. To reach
| Germany levels the US will need 8M+ tests. That's a large
| percentage of all tests that have already been done
| worldwide. Unfortunately a large country like the US
| (similar to countries like China and India) is going to run
| into production/technology constraints.
|
| The US dropped many balls and started late with ramping
| testing in particular, but now the ramping is happening and
| just takes time. There was also no way the US could test
| enough people using the original set of tests that simply
| took too long. New technology had to be developed.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _Unfortunately a large country like the US (similar to
| countries like China and India) is going to run into
| production /technology constraints._
|
| A large country has a lot of people to test, but also a
| lot of people to manufacture and perform the tests. So
| that argument doesn't work for me. Especially when we're
| talking about the richest country in the world.
|
| Now, if the test making and executing is done by a single
| centralized organization, it does make some sense. Which
| is why that way of doing things is an anti-pattern.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| 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.
| symplee wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| grey-area wrote:
| 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.
| heartbreak wrote:
| > 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.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| > Waiting until "it's all over" was not the goal of safer-
| at-home.
|
| Someone should tell that to the Italian authorities. At
| least until recently, some public statements seemed to inch
| in that direction ("zero new infections"), although more
| recently they realized that this is hardly possible at this
| point (especially if the estimates of the actual vs
| effective cases are true - talking about at least one order
| of magnitude).
| melling wrote:
| 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."
| ldng wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| 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.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| About half of the reinfected have symptoms.
| bb2018 wrote:
| 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.
| snambi wrote:
| How does testing prevent the disease? Also, if someone tests -ve,
| is that mean he/she is immune to the disease?
| narrator wrote:
| Yup
| zamfi wrote:
| > Bill Gates has literally been preparing the last 20 years to
| make enormous amounts of money on a forced vaccination program
|
| Is this one of those conspiracy theories I've been hearing
| about?
|
| Bill Gates' foundation has been giving away money for decades.
| If you think he's planning to make a bunch of money off "forced
| vaccination", you're stuck in the past -- Gates doesn't care
| about making more money, he cares about getting the respect of
| his peer group & broader society. He's not going to earn
| _money_ off this, he's going to earn _respect_.
|
| That has nothing to do with "forced" vaccination, and
| everything to do with (the perception of) saving lives
| otherwise lost to this virus. If he funds a real vaccine,
| whether forced or not, he'll accomplish his goal.
|
| Please, leave the shortsighted "greed" conspiracy theories off
| this site.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I do not believe any conspiracy theory about Gates and
| vaccines or anything else. But his comment about voting for
| Trump if the other candidate raise his taxes too much doesn't
| support the non greed argument ( he reiterated it after
| saying he was kidding with a straw man argument).
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMMZ1Qzr1ag
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| Your comment only appeals to people who already agree with
| you, therefore it's useless. If you want people to take you
| seriously then you can begin by addressing any of his points
| rather than fixating on the word "money" as if that was his
| entire argument. I can't see his comment because he edited it
| but I'm assuming he provided plenty of evidence such as the
| timing of Event 201 and its focus on coronaviruses. Maybe you
| can begin by convincingly addressing that. If you weren't
| aware of Event 201 before reading my comment then you should
| stop sharing your opinion on this issue anywhere.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| Event 201 as in the pandemic preparedness exercise? And its
| focus on coronaviruses because of SARS and MERS? Is that
| really all it takes to start an entire conspiracy lol
| rmah wrote:
| Oh, it takes far less than that to start a conspiracy
| theory.
| zamfi wrote:
| The original comment didn't mention event 201, it was
| literally just about money and how Gates was doing all this
| to get more of it, but really -- all event 201 shows is
| that a coronavirus-based pandemic disaster was extremely
| predictable, not that it was planned. War games in secret
| rooms help predict outcomes, they don't _cause_ those
| outcomes.
|
| Smart people have been concerned about a viral pandemic of
| this sort for centuries, and yet we were caught unprepared.
| That's the real tragedy.
| twomoretime wrote:
| > he cares about getting the respect of his peer group &
| broader society. He's not going to earn money off this, he's
| going to earn respect.
|
| Whatever the case, you have to admit that you are taking for
| granted that his intentions are benign. There's no rule that
| billionaires have to be benevolent. There's a lot of soft
| power associated with a mandatory vaccination program but
| aside from that, the chipping that he is behind has an
| enormous (and dangerous) surveillance potential.
|
| The man has the clout and resources to potentially install a
| physical, nonremovable beacon into people's bodies, and has
| spoken openly and repeatedly about doing so. How do you know
| he won't get drunk with that kind of power? A single man
| could, say, sway elections if he had access to just the
| location data for 300MM Americans. And there's really no way
| we'd know if the biometric/location data were being siphoned
| for "non government" use...
| zamfi wrote:
| > you have to admit that you are taking for granted that
| his intentions are benign
|
| Huh? I made no such assumption. I simply speculated that he
| was doing this for one form of currency, and not another.
| He may well want to track everybody, I have no idea.
|
| But the whole premise is absurd. Bill Gates doesn't need to
| inject tracking microchips into everyone through a forced
| vaccination program to "sway elections" -- that's Hollywood
| supervillain-level garbage: a massively intricate complex
| plan that achieves so little. It's like inventing a time
| machine just to use it to prove to your friend that he
| really did say that thing he denies he said in 1972.
|
| Bill Gates doesn't need a crazy plan to sway elections --
| he can just buy tons of ads! He can fund others' campaigns!
|
| I don't know Gates' intentions -- but I'm pretty sure he's
| not stupid.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Bill Gates doesn't need a crazy plan to sway elections
| -- he can just buy tons of ads! He can fund others'
| campaigns!
|
| Buying tons of ads seemed to work pretty well for
| Bloomberg.
| twomoretime wrote:
| >But the whole premise is absurd. Bill Gates doesn't need
| to inject tracking microchips into everyone through a
| forced vaccination program to "sway elections" -- that's
| Hollywood supervillain-level garbage: a massively
| intricate complex plan that achieves so little. It's like
| inventing a time machine just to use it to prove to your
| friend that he really did say that thing he denies he
| said in 1972.
|
| That's not what I'm talking about. You're conflating
| vaccination with the id2020 program. Different
| conspiracies. I'm just saying, if you implant an RFID
| digital certificate, you're effectively a walking uuid
| beacon. I'm not saying that's where he's going but the
| technology is there and his foundation is funding
| research into something like an RFID tattoo. Very easy to
| convince the masses that this is a necessary technology
| for safety given the new normal brought about by COVID19.
|
| If I had billions of dollars I'd certainly be tempted to
| play worldbuilder. I very much doubt that he sees the
| masses as people - not out of heartlessness, but out of a
| necessary objectivity. They are statistics.
| zamfi wrote:
| > I'm just saying, if you implant an RFID digital
| certificate, you're effectively a walking uuid beacon.
|
| We already carry beacons in our pockets all the time, and
| the government is already a subpoena away from getting
| that data. What do injected beacons buy Bill Gates
| exactly? Whatever it is, it feels like a ton of effort
| for not a ton of gain, tracking-wise, given that the
| beacons we have already broadcast their location over a
| much larger area.
| bb2018 wrote:
| Perhaps it would indulge the conspiracy theories too much -
| but I'd kinda love to see an actual breakdown of how
| something like this could ever make him money. Think of the
| huge amount of money he has lost from this in the other
| businesses he owns and think of all the money he invested in
| this for decades he could have invested in other lucrative
| industries.
|
| How much would he need from this supposed plan to even
| breakeven? Thirty billion?
| tedunangst wrote:
| That's why it's called a conspiracy theory, not a
| consistency theory.
| toast0 wrote:
| > how something like this could ever make him money.
|
| It's really simple, less death from preventable diseases
| reduces poverty, and increasing the sustainable prices for
| Microsoft products and services. More revenue for Microsoft
| lifts stock price and billg's net worth.
|
| Of course, the math doesn't add up if billg has to spend
| all his money to do it, and not just Microsoft reaps the
| benefits, which is why he's trying to get lots of other
| wealthy people to spend their money similarly --- then
| everyone who benefits can share the cost.
|
| (Mostly toungue in cheek)
| BubRoss wrote:
| These things usually break down with one or two questions
| that the person can't answer. Just like the 5G connection
| nonsense, if you ask how electromagnetic radiation in the
| spectrum that 5G uses has a connection to a virus (the most
| basic question possible) you will just get someone angry
| with you. It's almost fascinating how people can develop
| emotional attachment to something that fails a droplet of
| investigation.
| pcr910303 wrote:
| 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.
| gdulli wrote:
| > 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?
| modernyogihippy wrote:
| 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?
| pcr910303 wrote:
| > 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).
| pcr910303 wrote:
| 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).
| Aretas77 wrote:
| 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?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| 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.
| microcolonel wrote:
| 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.
| colmvp wrote:
| 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.
| clairity wrote:
| what are the arguments against wearing masks on transit?
| i'm no fan of masks, but wearing them on mass transit (of
| any kind) makes sense. lots of random people in a
| relatively small, enclosed, and cramped airspace elevates
| transmission risk materially (as opposed to wearing them
| outside, where it's negligible).
| Benmcdonald__ wrote:
| Won't change as Korea never had a lock down and people were
| always going to cafes/restaurants
| tomxor wrote:
| > 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%
| vanderburgt wrote:
| In this NPR podcast they expand on the methodology applied in
| S-Korea: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/837905422/the-
| coronavirus-gui...
| LordHumungous wrote:
| 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.
| dominotw wrote:
| 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.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| 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.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| 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.
| dominotw wrote:
| 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.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| The US could have ramped up production, but politics and
| regulation prevented it. The CDC and FDA prevented any
| private companies from producing their own tests and in the
| meantime the CDC made their own small batch of tests that
| weren't even accurate. If the president had taken the
| outbreak seriously we could have begun test production
| immediately, which is what South Korea did the moment they
| heard about the outbreak. This is largely due to systems
| put in place during and after the SARS and MERS outbreaks.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Korea has a broad swath of medical manufacturing capacity.
| A large part of the supply chain is already there, so it is
| easier for them to ramp up. You can double or triple output
| just by putting more shifts into the factories. Then you
| start retooling, repurposing to really ramp up.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| 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_hazor wrote:
| 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.
| refurb wrote:
| 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_hazor wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| Before the virus affected anyone in Korea the president brought
| together many heads of industry, and ramped up
| masks/testing/essential item production.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| All rich countries have been able to scale up their testing
| similarly quickly, once they decided it was a national priority
| to do so.
| dominotw wrote:
| then how come all rich countries don't have 'mass testing
| success' like the article claims happened in south korea.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| They took a long time to decide it was a national priority.
| At the point when Korea started heavily ramping up its
| testing program, most Western countries took roughly the
| same approach they took during SARS, where they contact
| traced and tested only the few cases they knew about with
| the expectation that'd be enough.
| dominotw wrote:
| I am unable to find any reliable data that shows the ramp
| up of testing capacity after deciding its a national
| priority by country. What is the basis for 'similarly
| quickly' ?
|
| Sibling comment to your original comment seems to suggest
| US wasn't able to 'similarly quickly' due to lack of
| onsite manufacturing.
|
| Even the article suggests this,
|
| > The country was testing people for the virus at the
| fastest pace in the world
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I can't find the data off the top of my head, but in the
| middle of March the US was able to ramp up from barely 1k
| tests a day to 100k within a week or two. It's my
| understanding that Germany went comparably fast.
| makomk wrote:
| 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...
| narrator wrote:
| 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/
| rhino369 wrote:
| 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.
| varjag wrote:
| > China: 4632 deaths, 77k recovered
|
| There are zero deaths and zero cases in Turkmenistan, must
| have gotten their treatment protocols tight.
| yfzhou wrote:
| 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.
| usaar333 wrote:
| 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.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _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.
| narrator wrote:
| The thing I don't get is this explains how people didn't
| get sick. What it doesn't explain is how so many got better
| after getting sick compared to other countries.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The fatality rate of countries with active epidemics is
| skewed by a variety of factors:
|
| - With exponential growth, most cases will new and so not
| become potentially lethal. This can lower the observed
| fatality rate (I think this explained Germany's original
| "great" rate which doesn't look at great any more).
|
| - With cases rising quickly, most countries don't have
| infrastructure or the time to increase testing (US
| testing is failing on multiple levels but even France,
| Spain and Italy are just overwhelmed with the sick and
| testing is less important).
|
| - With cases rising quickly, the fatality rate increases
| as hospitals are no longer able to provide adequate care.
|
| - Different countries have different age-profiles and the
| disease hits the elderly harder (but once hospitals break
| down, the odds for the young decrease).
|
| South Korea's fatality rate is similar to the ostensible
| fatality rate of Turkey and Luxembourg but likely for
| different rate. We probably won't have a complete idea
| what's happened until these events are done.
| seunosewa wrote:
| Their health system didn't get overwhelmed. Thus they
| could provide every patient with the best care.
| ajross wrote:
| 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.
| makomk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That is very labor intensive and isn't sustainable. People
| will get complacent fast.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| It is a lot more sustainable than the alternatives.
| [deleted]
| usaar333 wrote:
| > 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.
| ajross wrote:
| > Iceland was able to do it
|
| Iceland's per capita new infection rate peaked higher than
| basically any nation in the world, and while it's dropping
| comparatively rapidly it hasn't reached a stable baseline
| yet. I don't think this is a good example at all.
|
| While it's clear their _lockdown_ "worked" (in the sense of
| recovering them from a disastrous peak), I think it's still
| very much an open question as to whether their testing
| capacity will sustain this success.
| usaar333 wrote:
| case rate, not infection rate. They are one of the few
| nations in the world that are credibly even close to
| catching half their infections. The US is probably
| missing 90% (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020
| .04.06.20055582v...)
|
| To that point, their death rate is lower than the Bay
| Area.
|
| To a second point, Iceland is under a very weak lockdown,
| if you can even call it that. Their elementary schools
| remain open.
| cma wrote:
| Through mass testing they already avoided one nursing
| home hit, and haven't had a single hit. If they do, their
| fatality rate could quadruple because of how small the
| numbers are we are looking at there.
| teapourer wrote:
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| 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?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _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?
| randomsearch wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| joe_the_user wrote:
| "I think it's too early to judge success."
|
| Uh _really_?
|
| South Korea suppressed an epidemic and strengthened the
| tools they had for suppressing epidemics, maintaining
| economic strength and social cohesion.
|
| How are they not best position in the stage of _managing_
| the epidemic (the appropriate term used by the ggp).
|
| Oh, I know one really bad answer people are ready with -
| they didn't let the virus burn through their population to
| acquire herd immunity. The degree to which any other
| approach is going to leave a society ready to deal with new
| waves of this seems really, really low. Certainly, current
| US events aren't preparing for any future crisis.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Japan apparently has a much lower death rate and number of
| infections too.
|
| Should we trust those numbers? I'm going to say no.
| colmvp wrote:
| 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.
| noobermin wrote:
| 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.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > but no one shut down travel from Europe during March.
| Biggest mistake ever
|
| The USA did shut their border to a lot of Europe in early
| March. But at the time the WHO opposed border closure.
| RobAtticus wrote:
| Kind of - it closed the borders for Europeans traveling
| to the US, but did little to manage Americans returning
| from abroad. Given March is winter in the US (thus less
| tourism), I would imagine the majority of Europe -> US
| traffic at the time is Americans returning home, that's a
| rather weak closure.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Same thing is true for Japan. Everything seems fine for a
| while, and suddenly the numbers explode.
| seunosewa wrote:
| The calm before the storm happens in countries that are not
| testing people adequately. The numbers seem to explode when
| they really start testing.
|
| South Korea is still testing aggressively. Recently they
| even started re-testing recovered patients. Those who
| tested positive had their contacts traced and tested too.
| As long as they remain vigilant, they will not see another
| big explosion. They seem to have the right attitude.
|
| I'm waiting to see if there will be a little outbreak as a
| result of the elections they held recently.
| yongjik wrote:
| Couldn't find a better page, but according to a past
| version of wikipedia table[1], as of Mar 31, Japan had
| tested 32,497 people. The US had tested 1,108,500; South
| Korea, 410,564.
|
| A lot of people were perplexed by Japan's lack of testing.
| Seems like Japan's strategy (whatever it was) didn't work
| out in the end.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:COV
| ID-19...
| seunosewa wrote:
| Under testing always fails. You can't defeat an invisible
| enemy.
| Chunklight wrote:
| Mysteriously right after the Olympics were postponed.
| op03 wrote:
| 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.
| ImaCake wrote:
| > ~50% wont even show any symptoms
|
| It is closer to 20% A lot of articles stating more are mis-
| interpreting those numbers from prospective studies. It is
| possible that the authors of such studies would downplay
| false positives as well.
| mattmanser wrote:
| I think they don't know yet, even the US were saying it
| might be 25-50% a couple of days ago. For example the
| testing of the aircraft carrier, one of the few cases of
| total population testing, showed 60% asymptomatic cases
| but had a young population, and it's not clear from the
| information we've heard publically if some of those will
| develop symptoms later.
|
| So at the moment no-one really knows for certain.
| Lewton wrote:
| 60% asymptomatic at the time of testing
|
| Most of them will eventually begin showing symptoms
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| 50% keeps recurring because multiple mass testing efforts
| found that half of tested people were asymptomatic.
| However, that is mostly a function of a long incubation
| period. A significant portion of the infected developed
| symptoms later.
| Lewton wrote:
| Iceland did random sampling and while it showed 50%
| asymptomatic at the time of testing, only 15% ended up not
| showing symptoms at all
| Nokinside wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You can still trade with the rest of the world - people are
| still doing that now, in fact, with international trade
| being universally exempted from travel bans. But I can't
| imagine tourism or business travel being compatible with
| the level of quarantine required to keep an endemic
| respiratory virus eradicated within your borders.
| Nokinside wrote:
| That's true but it's very hard to keep the system 100%
| tight. Governments can't prevent human trade or drug trade
| either.
|
| Just something like 1 infected entering per day or week
| means that you must keep up suppressing and tracing.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Sure, but keeping up testing, contact tracing and other
| South Korea-style suppression measures is no big deal
| compared to the severe restrictions most other countries
| have had to implement. It's very troubling to shut down
| the economy for a whole year, but it's certainly
| plausible to sustain _those_ measures until a vaccine is
| ready.
| yfzhou wrote:
| China has been doing mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine for
| all foreign arrivals like this: https://twitter.com/nishant
| sharma87/status/12424610259510845...
|
| However, the latest cluster in Heilongjiang involved an
| asymptomatic student returned from USA, completed 14 day
| quarantine, tested negative before and after, but still
| went on to infect her family and neighbors who infected
| more at the hospital. Total confirmed cases in this cluster
| is ~50 right now.
|
| Most of the spread in this case happened because of
| negligence in the hospital thinking coronavirus is
| eradicated there so they didn't take precautions. Coastal
| cities like Shanghai are taking good measures so there
| hasn't been a problem despite it being where most
| international flights land and basically 100% back to work
| for over a month now. The biggest danger is people becoming
| tired of wearing masks and avoiding gatherings over time.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| 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_Henry wrote:
| 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
| BubRoss wrote:
| That says they detected it on floors in hospitals. Does it
| talk about it being on shoes, entering homes and ultimately
| infecting people?
| gedy wrote:
| I'm confused/concerned by this as the US authorities are
| emphasizing that this is a respiratory virus and no need to
| be concerned about food transmission, etc
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The best evidence is that there's no need for the average
| person to be concerned about food transmission. The
| hospital context is very different; transmission routes
| that are normally negligible can start to matter when you
| have 200 people coughing coronavirus into the air.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"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?
| _ph_ wrote:
| Well, first of all, there were no masks to wear. Not even
| enough to properly equip all medical personal. But yes, if
| people would wear masks whenever there is the risk that
| they are sick, be it Covid-19, the flu or just a cold, it
| would be beneficial.
| tpm wrote:
| That didn't stop some Eastern European countries from
| mandating their use in public and an industry quickly
| emerged around that.
| marvin wrote:
| You can make them yourself on a sewing machine, or even
| sewing by hand if you're desperate. My partner and I have
| made ~20 in some of our spare time in the last three
| weeks, for ourselves and our close family and friends.
| It's not high tech.
|
| Didn't even have to go out and buy more materials.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| No one has done a controlled study on this, so no one
| really knows. It ranges from zero to many.
|
| The reason government and medical signaling on the subject
| has been so mixed is that it isn't apparent they are very
| effective, especially the jury rigged cloth masks that
| people are using.
| thowfaraway wrote:
| There are many controlled studies on other respiratory
| disease like the flu, and some on other corona viruses
| like SARS the show high efficacy of masks. If you doubt
| the science, fall back on common sense. A respiratory
| barrier is going to have some value in diminishing the
| ability of a respiratory virus to spread.
|
| https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1
|
| _The reason government and medical signaling on the
| subject has been so mixed is that it isn't apparent they
| are very effective_
|
| The reason signaling has been mixed is because they were
| trying to preserve supply for medical professionals. The
| reason that medical professionals need them is because
| they work.
| smileypete wrote:
| >No one has done a controlled study on this, so no one
| really knows. It ranges from zero to many.
|
| Can't remember seeing any controlled studies on the
| efficacy of social distancing either.
|
| Many of the healthcare professionals in the countries
| that dealt with SARS are calling for universal mask
| wearing. I'd much rather trust their intuition and
| judgement than governments and media outlets passing the
| buck to the WHO.
| danans wrote:
| > Can't remember seeing any controlled studies on the
| efficacy of social distancing either.
|
| No, but we have mountains of evidence from respiratory
| diseases throughout history, including the common cold
| and seasonal flu, that distancing lowers transmission.
|
| It's why people are encouraged to stay home from work
| when they are sick, and why in normal situations, people
| in lines of work where they cannot afford to stay home
| from work get sick more often.
|
| Social distancing is one of the oldest public health
| protocols we have for disease transmission control.
|
| Sure, many old practices for disease prevention amount to
| nothing but old wives tales, but social distancing likely
| isn't one of them.
| pps43 wrote:
| > no one really knows
|
| Healthcare workers wear masks. I'm pretty sure they have
| a pretty good idea whether masks work.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Even basic mask works quite well in stopping infected
| person spreading it further. This isn't some recent
| covid-related revelation, but long known fact. To say it
| for the 1000th time - this doesn't make you magically
| virus-proof, but significantly lowers the infection rate
| of those who have it. On large enough scale, this
| behavior makes significant difference in infection rates.
|
| I have yet to see a single western leader to recommend
| those masks for all the interactions (indoor at least).
| Case point - yesterday I went shopping in fairly large
| supermarket in Switzerland, and there were maybe 5 other
| customers (out of at least 100 in the store during that
| time, probably close to 200 plus all the staff) wearing
| masks, or gloves. People at least often kept their
| distance (not always possible in aisles), but that's
| about it. In a country which has one of most per-capita
| infections globally.
|
| Why? They rely heavily on politicians doing right stuff.
| Mostly it works, but in these times politicians prefer
| keeping economy running (they delayed strong measures
| when things were getting worse than bad in Italy few kms
| from their border due to fear of financial impacts...
| well now they are worse but delayed by few days).
| hilbertseries wrote:
| Los Angeles has mandated you have to wear a face covering
| when going into essential businesses.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| we don't have an aversion to it. Neoliberal governments
| went out of their way to chastise mask wearing because it
| would paint a bad picture as they wanted people to actually
| just die "for the economy".
| stcredzero wrote:
| _I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we
| (western /European countries) didn't have such an aversion
| to wearing face masks_
|
| My wife and I were one of the few people wearing masks at
| the start of the pandemic, before the closing and work from
| home orders came. We were harassed by random people
| shouting at us.
|
| Also, I don't really get the societal penalty for disaster
| preparation. It's completely illogical. Just a few weeks
| before the news was really onboard with the pandemic, a
| woman at my apartment was looking at how many amazon boxes
| I had on my hand cart. I told her, "In times like this, it
| pays to be prepared." She looked at me like I was scum. My
| understanding is that some news outlets were actually
| denigrating disaster preparation at that point.
| mindslight wrote:
| My best theory so far is that when it comes to telling
| people what they themselves need to _do_ (as opposed to
| inactionable general fear), mainstream media narratives
| are based around telling audiences the easy answer that
| they want to hear - eg you don 't have to do anything to
| prepare, and those that do are wrong. Obviously this has
| always been an ongoing quality (eg no need to oppose the
| Iraq war since it's just), but with a public health
| emergency it's front and center.
| neurologic wrote:
| > Also, I don't really get the societal penalty for
| disaster preparation.
|
| It makes a lot of sense: if you're preparing for a
| disaster, you won't go down with everyone else when
| disaster strikes. This creates some feeling of resentment
| which caused people to lash out at you.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| 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.
| misun78 wrote:
| I hope you are not including Cuomo -- the governer at the
| epicenter of the worst hit NY -- in your "list of good
| governers"? This was his quote from early March:
|
| "People are reacting like this is the Ebola virus. This is
| not the Ebola virus. This hysteria that you see, this fear
| that you see, the panic that you see is unwarranted. We
| have dealt with worse viruses. This spreads like the flu,
| but most people will have it and they get on with their
| lives."
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Yeah, he was wrong. But he's changed his tune, and has
| done a decently good job managing the situation.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| He's pretty much right though. It spreads worse than the
| flu and Dr. Ioaniddis recently published a serological
| study showing it seems to have a mortality rate similar
| to the flu. An overwhelming majority of people who get it
| will not die. Ioaniddis et. al. suggests the evidence
| points towards 1~2 out of a thousand mortality rate.
|
| We should not be panicking. We should be mitigating the
| disease based on the evidence at hand.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _He's pretty much right though. It spreads worse than
| the flu_
|
| Err, it spreads much better, several times more than the
| flu.
|
| > _and Dr. Ioaniddis recently published a serological
| study showing it seems to have a mortality rate similar
| to the flu_
|
| Dr. Ioaniddis study was cherry-picked and bogus, much
| like the studies he was famous for criticizing...
| beagle3 wrote:
| [citation needed] about cherry picking. The limits of
| their scheme was acknowledged and discussed in the paper.
| What cherry picking are you referring to that wasn't
| addressed?
| pps43 wrote:
| This paper?
|
| "I think the authors of the above-linked paper owe us all
| an apology. We wasted time and effort discussing this
| paper whose main selling point was some numbers that were
| essentially the product of a statistical error."
|
| https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-
| flaw...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm skeptical whenever I see a teardown like this which
| fails to mention that the offical case counts have all
| the same problems. Maybe we should dismiss this paper -
| but that means committing ourselves to radical skepticism
| about the prevalence, not going back and believing the
| numbers printed in the news.
| corkmask wrote:
| 9 days ago Ioaniddis said
|
| _If I were to make an informed estimate based on the
| limited testing data we have, I would say that covid-19
| will result in fewer than 40,000 deaths this season in
| the USA,_
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| If he's off by 1.5x (IHME model predicts 60k fatalities
| attributed to COVID-19), surely that's miles better than
| the what - 50x predicted at the start (I recall seeing
| 2mil fatalities passed around by Imperial for the US)?
| 40k deaths is a little less than a week of natural deaths
| in the US, for scale.
| coldtea wrote:
| That's with unprecedented social distancing measures -
| the 50x prediction was without...
|
| Ioannides in his mid-March article was predicting
| "10,000" deaths in total in the US, without measures...
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| It's worth putting his actual statement here, so people
| can decide whether you're misrepresenting him.
|
| From his article [1]:
|
| > If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals
| infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population
| -- a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis --
| and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about
| 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000
| deaths.
|
| [1]: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-
| making-a...
|
| He ventured a prediction of the CFR. And then just
| calculates the amount of deaths from a pretty arbitrary
| infected percentage of the population (there's no mention
| of the time scale either). Never does he predict that 1%
| will be infected. He's arbitrarily picking a number to
| illustrate the amount of deaths we'd see, but that all
| depends on how the disease spreads. Oddly enough his
| serology study ends up being somewhat close - instead of
| 1%, they saw 1.80-3.17% (in Santa Clara).
| acqq wrote:
| > Never does he predict that 1% will be infected.
|
| But he uses exactly this in his argument, in the same
| paragraph: "If we had not known about a new virus out
| there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests,
| the number of total deaths due to "influenza-like
| illness" would not seem unusual this year. At most, we
| might have casually noted that flu this season seems to
| be a bit worse than average."
|
| Then later: "Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19
| in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to
| 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 ... along with similar
| catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a
| realistic scenario, or bad science fiction?"
|
| Then he claims that "The most valuable piece of
| information for answering those questions would be to
| know the current prevalence of the infection in a random
| sample of a population"
|
| But I claim he already had, at the moment he wrote that
| article, _much better data than that_ already available:
| specifically, that all the statistics everybody could
| find even in the Wikipedia already gave much more
| information that he claimed has to be obtained by "a
| random sample of a population."
|
| One can evaluate "how random" all already known cases, at
| the time he wrote the article, were. But also one can
| evaluate, if these known cases, even if they weren't
| random, were actually saying more, not less, by the
| nature the numbers were obtained.
|
| And that was exactly the case: time and again, in country
| after country, the statistics included much more people
| than the small randomness based study would include, and
| it gave reasonable estimates about both the speed of the
| spread and percentage of the people affected.
|
| His argument was not based on analyzing already available
| data, but on "not knowing" by *refusing to even look at
| the already available data.
|
| Which is fraudulent, ignorant or both. But there were
| some big names doing exactly the same, exactly at the
| time he published that article. So his article was just
| political, not scientific at all.
| corkmask wrote:
| at what multiplier would you consider being skeptical
| about what he says.
|
| your comparison of the 2 mil which was the worst case
| scenario months ago, and now irrelevant, with 40k which
| was his prediction from 10 days ago is wrong.
| acdha wrote:
| You have to read the study's details, not just the number
| in the headline. The IC report's highest number was
| looking at what would happen if strong countermeasures
| were not taken, and they subsequently were -- it's like
| criticizing the justifications for mandating seatbelts
| because so many fewer people die in car crashes now.
| corkmask wrote:
| that's what I am trying to tell him. comparing his
| prediction a week ago with measures to a prediction a
| month or more ago without measure is pointless.
| coldtea wrote:
| He also predicted about 10,000 deaths in total in his
| mid-March article -- and he even meant that number
| without any special measures like social distancing and
| WFH.
|
| At this point he should stop predicting...
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| Should Imperial close up shop too?
| coldtea wrote:
| No, Imperial gave an estimation of what would happen
| without measures, but there were measures taken. So in
| their case, it's natural that the actual number (with
| measures) would be much less.
|
| Ioannidis' already 4x surpassed prediction was 10K deaths
| without measures.
|
| Given that we have 4x WITH measures, this means we would
| be many times more wrong if we followed his advice and
| didn't take any...
| closeparen wrote:
| Ebola has an average case fatality rate of 50%. This is
| not Ebola.
| Benmcdonald__ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The US will hit 40,000 deaths today.
| dpau wrote:
| and 22 million unemployed
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| For businesses that will probably never return.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| They'll be replaced, but the owners, employees, and loved
| ones who die won't.
| crimsonalucard wrote:
| Why the hell is this voted down? It's true. There is a
| sacrifice that must be made between saving lives and
| saving businesses that is very real.
|
| Ideally we want to save lives but there will be a line
| drawn somewhere where we must open up businesses again.
| collyw wrote:
| I have to agree on this. Just go to any country with a
| poorly functioning economic system, the healthcare
| matches it.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Eventually, but an immense amount of capital (not just in
| a cash sense) that allows those businesses to operate has
| been irreparably destroyed. Rebuilding and bootstrapping
| that again from almost nothing will take years in many
| cases. Businesses don't exist in isolation, some sectors
| are seeing destruction not just of the businesses but the
| entire institutional structure of their ecosystems, which
| is _much_ harder to replace.
|
| There will be second-order effects that people aren't
| considering. In Seattle, for example, all of the builders
| I know are saying multi-family residential construction
| projects have become indefinitely non-viable due to the
| systemic collapse of the business ecosystem they rely on.
| Even if things opened up tomorrow, most of their projects
| will stay dead for the foreseeable future. This will have
| a large impact for housing costs, construction worker
| employment, etc many years beyond the term of the
| lockdown.
|
| I think many people are oblivious to the long-term
| second-order damage that is being inflicted in some
| industries that cannot be fixed on any kind of timeframe
| that matters to ordinary people.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Can we please abandon this trope that economic impacts
| don't have health implications of their own?
|
| > "With the global recession gathering pace, there could
| be hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths in
| 2020", the Secretary-General warned.
|
| > This scenario would effectively reverse progress made
| in reducing infant mortality over the past two to three
| years.
|
| https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1061892
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