9 ms·

As a South Korean citizen it is jarring that other countries including the US and Japan isn't really trying to test people. Japan has people that died due to CO

As a South Korean citizen it is jarring that other countries including the US and Japan isn't really trying to test people. Japan has people that died due to COVID-19 and they don't know how it was spread - the US didn't even test everyone that came from Diamond Princess! Why aren't those countries tracking down how the viruses are being spread? I don't like conspiracy theories, but seriously it looks like they are trying to lessen the numbers on the paper instead of really trying to find the patients. Compare the numbers that the countries are testing[0], US is less than a thousand and Japan is about 1300. Edit: Just for people who are curious in how things are working in South Korea, we test everyone who has: pneumonia symptoms, or has been in the same place with already discovered patients for free - and anyone who is concerned can test with about $100 - which is refunded if one turns out to be positive. We track every COVID-19 patient's routes and test everyone who was in the same place; which means that the government (mostly) knows exactly how the virus is being spread. Based on data that was announced 10 hours ago[1] (we announce data and roadmap twice every day), we have tested 66,652 people with 1,766 cases found, and currently 25,568 tests are on-going. 1,727 people are being quarantined, and 26 people have fully recovered from COVID-19. Second Edit: Okay, I'm not really skilled in English; if this felt like bragging how South Korea is well handling this situation, that is not my intent - we have a lot of complaints of how the government should handle this. My intent was asking why the US/Japan is not doing at least this much, considering that both countries are much powerful & richer than Korea. Both countries are basically the Korea's wannabe-countries; and everybody here is pretty shocked (literally - there is a lot of news/SNS posts/internet memes on how Japan/US is handling the situation) that they aren't doing well. [0] https://i.imgur.com/BAROczt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/BAROczt.jpg [1] http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?brdId=&brdGubun=&dataGubun=&ncvContSeq=353203&contSeq=353203&board_id=&gubun=ALL http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?brdId=&brdGubun=&data... (Korean, sorry :-()

1-6 7y ago
Get off your high horse. South Korea is doing damage control after Pres. Mun Jaein failed to put stops on people flowing in from China. Handing out masks and doing drive-in clinics are just a publicity stunt in S.Korea to look like they're controlling the spread. The last thing Korea wants to do is look medically sloppy for their plastic surgeons. Don't just give me numbers, give me info how those numbers were acquired. The truth is, no nation has a good answer to this new virus.
- pcr910303 7y ago
  > The truth is, no nation has a good answer to this new virus. Yeah, that's true. Nobody is doing well, and South Korea is also having an outbreak as well. > Get off your high horse. I'm not here to brag about my country, I have enough problems with the current government here. What I'm asking is the reason why the US and Japan gov is doing nothing. > Pres. Mun Jaein failed to put stops on people flowing in from China AFAIK, Korea and Japan boyh banned people from coming from the Wuhan-district; they didn't ban everyone from China - which makes the three countries the same level. Also, AFAIK no Chinese people occurred secondary infection, every infection case was from a Korean citizen that came from China - which means blocking the Chinese wouldn't have helped. > Handing out masks and doing drive-in clinics are just a publicity stunt in S.Korea to look like they're controlling the spread. So, you think masks/fast tests are ineffective and they can't help controlling the spread? > Don't just give me numbers, give me info how those numbers were acquired. What info do you think isn't provided yet? Edit: Got feedback that the US did ban every Chinese (not just from Wuhan), so removed the inaccurate mention.
  - qsz13 7y ago
    US did ban all non-US citizens that have traveled to China in the past 14 days, not just Wuhan-district.
    - pcr910303 7y ago
      Thanks for the info, edited.
  - at-fates-hands 7y ago
    >> AFAIK no Chinese people occurred secondary infection I've seen reports this has happened, but the medical reporting is saying the person(s) may not have completely recovered before showing signs of the infection again. I saw two interviews with doctors who related the infection has ups and downs and while someone may have been feeling better - they might have thought they were over it, when in fact, they really weren't. The reporting on this is all over the map and most of the stuff I've read is pretty tentative in what they actually know and can document as fact.
hadtodoit 7y ago
The US did quarantine and test arrivals from Diamond Princess. Those who showed no symptoms have been sent home afaik and are under self-quarantine for a couple weeks. It is ironic that South Koreans would be worried about Americans and Japanese given the state of corona in SK.
- pcr910303 7y ago
  > The US did quarantine and test arrivals from Diamond Princess. Those who showed no symptoms have been sent home afaik and are under self-quarantine for a couple weeks. Hmm, what we heard was that the US only tested people who had symptoms, and people who didn’t wasn’t under quarantine. Looks like people thinks that self-quarantine disqualified as quarantine; they were worried that people can spread the virus while getting to their homes. Maybe this probably isn’t that much a big problem in US compared to Korea where public transport is less used?
  - at-fates-hands 7y ago
    > Hmm, what we heard was that the US only tested people who had symptoms. Which is a crap shoot to begin with since the symptoms are fever, coughing and shortness of breath. A lot of the original patients were misdiagnosed as just having pneumonia since it has the same symptoms. There's still a TON of misinformation out there as well. Just like in the Times today where they said in one sentence: Yet the patient tested positive, and may be the first person to be infected through community spread in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. So then, they don't know where he got it then? Wow, that must be serious, right? But wait, this is the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH: C.D.C. officials said it was possible the patient was exposed to a returning traveler who was infected. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/health/coronavirus-testing-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/health/coronavirus-testin... They first say its the first patient who was infected through community spread, then back off the very next sentence to say its actually possible he was infected by someone else? I'm not sure how this type of reporting is helping anything, other than by spreading fear, which during an epidemic is exactly what you don't want.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>As a South Korean citizen it is jarring that other countries including the US and Japan isn't really trying to test people. It's apparently quite expensive here. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, while one reported cost [0] for the test is: >$3,270 two weeks after his test. He will be responsible for $1,400 of that bill. That's almost 10% of my annual gross before insurance and I have almost 14 years at my job. For someone working a minimum wage job that's more than 11 week's gross income. I imagine they are limiting the number of tests on people that could have any number of other things and waiting for symptoms to strongly point towards the virus due to the simple fact that the tests cost so much. If a patient can't pay, whatever hospital has to carry that cost for potentially years before the patient can repay them (or not get paid at all if it pushes someone to bankruptcy). Until the government sets aside money to subsidize the tests, I imagine the testing rates will remain low. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-test-medical-bill-china-us-miami-osmel-martinez-azcue-a9358146.html?amp&utm_source=reddit.com https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...
- pcr910303 7y ago
  Hmm, I’m not really familiar with US’s medical system... so some questions: * Does that mean someone who gets minimum wage (which probably doesn’t have an additional health insurance except for a default one) needs to pay for $1400 to test? (If true, that’s insane - why does the government only take cares of $1700 and not something like $3000?) * Does people who come from Wuhan/other places where COVID-19 is spreading (lets say an american that comes from Daegu - the district with the most patients in Korea) also have to pay the high price to be tested?
  - magduf 7y ago
    The US medical system is a complete disaster. Basically, the government doesn't pay for anything; only private insurers do. And they try to avoid paying for as much as they can get away with. On top of that, the actual cost of care is far, far higher than in other developed nations for the same procedures, due to many systemic problems.
cmurf 7y ago
It's a kakistocracy. The conspiracy is the spread of incompetency to paper over the mental illness of a malignant narcissist. It is better that the VPOTUS is taking charge of this, he's one of the few senior officials who isn't temporary, acting, unconfirmed, or insane. But conveniently, if everything goes to hell, the narcissist has someone to shift the blame to. And the only reason why someone accused you of bragging is classic "whataboutism" to deflect from your question, you can just ignore that nonsense. By the way, at least SK successfully impeached and removed its corrupt president from office. It's called taking responsibility and keeping power with the people. In the U.S. we're papering over incompetency, corruption, and mental illness as much as possible. What will be the CDC version of Clownstick's NOAA Sharpie incident? I'm supremely confident there will be an equivalent of ordering scientists to lie to the American public, because that's what he does. It isn't a conspiracy, it's incompetency. And it is contagious. Defending incompetency is itself incompetent. Edit: Oh look it's already happening. U.S. health officials can't make their own statements on the progression of Coronavirus, they have to clear their statements with Pence first. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronavirus-pence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronaviru...
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't go back to old habits of breaking the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Broken_Hippo 7y ago
Don't the costs get even worse if you are positive - or actually, higher while you wait for results? I mean, you are supposed to self-quarantine while waiting, which means no pay for that period. If you are positive after the result, there is more quarantine. More time without pay. You can let the bill go to collections if they don't require upfront payment, but few can go 2-6 weeks without pay at all. People need to eat.
- petschge 7y ago
  In civilized countries you are still payed if you are ordered into medically necessary quarantine. And you can not be fired for it either.
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    Sure. But this is the US we are talking about.
cm2012 7y ago
My wife's grandparents are in Korea so I'm so happy they're taking this seriously. Her grandma smokes a lot and already has a bad cough, so I feel like she'd be particularly vulnerable.
ravenstine 7y ago
It's instances like this that reveal that the system is a joke. I don't know how people can witness the incompetence of entire nations and then have faith that the government will do the right thing given more money and more responsibility.
surge 7y ago
They're worried about false negatives, if you test someone before they're showing severe symptoms, its best to go ahead and quarantine them, but we've seen to many cases where we clear people as negative and turns out they had it the whole time. The viral load needs to be high enough for the test to work.
- nomel 7y ago
  > They're worried about false negatives, Could you explain this logic a little more? Unless the false negative is something very high (do we know what it is?), I don't understand why identifying none is better than identifying some some, especially with an exponential spread.
  - dwild 7y ago
    He said this: > its best to go ahead and quarantine them, In an ideal world, you wouldn't let them go. A test only allow to send people out of a quarantine.
rconti 7y ago
That's not a very good conspiracy theory, because ultimately more people will get infected and the numbers will be worse because of "lessening the numbers on paper".
- fierro 7y ago
  not cool to passive aggressively "quote" a grammatically incorrect comment clearly made by an ESL commenter
  - rconti 7y ago
    It wasn't passive aggressive. And the issue was not a grammatical error, it was a logical error that I don't believe the governments in question would make. I was pointing out that a conspiracy that will obviously collapse under its own weight as infections obviously increase is not a good conspiracy. (not to insult the theory, just the premise such a theory would describe). Countries deliberately underreporting infections early on simply doesn't make sense except perhaps for China, before it spread beyond its borders, hoping to keep a lid on things. Now that it's starting to spread in other countries, it's too late to pretend like it won't continue to get at least somewhat larger. Any numbers you falsify today will look bad tomorrow, clearly. Which is what China found out. Which is why I don't think such a conspiracy theory holds water.
chapium 7y ago
Conspiracy makes zero sense, what would be accomplished? I'm going with a large bureaucracy reacting slowly, which is also hampered by being staffed according to political alignment rather than by the best candidates.
- p1esk 7y ago
  Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity - Hanlon’s razor
- throw44342 7y ago
  Perhaps they want to save face? Elections and the Olympics are coming up.
spyckie2 7y ago
My recommendation is don't create conspiracy theories when the easiest explanation is incompetence. You'd be surprised - even though most businesses are fast at reacting to global events and responding accordingly, the US government is notoriously slow. The US hasn't faced or reacted to a serious pandemic before (the swine flu in 2009 was largely considered part of flu season).
- ergothus 7y ago
  > even though most businesses are fast at reacting to global events and responding accordingly Citation needed. I wont declare the govt to respond quickly, but the incentives, experiences, and expertise at companies dont tell me they are likely to respond in the best way. Some, certainly. Many? Maybe. Most? Prove it.
  - spyckie2 7y ago
    Sorry, meant to convey an anecdotal tone, not a factual one. I won't modify the original but when I wrote it I was thinking about the stock market's quick reaction.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      The stock market is not a business lol.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lifthrasiir 7y ago
As a fellow South Korean, I should point out that the case of SK is very unique and probably can't be reproduced. 1. SK used to be under a dictatorship (until 1987 democratization) and as a result its administrative power is still far-reaching. When the Shincheonji (SCJ hereafter) church in Daegu was revealed to be a very problematic cohort, essentially every SCJ follower in Daegu was contacted for check-up, to the point that some hiding SCJ follower was tracked via police power (!). Not that SCJ's behavior is acceptable, but SK government has too much information to track individuals when deemed necessary. It is really a lucky coincidence that the current government doesn't try to do too much bad thing with that power. 2. Unlike other countries, many, if not most, infections in SK can be readily tracked to a single cohort (SCJ followers) and that makes the containment look still viable. Okay, I actually disagree as the prevalent (and secretive) nature of the SCJ makes the containment impossible at this stage. I believe the SK government knows that too but continues the containment as a last resort (that is, better than not trying at all). Combined with strong administrative power and pretty stable diagnostic capacity, this "last" resort can be extended much further. It is not necessarily a bad thing though because a big pile of data resulting from lots of tests will be useful later anyway. 3. There is no other incentive for countries to test every (pseudo)patient. It is now clear that only some---mostly already vulnerable---COVID-19 patients develop severe symptoms and most can be recovered without too much hassle. Sending every patient to the hospital is a significant burden to the domestic medical system and eventually only severe patients would have to be sent. Having this information, countries can skip the investigative phase (in this case, thankfully done by China and SK) and simply execute the eventual strategy. The eventual strategy also has a side effect of the smaller number of reported patients. It would be a conspiracy theory that this is a motivating factor for most other countries, but it is compelling as a side effect of what they have to eventually do anyway. WHO had to accept Japan's absurd claim that the "international conveyance" is not a part of Japan because they needed Japan to at least report proper numbers. I don't think Japan is in the unique position in this regard. Even SK would be doing the same unless SK is between two highly impacted countries...

1-6 7y ago

Get off your high horse. South Korea is doing damage control after Pres. Mun Jaein failed to put stops on people flowing in from China. Handing out masks and doing drive-in clinics are just a publicity stunt in S.Korea to look like they're controlling the spread. The last thing Korea wants to do is look medically sloppy for their plastic surgeons. Don't just give me numbers, give me info how those numbers were acquired. The truth is, no nation has a good answer to this new virus.

pcr910303 7y ago
> The truth is, no nation has a good answer to this new virus. Yeah, that's true. Nobody is doing well, and South Korea is also having an outbreak as well. > Get off your high horse. I'm not here to brag about my country, I have enough problems with the current government here. What I'm asking is the reason why the US and Japan gov is doing nothing. > Pres. Mun Jaein failed to put stops on people flowing in from China AFAIK, Korea and Japan boyh banned people from coming from the Wuhan-district; they didn't ban everyone from China - which makes the three countries the same level. Also, AFAIK no Chinese people occurred secondary infection, every infection case was from a Korean citizen that came from China - which means blocking the Chinese wouldn't have helped. > Handing out masks and doing drive-in clinics are just a publicity stunt in S.Korea to look like they're controlling the spread. So, you think masks/fast tests are ineffective and they can't help controlling the spread? > Don't just give me numbers, give me info how those numbers were acquired. What info do you think isn't provided yet? Edit: Got feedback that the US did ban every Chinese (not just from Wuhan), so removed the inaccurate mention.
- qsz13 7y ago
  US did ban all non-US citizens that have traveled to China in the past 14 days, not just Wuhan-district.
  - pcr910303 7y ago
    Thanks for the info, edited.
- at-fates-hands 7y ago
  >> AFAIK no Chinese people occurred secondary infection I've seen reports this has happened, but the medical reporting is saying the person(s) may not have completely recovered before showing signs of the infection again. I saw two interviews with doctors who related the infection has ups and downs and while someone may have been feeling better - they might have thought they were over it, when in fact, they really weren't. The reporting on this is all over the map and most of the stuff I've read is pretty tentative in what they actually know and can document as fact.

hadtodoit 7y ago

The US did quarantine and test arrivals from Diamond Princess. Those who showed no symptoms have been sent home afaik and are under self-quarantine for a couple weeks. It is ironic that South Koreans would be worried about Americans and Japanese given the state of corona in SK.

pcr910303 7y ago
> The US did quarantine and test arrivals from Diamond Princess. Those who showed no symptoms have been sent home afaik and are under self-quarantine for a couple weeks. Hmm, what we heard was that the US only tested people who had symptoms, and people who didn’t wasn’t under quarantine. Looks like people thinks that self-quarantine disqualified as quarantine; they were worried that people can spread the virus while getting to their homes. Maybe this probably isn’t that much a big problem in US compared to Korea where public transport is less used?
- at-fates-hands 7y ago
  > Hmm, what we heard was that the US only tested people who had symptoms. Which is a crap shoot to begin with since the symptoms are fever, coughing and shortness of breath. A lot of the original patients were misdiagnosed as just having pneumonia since it has the same symptoms. There's still a TON of misinformation out there as well. Just like in the Times today where they said in one sentence: Yet the patient tested positive, and may be the first person to be infected through community spread in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. So then, they don't know where he got it then? Wow, that must be serious, right? But wait, this is the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH: C.D.C. officials said it was possible the patient was exposed to a returning traveler who was infected. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/health/coronavirus-testing-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/health/coronavirus-testin... They first say its the first patient who was infected through community spread, then back off the very next sentence to say its actually possible he was infected by someone else? I'm not sure how this type of reporting is helping anything, other than by spreading fear, which during an epidemic is exactly what you don't want.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>As a South Korean citizen it is jarring that other countries including the US and Japan isn't really trying to test people. It's apparently quite expensive here. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, while one reported cost [0] for the test is: >$3,270 two weeks after his test. He will be responsible for $1,400 of that bill. That's almost 10% of my annual gross before insurance and I have almost 14 years at my job. For someone working a minimum wage job that's more than 11 week's gross income. I imagine they are limiting the number of tests on people that could have any number of other things and waiting for symptoms to strongly point towards the virus due to the simple fact that the tests cost so much. If a patient can't pay, whatever hospital has to carry that cost for potentially years before the patient can repay them (or not get paid at all if it pushes someone to bankruptcy). Until the government sets aside money to subsidize the tests, I imagine the testing rates will remain low. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-test-medical-bill-china-us-miami-osmel-martinez-azcue-a9358146.html?amp&utm_source=reddit.com https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...

pcr910303 7y ago
Hmm, I’m not really familiar with US’s medical system... so some questions: * Does that mean someone who gets minimum wage (which probably doesn’t have an additional health insurance except for a default one) needs to pay for $1400 to test? (If true, that’s insane - why does the government only take cares of $1700 and not something like $3000?) * Does people who come from Wuhan/other places where COVID-19 is spreading (lets say an american that comes from Daegu - the district with the most patients in Korea) also have to pay the high price to be tested?
- magduf 7y ago
  The US medical system is a complete disaster. Basically, the government doesn't pay for anything; only private insurers do. And they try to avoid paying for as much as they can get away with. On top of that, the actual cost of care is far, far higher than in other developed nations for the same procedures, due to many systemic problems.

cmurf 7y ago

It's a kakistocracy. The conspiracy is the spread of incompetency to paper over the mental illness of a malignant narcissist. It is better that the VPOTUS is taking charge of this, he's one of the few senior officials who isn't temporary, acting, unconfirmed, or insane. But conveniently, if everything goes to hell, the narcissist has someone to shift the blame to. And the only reason why someone accused you of bragging is classic "whataboutism" to deflect from your question, you can just ignore that nonsense. By the way, at least SK successfully impeached and removed its corrupt president from office. It's called taking responsibility and keeping power with the people. In the U.S. we're papering over incompetency, corruption, and mental illness as much as possible. What will be the CDC version of Clownstick's NOAA Sharpie incident? I'm supremely confident there will be an equivalent of ordering scientists to lie to the American public, because that's what he does. It isn't a conspiracy, it's incompetency. And it is contagious. Defending incompetency is itself incompetent. Edit: Oh look it's already happening. U.S. health officials can't make their own statements on the progression of Coronavirus, they have to clear their statements with Pence first. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronavirus-pence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronaviru...

dang 7y ago
Please don't go back to old habits of breaking the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Broken_Hippo 7y ago

Don't the costs get even worse if you are positive - or actually, higher while you wait for results? I mean, you are supposed to self-quarantine while waiting, which means no pay for that period. If you are positive after the result, there is more quarantine. More time without pay. You can let the bill go to collections if they don't require upfront payment, but few can go 2-6 weeks without pay at all. People need to eat.

petschge 7y ago
In civilized countries you are still payed if you are ordered into medically necessary quarantine. And you can not be fired for it either.
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  Sure. But this is the US we are talking about.

cm2012 7y ago

My wife's grandparents are in Korea so I'm so happy they're taking this seriously. Her grandma smokes a lot and already has a bad cough, so I feel like she'd be particularly vulnerable.

ravenstine 7y ago

It's instances like this that reveal that the system is a joke. I don't know how people can witness the incompetence of entire nations and then have faith that the government will do the right thing given more money and more responsibility.

surge 7y ago

They're worried about false negatives, if you test someone before they're showing severe symptoms, its best to go ahead and quarantine them, but we've seen to many cases where we clear people as negative and turns out they had it the whole time. The viral load needs to be high enough for the test to work.

nomel 7y ago
> They're worried about false negatives, Could you explain this logic a little more? Unless the false negative is something very high (do we know what it is?), I don't understand why identifying none is better than identifying some some, especially with an exponential spread.
- dwild 7y ago
  He said this: > its best to go ahead and quarantine them, In an ideal world, you wouldn't let them go. A test only allow to send people out of a quarantine.

rconti 7y ago

That's not a very good conspiracy theory, because ultimately more people will get infected and the numbers will be worse because of "lessening the numbers on paper".

fierro 7y ago
not cool to passive aggressively "quote" a grammatically incorrect comment clearly made by an ESL commenter
- rconti 7y ago
  It wasn't passive aggressive. And the issue was not a grammatical error, it was a logical error that I don't believe the governments in question would make. I was pointing out that a conspiracy that will obviously collapse under its own weight as infections obviously increase is not a good conspiracy. (not to insult the theory, just the premise such a theory would describe). Countries deliberately underreporting infections early on simply doesn't make sense except perhaps for China, before it spread beyond its borders, hoping to keep a lid on things. Now that it's starting to spread in other countries, it's too late to pretend like it won't continue to get at least somewhat larger. Any numbers you falsify today will look bad tomorrow, clearly. Which is what China found out. Which is why I don't think such a conspiracy theory holds water.

chapium 7y ago

Conspiracy makes zero sense, what would be accomplished? I'm going with a large bureaucracy reacting slowly, which is also hampered by being staffed according to political alignment rather than by the best candidates.

p1esk 7y ago
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity - Hanlon’s razor
throw44342 7y ago
Perhaps they want to save face? Elections and the Olympics are coming up.

spyckie2 7y ago

My recommendation is don't create conspiracy theories when the easiest explanation is incompetence. You'd be surprised - even though most businesses are fast at reacting to global events and responding accordingly, the US government is notoriously slow. The US hasn't faced or reacted to a serious pandemic before (the swine flu in 2009 was largely considered part of flu season).

ergothus 7y ago
> even though most businesses are fast at reacting to global events and responding accordingly Citation needed. I wont declare the govt to respond quickly, but the incentives, experiences, and expertise at companies dont tell me they are likely to respond in the best way. Some, certainly. Many? Maybe. Most? Prove it.
- spyckie2 7y ago
  Sorry, meant to convey an anecdotal tone, not a factual one. I won't modify the original but when I wrote it I was thinking about the stock market's quick reaction.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    The stock market is not a business lol.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

lifthrasiir 7y ago

As a fellow South Korean, I should point out that the case of SK is very unique and probably can't be reproduced. 1. SK used to be under a dictatorship (until 1987 democratization) and as a result its administrative power is still far-reaching. When the Shincheonji (SCJ hereafter) church in Daegu was revealed to be a very problematic cohort, essentially every SCJ follower in Daegu was contacted for check-up, to the point that some hiding SCJ follower was tracked via police power (!). Not that SCJ's behavior is acceptable, but SK government has too much information to track individuals when deemed necessary. It is really a lucky coincidence that the current government doesn't try to do too much bad thing with that power. 2. Unlike other countries, many, if not most, infections in SK can be readily tracked to a single cohort (SCJ followers) and that makes the containment look still viable. Okay, I actually disagree as the prevalent (and secretive) nature of the SCJ makes the containment impossible at this stage. I believe the SK government knows that too but continues the containment as a last resort (that is, better than not trying at all). Combined with strong administrative power and pretty stable diagnostic capacity, this "last" resort can be extended much further. It is not necessarily a bad thing though because a big pile of data resulting from lots of tests will be useful later anyway. 3. There is no other incentive for countries to test every (pseudo)patient. It is now clear that only some---mostly already vulnerable---COVID-19 patients develop severe symptoms and most can be recovered without too much hassle. Sending every patient to the hospital is a significant burden to the domestic medical system and eventually only severe patients would have to be sent. Having this information, countries can skip the investigative phase (in this case, thankfully done by China and SK) and simply execute the eventual strategy. The eventual strategy also has a side effect of the smaller number of reported patients. It would be a conspiracy theory that this is a motivating factor for most other countries, but it is compelling as a side effect of what they have to eventually do anyway. WHO had to accept Japan's absurd claim that the "international conveyance" is not a part of Japan because they needed Japan to at least report proper numbers. I don't think Japan is in the unique position in this regard. Even SK would be doing the same unless SK is between two highly impacted countries...