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People can be contagious before symptoms. And that’s also a very different strategy than testing everyone before they go into work each day. You’ll miss the vas

People can be contagious before symptoms. And that’s also a very different strategy than testing everyone before they go into work each day. You’ll miss the vast majority of people if you just test people with symptoms.

zaroth 7y ago
South Korea isn’t testing everyone, every day. Neither is China. So there’s a middle ground here somewhere.
- positr0n 7y ago
  Neither country took the middle ground compared to where the US was when we finally started reacting. South Korea has been aggressively testing, contact chasing, and quarantining from day 1. Look at their number of tests per capita compared to ours. China did indeed shut down the entire economy for months for provinces containing 900M people iirc. In barely hit provinces they have teams of thousands of people doing aggressive testing, contact tracing, and quarantine.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    South Korea has tested 0.5% of their population by some accounts. I mean, yes, that's great, but it's not as widespread as people are implying.
- makomk 7y ago
  The number of new cases in South Korea has started to increase again, and they keep getting new clusters unlinked to any known cases: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-southkorea/south-korea-reports-147-new-coronavirus-cases-concerns-of-cluster-outbreaks-continue-idUKKBN218025 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-southko... I suspect that they're going to have to give up on the tracing and testing approach in the next few weeks.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Daily New Cases isn’t actually trending upward at this point; https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-kore... The article you linked is based on a single day’s new case count.
amluto 7y ago
Stopping every transmission isn’t necessary. We just need some way to drive R < 1. China’s approach (lots of temperature taking, testing everyone with a fever) might not eradicate the disease here, but it could keep it manageable until a vaccine is deployed.
- orasis 7y ago
  Yes, you are the voice of reason! R of .9 is just fine. Pushing R to 0 is unnecessarily costly.

zaroth 7y ago

South Korea isn’t testing everyone, every day. Neither is China. So there’s a middle ground here somewhere.

positr0n 7y ago
Neither country took the middle ground compared to where the US was when we finally started reacting. South Korea has been aggressively testing, contact chasing, and quarantining from day 1. Look at their number of tests per capita compared to ours. China did indeed shut down the entire economy for months for provinces containing 900M people iirc. In barely hit provinces they have teams of thousands of people doing aggressive testing, contact tracing, and quarantine.
- nostromo 7y ago
  South Korea has tested 0.5% of their population by some accounts. I mean, yes, that's great, but it's not as widespread as people are implying.
makomk 7y ago
The number of new cases in South Korea has started to increase again, and they keep getting new clusters unlinked to any known cases: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-southkorea/south-korea-reports-147-new-coronavirus-cases-concerns-of-cluster-outbreaks-continue-idUKKBN218025 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-southko... I suspect that they're going to have to give up on the tracing and testing approach in the next few weeks.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Daily New Cases isn’t actually trending upward at this point; https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-kore... The article you linked is based on a single day’s new case count.

amluto 7y ago

Stopping every transmission isn’t necessary. We just need some way to drive R < 1. China’s approach (lots of temperature taking, testing everyone with a fever) might not eradicate the disease here, but it could keep it manageable until a vaccine is deployed.

orasis 7y ago
Yes, you are the voice of reason! R of .9 is just fine. Pushing R to 0 is unnecessarily costly.