4 ms·

I dunno, how long did it take in South Korea?

calmworm 7y ago
Exactly. It’s already done. Why there isn’t more or even any public outcry regarding the US/FDA refusing to use their testing kits/system is beyond me.
- drak0n1c 7y ago
  For those reading who may be reminded of a recent news story - There was never any refusal of purportedly offered test kits. The WHO confirmed that there was never such an offer or even availability and that the rumor was false. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/16/joe-biden/biden-falsely-says-trump-administration-rejected-w/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/16/joe-biden/...
  - ejstronge 7y ago
    I’m not sure when the WHO reported that it did not have kits to offer, though they did state that many countries develop their own kits. It still makes sense to ask why FDA only allowed CDC to develop a test, vs allowing all extant, validated tests and/or allowing private US tests.
  - calmworm 7y ago
    This is not the same story or question. This is a derailing statement and should be removed.
mehrdadn 7y ago
How were their false negatives? (Edit: typo: just noticed I accidentally wrote false positives instead of false negatives.)
- ajmurmann 7y ago
  Seems not to matter much given that they were able to get their cases under control
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    How have they established this has been due to testing rather than something else?
    - yibg 7y ago
      Maybe instead of looking for excuses we should look at what they have done that can be applied to the US and Europe.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        That's literally what I'm asking. What else did they do besides testing? My understanding is they've been aggressively quarantining people and tracing their contacts via phone GPS tracking, credit card data, and video surveillance [1], which is what really matters. Whereas in the US, they're telling people that testing them wouldn't change the health provider's response, which would be that the patient should self-quarantine if able. Now I don't like this fact, but I don't see why they would be lying about it. And if we assume they're not lying, then testing really would seem pointless. The problem here (as far as I can tell) seems to not be the presence or lack of testing, but the inability and/or unwillingness to provide the same kind of response in the US as in South Korea. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-south-korea-spread-daily-case-count-decreases-over-time-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-south-korea-spre...
        ajmurmann 7y ago
        I think the problem is bigger. We can't do now what SK is doing. They are tracing cases and aggressively quarantining everyone who tests positive. Obviously you cannot do that if you cannot test enough people to get a complete enough picture of the invected population. We also probably now have too many infected to make that strategy workable at this point, even if we had the tests, tracing probably would be the new bottleneck. This great write-up suggests to shut everything down to get cases back to a manageable level and then move to the SK and Singaporean model: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th... Strongly recommend the read.
neuronexmachina 7y ago
Looks like they were on the ball and started developing their tests way back in January, when the virus's gene was first sequenced. I haven't been able to find a detailed timeline of their test production, though: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/south-korea-coronavirus-lessons-quick-easy-tests-monitoring-200319011438619.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/south-korea-coronavir...
nprz 7y ago
South Korea and the US found their first covid positive case on the same day[0]. I can't understand how the richest nation in the world failed this hard at containing and controlling covid. [0]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testin...
- chrisco255 7y ago
  If you look at South Korea's population, they have 1/7th the pop of the United States but yet have 1/3rd the number of deaths. They are doing almost twice as bad as the U.S. in terms of deaths per million people.
  - raphlinus 7y ago
    There are so many ways to slice the raw data, each giving a different sound of how alarming it is. For example, if you look at just Washington state, it has roughly the same number of deaths of South Korea, with one seventh the population.
pnw_hazor 7y ago
SK reformed their pandemic response in 2015. They were ready long before Covid-19 showed up. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-coronavirus-testing-while-the-us-fell-dangerously-behind https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-co...

Exactly. It’s already done. Why there isn’t more or even any public outcry regarding the US/FDA refusing to use their testing kits/system is beyond me.

drak0n1c 7y ago
For those reading who may be reminded of a recent news story - There was never any refusal of purportedly offered test kits. The WHO confirmed that there was never such an offer or even availability and that the rumor was false. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/16/joe-biden/biden-falsely-says-trump-administration-rejected-w/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/16/joe-biden/...
- ejstronge 7y ago
  I’m not sure when the WHO reported that it did not have kits to offer, though they did state that many countries develop their own kits. It still makes sense to ask why FDA only allowed CDC to develop a test, vs allowing all extant, validated tests and/or allowing private US tests.
- calmworm 7y ago
  This is not the same story or question. This is a derailing statement and should be removed.

mehrdadn 7y ago

How were their false negatives? (Edit: typo: just noticed I accidentally wrote false positives instead of false negatives.)

ajmurmann 7y ago
Seems not to matter much given that they were able to get their cases under control
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  How have they established this has been due to testing rather than something else?
  - yibg 7y ago
    Maybe instead of looking for excuses we should look at what they have done that can be applied to the US and Europe.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      That's literally what I'm asking. What else did they do besides testing? My understanding is they've been aggressively quarantining people and tracing their contacts via phone GPS tracking, credit card data, and video surveillance [1], which is what really matters. Whereas in the US, they're telling people that testing them wouldn't change the health provider's response, which would be that the patient should self-quarantine if able. Now I don't like this fact, but I don't see why they would be lying about it. And if we assume they're not lying, then testing really would seem pointless. The problem here (as far as I can tell) seems to not be the presence or lack of testing, but the inability and/or unwillingness to provide the same kind of response in the US as in South Korea. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-south-korea-spread-daily-case-count-decreases-over-time-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-south-korea-spre...
      - ajmurmann 7y ago
        I think the problem is bigger. We can't do now what SK is doing. They are tracing cases and aggressively quarantining everyone who tests positive. Obviously you cannot do that if you cannot test enough people to get a complete enough picture of the invected population. We also probably now have too many infected to make that strategy workable at this point, even if we had the tests, tracing probably would be the new bottleneck. This great write-up suggests to shut everything down to get cases back to a manageable level and then move to the SK and Singaporean model: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th... Strongly recommend the read.

neuronexmachina 7y ago

Looks like they were on the ball and started developing their tests way back in January, when the virus's gene was first sequenced. I haven't been able to find a detailed timeline of their test production, though: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/south-korea-coronavirus-lessons-quick-easy-tests-monitoring-200319011438619.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/south-korea-coronavir...

nprz 7y ago

South Korea and the US found their first covid positive case on the same day[0]. I can't understand how the richest nation in the world failed this hard at containing and controlling covid. [0]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testin...

chrisco255 7y ago
If you look at South Korea's population, they have 1/7th the pop of the United States but yet have 1/3rd the number of deaths. They are doing almost twice as bad as the U.S. in terms of deaths per million people.
- raphlinus 7y ago
  There are so many ways to slice the raw data, each giving a different sound of how alarming it is. For example, if you look at just Washington state, it has roughly the same number of deaths of South Korea, with one seventh the population.

pnw_hazor 7y ago

SK reformed their pandemic response in 2015. They were ready long before Covid-19 showed up. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-coronavirus-testing-while-the-us-fell-dangerously-behind https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-co...