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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).

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 6y ago
But people are still working and their economy is still running. This is a HUGE improvement over what we have currently in the USA.
- throw_away 6y ago
  & just looking at the raw data, they seem to have a waaay better solution than we do: https://imgur.com/a/2T0GVoe https://imgur.com/a/2T0GVoe from http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ if anyone wants to compare other stats.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    A significant part of the lower peak is the earlier intervention. There's similar patterns if you compare between US states.
  - usaar333 6y ago
    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"
- killIdeas 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Who's "they"? From an outside perspective (UK) everyone seems to be making it political - Trump especially so.
    - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
  That's because they intervened early with large scale testing, contact tracing, and social distancing. The problem is contact tracing only works when the number of new infections is manageable, though. That's why it's so critical to react early and aggressively. Once it becomes unmanageable, the only solution is mass quarantines until the numbers are manageable again. The best analogy is a fire. If it's just embers, one person can stomp it out. If you wait for it to become a forest fire, then it requires drastic measures.
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
      - greedo 6y ago
        We don't have the political will to do track and trace, nor the trained manpower. We would need roughly 300K people employed doing just this.
collyw 6y ago
I am stuck in my flat in Spain for the 5th week now. Just read they extended it another two, to 8 in total. I am wondering how other countries can be a bit more relaxed (UK and Belgium are allowed out for an our for exercise), or in the case of Sweeden a lot more relaxed, and are still managing to flatten their curves.
- nradov 6y ago
  This video has a good explanation of why the Spanish policy is ineffective. https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-johan-giesecke-shares-lessons-from-sweden/ https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-joh...
  - WillPostForFood 6y ago
    Can you summarize or link to the time in the video where it is addressed?
    - raphlinus 6y ago
      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.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago

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

throw_away 6y ago
& just looking at the raw data, they seem to have a waaay better solution than we do: https://imgur.com/a/2T0GVoe https://imgur.com/a/2T0GVoe from http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ if anyone wants to compare other stats.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  A significant part of the lower peak is the earlier intervention. There's similar patterns if you compare between US states.
- usaar333 6y ago
  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"
killIdeas 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Who's "they"? From an outside perspective (UK) everyone seems to be making it political - Trump especially so.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
That's because they intervened early with large scale testing, contact tracing, and social distancing. The problem is contact tracing only works when the number of new infections is manageable, though. That's why it's so critical to react early and aggressively. Once it becomes unmanageable, the only solution is mass quarantines until the numbers are manageable again. The best analogy is a fire. If it's just embers, one person can stomp it out. If you wait for it to become a forest fire, then it requires drastic measures.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
    - greedo 6y ago
      We don't have the political will to do track and trace, nor the trained manpower. We would need roughly 300K people employed doing just this.

collyw 6y ago

I am stuck in my flat in Spain for the 5th week now. Just read they extended it another two, to 8 in total. I am wondering how other countries can be a bit more relaxed (UK and Belgium are allowed out for an our for exercise), or in the case of Sweeden a lot more relaxed, and are still managing to flatten their curves.

nradov 6y ago
This video has a good explanation of why the Spanish policy is ineffective. https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-johan-giesecke-shares-lessons-from-sweden/ https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-joh...
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
  Can you summarize or link to the time in the video where it is addressed?
  - raphlinus 6y ago
    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.