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This is not meant to be a rebuttal to your comment, but a discussion. Consider the case of South Korea and Japan. 1. Dense populations. 2. Very little Covid1

This is not meant to be a rebuttal to your comment, but a discussion. Consider the case of South Korea and Japan. 1. Dense populations. 2. Very little Covid19. 3. Relatively low lock-down related economic impact. 4. Nearly universal mask wear. Honest question: what else do we need to know? I strongly suspect that if the United States, or any other country, had nearly universal mask wearing, we'd have a strong economy AND pretty low infection rates. I'd love for somebody 'in the know' to modify/correct any of my assertions.

DanBC 6y ago
Masks are the thing you do if you cannot socially distance. We have good evidence for social distancing, we don't yet (for a variety of reasons) have good evidence for mask wearing. You point to South Korea, and then claim it's the masks. But there's a bunch of other stuff they're also doing (because of their experience with coronaviruses): earlier lockdown, harder lockdown, much better test trace and isolate programmes, more social adherence to prevention measures such as hand washing and distancing and mask wearing, people with symptoms choosing to self-isolate, travel restrictions, etc. You need all of it at the same time, but especially distancing.
- Diederich 6y ago
  Thanks for this, I appreciate it. I'm aware of some of the details you mentioned. > harder lockdown So I did some more digging, and found this: https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/south-korea-faces-another-possible-outbreak-of-covid-19/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/south-korea-faces-another-po... This broadly supports what you're saying. Their success has been due to many rigorous and (near?) universally adopted protocols, not just mask wearing.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Yeah, and they take all the camera data from CCTV and all the mobile phone data, as well as the contact tracing data (with QR codes to a central system) and use that for contact tracing. They are trading off liberty for security, and it seems to be working out well for them. I can only imagine how crazy the US would have gone if the government had tried to do any of this.

DanBC 6y ago

Masks are the thing you do if you cannot socially distance. We have good evidence for social distancing, we don't yet (for a variety of reasons) have good evidence for mask wearing. You point to South Korea, and then claim it's the masks. But there's a bunch of other stuff they're also doing (because of their experience with coronaviruses): earlier lockdown, harder lockdown, much better test trace and isolate programmes, more social adherence to prevention measures such as hand washing and distancing and mask wearing, people with symptoms choosing to self-isolate, travel restrictions, etc. You need all of it at the same time, but especially distancing.

Diederich 6y ago
Thanks for this, I appreciate it. I'm aware of some of the details you mentioned. > harder lockdown So I did some more digging, and found this: https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/south-korea-faces-another-possible-outbreak-of-covid-19/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/south-korea-faces-another-po... This broadly supports what you're saying. Their success has been due to many rigorous and (near?) universally adopted protocols, not just mask wearing.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Yeah, and they take all the camera data from CCTV and all the mobile phone data, as well as the contact tracing data (with QR codes to a central system) and use that for contact tracing. They are trading off liberty for security, and it seems to be working out well for them. I can only imagine how crazy the US would have gone if the government had tried to do any of this.