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A comment on How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down. Parent comment

Re:How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting E... by h91wka on Friday March 27, 2020 @07:41AM (#22702052)
My key takeaway from this entire situation is that authorities in Europe and USA don't understand how exponent works. Every country that is now suffering from the pandemic went through "c'mon, it's just 10 cases" phase. We had ~two months to observe how the situation unfolds in Asia, yet learned nothing. As for me, back in late February when I checked the dashboard and saw that ~10 cases were registered in my country, I decided that "nope, I am not going to use public transportation any time soon".

It should be mandatory for any politician or government clerk to take an exam in differential equations. There _was_ time to prepare, and there was a chance to contain the situation.

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Re:How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting E... by TeMPOraL on Friday March 27, 2020 @09:22AM (#22702603)
Yeah. And the funny thing is, a lot of people in the west - and presumably, most politicians and people in high places - understand how compound interest works. And it's the same thing.

You could literally rephrase the pandemic as: "Imagine total cases are dollars, then $country has 1000 dollars on their account, with 30% daily interest capitalized daily". Maybe that would've gotten through better?

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Re:How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting E... by viklove on Friday March 27, 2020 @12:34PM (#22704342)
> Europe and USA don't understand how exponent works.

Oh, they know how exponents work. They only care when it affects their bottom line. It's clear that the working class are just lambs for slaughter when the corporate overlords look at them.

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Re:How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting E... by h91wka on Friday March 27, 2020 @12:40PM (#22704391)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. By delaying the response they made their bottom line sink exponentially deeper.
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Re:How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting E... by viklove on Friday March 27, 2020 @01:21PM (#22704793)
No, they were selling off assets in the final moments before the markets crashed -- buying themselves a bit more time by lying to their serfs.
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