Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by davidw on Sunday May 17, 2020 @02:42PM
(#23214184)
South Korea has fewer cases - and deaths - than Iowa.
I mean, I know Iowa is a really dense place where everyone uses public transportation, but maybe they could at least make an effort...
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by alkonaut on Sunday May 17, 2020 @04:17PM
(#23215036)
I think random comparisons are pretty much completely lacking in information. Fewer died in country X than country Y doesn't mean policy is better. Nor does "they have fewer cases", or "they have fewer deaths". A tiny outbreak will yield few dead regardless of policy. Not all small outbreaks necessarily become large outbreaks, despite poor policy (why, we don't know yet). What would impress me is a region that with sustainable and accepted policies contain an outbreak in a population with very low immunity. Or a region that can reach a high level of immunity without the disease reaching vulnerable groups.
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by davidw on Sunday May 17, 2020 @05:59PM
(#23215885)
South Korea's initial outbreak was fairly large, if I recall correctly, as it was connected with a church.
This isn't some small, statistically insignificant difference. It's a massive difference in the number of cases and deaths.
Re:Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling
by alkonaut on Sunday May 17, 2020 @06:45PM
(#23216219)
300 dead is a pretty small outbreak by today’s standards I’d say. It was the second largest after Wuhan for a short while.
They have 300 deaths and 10k confirmed cases, suggesting they have confirmed 10% to a third of all cases.
It’s also impressive that they managed to keep the outbreak so small without extreme mitigations like other places with similar outbreaks.
I don’t think that most western countries can emulate it though. Next time, perhaps (this is South Korea’s second SARS outbreak).
I suspect a reasonable middle ground strategy is to aim for just some immunity (say 15% or 25%) while not overwhelming healthcare, after which tracing and isolation has a chance of working while also allowing a somewhat functioning society (Note: I mean for dense cities. This could still mean 5% in a country, as in Spain for example). The hard part is ensuring that as few as possible of those that are infected are in risk groups. This is something that proved difficult in many places.
There is a set of restrictions that allows the aggressive testing/tracing/isolation work for a naive population, and a different set of restrictions that is sufficient for to contain the spread in a population with 20% immunity. My feeling is that the former set of restrictions isn’t viable in democratic countries, or sustainable for the time we are talking about (1-2 years) without leading to something that costs more than is won.