
Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success - Reedx
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-18/seoul-s-full-cafes-apple-store-lines-show-mass-testing-success
======
teapourer
To be clear, the Korean government officially still recommends social
distancing. They are especially worried about the family picnics mentioned in
the article, and have officially closed many public parks in response.

To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully
managed the outbreak.

~~~
WillPostForFood
The article and discussions about Korea seem to mainly revolve around testing
and contact tracing. These are complex and expensive, and substantially more
difficult to manage in a country like the US which is 7x the population, and
is somewhat decentralized (50 states).

Meanwhile, the on the street observations in the article are: masks, masks,
masks. Masks are cheap and easy. So let's start with masks, masks, masks first
while we figure out and ramp up testing and contact tracing.

 _the first Apple store to reopen outside China had lines snaking out the door
as many South Koreans -- almost all wearing masks_

 _At Han River park in Seoul’s Banpo district, families -- also in masks --
were having picnics_

 _including requiring voters to wear masks and disposable plastic gloves while
casting their ballots_

 _People are still wearing masks and mind talking face-to-face with strangers_

~~~
Reason077
> _“masks, masks, masks.”_

Exactly. I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we (western/European
countries) didn’t have such an aversion to wearing face masks, even in a time
of pandemic?

~~~
stcredzero
_I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we (western /European
countries) didn’t have such an aversion to wearing face masks_

My wife and I were one of the few people wearing masks at the start of the
pandemic, before the closing and work from home orders came. We were harassed
by random people shouting at us.

Also, I don't really get the societal penalty for disaster preparation. It's
completely illogical. Just a few weeks before the news was really onboard with
the pandemic, a woman at my apartment was looking at how many amazon boxes I
had on my hand cart. I told her, "In times like this, it pays to be prepared."
She looked at me like I was scum. My understanding is that some news outlets
were actually denigrating disaster preparation at that point.

~~~
neurologic
> Also, I don't really get the societal penalty for disaster preparation.

It makes a lot of sense: if you're preparing for a disaster, you won't go down
with everyone else when disaster strikes. This creates some feeling of
resentment which caused people to lash out at you.

~~~
stcredzero
_you won 't go down with everyone else when disaster strikes. This creates
some feeling of resentment which caused people to lash out at you._

A well known psychologist was castigated a few years back for his likening
people to lobsters. Yet here we have a perfect example of people acting like
the proverbial lobsters who drag the escaping lobster back into the pot.

~~~
greedo
Crab pot metaphor.

------
pcr910303
Very surprised to find out country (city) in HN's top page!

For people who are interested in current Korea's situation:

There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday. The number of
new cases have been consistently falling since April 14th. 'Intense social
distancing' was stopped yesterday (April 19th), and the Korean government is
planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May 5th.

Schools are planned to open on May 6th, and the ban of churches, bars, etc.
are expected to be dropped in the following days (probably tomorrow).

The KCDC is saying that to drop the 'social distancing', there should
consistently have less than 30 cases (which is true for a week) and cases
which infection routes are unknown should be less than 5% of all new cases.
(It was about 5%~10% when it was announced, and AFAIK it's now true.)

There's still some anxiety because people started to become dull to the social
distancing movement - so people are worrying that new cases might increase.

~~~
gdulli
> There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday.

> Korean government is planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May
> 5th.

Are the people divided about whether it was a good idea to wait until new
cases got this low before making decisions about moving forward? Or is there
very broad support for the kind of discipline it takes to wait until May 5
despite the cases being so low already?

Have people's opinions about the appropriate level of response become
politicized? Have the facts and statistics and science of it all become
politicized?

~~~
yongjik
As GP said in another reply, the incumbent party won a landslide victory in
recent congressional election (180 out of 300 seats), so it seems South
Koreans generally approve how the government handled it. (Of course the timing
was fortuitous for Moon: had the election happened ~45 days ago things would
have been very different.)

Even for the opponents, it seems the majority criticism was that the
government _didn 't do enough_ \- somehow they're very angry about not
blocking visitors from China. (Many conservatives have a strong pro-America,
anti-China sentiment, and frequently accuse the president of being the
opposite.)

~~~
tooltalk
You don't have to be a conservative to see how the gov't screwed up early on
-- the SK gov't went against the advice of the Korean Medical Association to
restrict travel from China; instead the current Moon administration made a
political decision to keep their door open to China to please Xi JinPing of
China. The problem for the minority party was their link to Shincheonji, a
cult responsible for the majority of all coronavirus cases, and they really
had to keep their head down pretty much throughout the whole ordeal.

I consider myself a newbie and neutral on SK politics and had dismissed all
the criticism of Moon being a commie and all before, but I'm starting to see
through the garbage now.

~~~
yongjik
Well, AFAIK, expert opinions were divided: many doctors were against border
closing, saying that it will cause more people to enter illegally and hide,
and then we'll have a harder time tracking them. (It's just a short boat ride
across the Yellow Sea from China: you can't block the entire coastline.)

We may argue which side was right in retrospect, but it's not like Moon
ignored the expert consensus.

Besides, Korean Medical Association is not exactly a neutral expert
organization. The current head of KMA is this guy here [1], with pickets
reading "Impeachment is void! Stop framing innocent President Park! Let's
rescue innocent President Park with people's power and restore her honor!"
blah blah, referring to Park Geun-Hye, kicked out in 2017 after corruption
scandal.

[1]
[https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%8C%8C%EC%9D%BC:%EC%8B%9C%EC%9C%84%ED...](https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%8C%8C%EC%9D%BC:%EC%8B%9C%EC%9C%84%ED%95%98%EB%8A%94%EB%8C%80%EC%A7%91%EC%9D%B4%ED%98%95.jpg)

------
FlorianRappl
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.

~~~
collyw
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.

~~~
koyote
This is something I have not seen discussed or explained anywhere:

Spain has such a hard lockdown and yet even after 5 weeks there are still
thousands of cases every day. How are so many new people getting infected? The
same has been true in Italy.

~~~
greedo
It's extremely difficult to tell whether the number of cases are increasing,
or if testing is revealing more cases. It sounds like a tautology, but unless
you have a very strict, consistent testing rubric, the outcomes are hard to
measure in terms of growth. At best you can determine total case count.

------
melling
South Korea started testing very early:

“South Korea's foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, speaking to the BBC last
week, said the key lessons from her country are that it developed testing for
the virus even before it had a significant number of cases. "In mid-January,
our health authorities quickly conferred with the research institutions here
[to develop a test]," Kang said. "And then they shared that result with the
pharmaceutical companies, who then produced the reagent [chemical] and the
equipment needed for the testing."

------
tomxor
> U.S. has swelled to more than 700,000 while Korea [...] have slowed to just
> over 10,000.

Comparing absolutes is not very useful so I thought I'd double check this. The
difference is obviously less when normalized but the US is still an order of
magnitude worse than SK:

    
    
      USA:
      700e3 / 328.2e6 * 100 = 0.213%
    
      SK:
      10e3 / 51.64e6 * 100 = 0.019%

~~~
lm28469
Looking at the graphs shows a whole other story though. South korea is on the
way down for weeks now, the US are still on the way up. (active cases)

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-
kore...](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/)

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/)

------
makomk
This worries me. South Korea's mass testing alone was not enough to contain
the coronavirus outbreak; they relied on social distancing measures too:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
southk...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
southkorea/south-korea-extends-intensive-social-distancing-to-reach-50-daily-
coronavirus-cases-idUSKBN21M02P)

~~~
narrator
South Korea: 234 deaths 8042 recovered. China: 4632 deaths, 77k recovered[1].
Their treatment protocol is an order of magnitude better than every other
country. What are they doing that we're not? This is a huge glaring
discrepancy. What's the difference between their treatment protocols and
everyone else's?

[1][https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

~~~
joe_the_user
_What 's the difference between their treatment protocols and everyone
else's?_

It's mind boggling anyone has to ask now this has been going on so long but
here goes.

1) They had an approach plan beforehand because they had observed the previous
SARS epidemic and took the danger seriously.

2) They had "quarantine hotels" freely available for those who were positive
to prevent them from infecting others. (Seattle has a few of these, I've heard
but they aren't widespread in the US. The idea of housing people freely is
anethema to the US.)

3) They did testing early and often.

4) Their doctors and nurses worked with full PPEs, full anti-contamination
suits, so they didn't themselves massively spread the illness.

5) They reserved hospitals specifically for the epidemic and had protocols for
sending people to these hotel.

6) They had drive through testing and other testing easily and freely
available (the US plan of profiting from testing is just so "I can't even").

7) They did systematic contact tracing with an app for people to discover
where infectious people had been.

8) They did social distancing _with mask_ from the start.

\-- The US had literally done NONE of this. What the US has done is last-ditch
efforts by states after the ostensibly responsible parties (the CDC etc)
failed massively. And the Federal government is now literally sabotaging the
states.

~~~
narrator
The thing I don't get is this explains how people didn't get sick. What it
doesn't explain is how so many got better after getting sick compared to other
countries.

~~~
joe_the_user
The fatality rate of countries with active epidemics is skewed by a variety of
factors:

\- With exponential growth, most cases will new and so not become potentially
lethal. This can lower the observed fatality rate (I think this explained
Germany's original "great" rate which doesn't look at great any more).

\- With cases rising quickly, most countries don't have infrastructure or the
time to increase testing (US testing is failing on multiple levels but even
France, Spain and Italy are just overwhelmed with the sick and testing is less
important).

\- With cases rising quickly, the fatality rate increases as hospitals are no
longer able to provide adequate care.

\- Different countries have different age-profiles and the disease hits the
elderly harder (but once hospitals break down, the odds for the young
decrease).

South Korea's fatality rate is similar to the ostensible fatality rate of
Turkey and Luxembourg but likely for different rate. We probably won't have a
complete idea what's happened until these events are done.

------
BurningFrog
Meanwhile, the US still has very little testing capacity, with no signs of if
and when that will change.

One problem with the death of journalism is that no one is even reporting on
this.

~~~
matwood
On a per capita basis yes, but the US has done more tests than any other
country. Once the US doubles testing capacity again it will be on par with
other large countries.

~~~
BurningFrog
Per capita is all that matters.

~~~
matwood
Sure. On a per capita basis the US is ahead of SK. To reach Germany levels the
US will need 8M+ tests. That’s a large percentage of all tests that have
already been done worldwide. Unfortunately a large country like the US
(similar to countries like China and India) is going to run into
production/technology constraints.

The US dropped many balls and started late with ramping testing in particular,
but now the ramping is happening and just takes time. There was also no way
the US could test enough people using the original set of tests that simply
took too long. New technology had to be developed.

~~~
BurningFrog
> _Unfortunately a large country like the US (similar to countries like China
> and India) is going to run into production /technology constraints._

A large country has a lot of people to test, but also a lot of people to
manufacture and perform the tests. So that argument doesn't work for me.
Especially when we're talking about the richest country in the world.

Now, if the test making and executing is done by a single centralized
organization, it does make some sense. Which is why that way of doing things
is an anti-pattern.

------
vanderburgt
In this NPR podcast they expand on the methodology applied in S-Korea:
[https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/837905422/the-coronavirus-
gui...](https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/837905422/the-coronavirus-guilt-trip)

------
Benmcdonald__
3 new cases of coronavirus in Korea today

1 person has died this year from coronavirus in Seoul

Looks to be near the end of the outbreak for Korea

~~~
coldcode
The US will hit 40,000 deaths today.

~~~
dpau
and 22 million unemployed

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
For businesses that will probably never return.

~~~
lmeyerov
They'll be replaced, but the owners, employees, and loved ones who die won't.

~~~
jandrewrogers
Eventually, but an immense amount of capital (not just in a cash sense) that
allows those businesses to operate has been irreparably destroyed. Rebuilding
and bootstrapping that again from almost nothing will take years in many
cases. Businesses don't exist in isolation, some sectors are seeing
destruction not just of the businesses but the entire institutional structure
of their ecosystems, which is _much_ harder to replace.

There will be second-order effects that people aren't considering. In Seattle,
for example, all of the builders I know are saying multi-family residential
construction projects have become indefinitely non-viable due to the systemic
collapse of the business ecosystem they rely on. Even if things opened up
tomorrow, most of their projects will stay dead for the foreseeable future.
This will have a large impact for housing costs, construction worker
employment, etc many years beyond the term of the lockdown.

I think many people are oblivious to the long-term second-order damage that is
being inflicted in some industries that cannot be fixed on any kind of
timeframe that matters to ordinary people.

~~~
lmeyerov
I'm not. Plenty of countries have shown that we can reopen without killing
those at risk. The false choice of saving the economy vs saving the at-risk is
an entirely political position and part of the propaganda machine you've
fallen for.

Unfortunately, in the US, the federal government has presented the false
choice of safety vs economy. Yes there are trade-offs in tactics, but it's not
one or the other. Stop playing politics, unify messaging, and increase
spending money on _both_. I'm helping organize projectdomino.org as part of
staving off the currently-likely upcoming shitstorm of reopening without
public health funding, coordination, infrastructure, and compliance. I
encourage aiding local causes and telling your local Republican leaders that
you're tired of their shit that has now stepped up to pathogens literally
attacking us at home.

------
dominotw
how was south korea able to scale up their testing so fast. Where did the
extra testing capacity come from. I've been really curious about this but
haven't seen any good answers so far.

~~~
WillPostForFood
It is am extremely stark example of the value of maintaining manufacturing
capacity in your country. Korea can makes tests, so they have tests.

Seegene, a company that makes Covid-19 testing equipment is in Korea. They
just needed approval and to ramp up manufacturing. For most countries, like
the US, we don't have the manufacturing ability anymore, so we have to go beg
and buy tests while we figure how to make again. Seegene alone has been
responsible for 80% of the tests in Korea.

~~~
dominotw
Afaik, the shortage in US is mainly of raw materials and commodity items like
pipettes. How did Seegene ramp up its raw material pipeline so quickly. Really
fascinating success.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Korea has a broad swath of medical manufacturing capacity. A large part of the
supply chain is already there, so it is easier for them to ramp up. You can
double or triple output just by putting more shifts into the factories. Then
you start retooling, repurposing to really ramp up.

------
Aretas77
Won't this reignite the spreading of the virus? Like, they missed a few people
who were asymptotic and not tested, and are roaming the streets with other
people?

~~~
microcolonel
No, because they test people regularly and do accurate contact tracing. Thanks
to a favourable regulatory environment and a profusion of capable people,
South Korea scaled up testing and tracing capacity very rapidly. Furthermore,
they were socially prepared to do the basic social distancing.

Also, Taiwan has done an excellent job, and they didn't need to perform nearly
as many tests. AFAIK there hasn't been a single additional confirmed case in
Taiwan for the last three days.

~~~
colmvp
Taiwan also has a lot of preventative measures, i.e. mandatory mask usage in
mass transit systems, government issued masks and mask rationing system,
automated temperature checks at various public spaces, mask usage in schools,
plastic dividers at restaurants... on top of that they have a very
sophisticated scalable method of tracking people who have the virus and
ensuring that they are abiding by quarantine rules via tracing the location of
their cell phone.

In my city, people are still arguing whether or not people in the mass transit
system should be wearing masks.

~~~
clairity
what are the arguments against wearing masks on transit? i’m no fan of masks,
but wearing them on mass transit (of any kind) makes sense. lots of random
people in a relatively small, enclosed, and cramped airspace elevates
transmission risk materially (as opposed to wearing them outside, where it’s
negligible).

------
LordHumungous
Does it show the success of their approach? Given that new cases hit the
hospitals 2 weeks after exposure it seems like it is far too soon to know
that.

Also, over what timeline are we talking? South Korea has fewer deaths now,
will that be the case in two years time?

I've seen a lot of articles lately drawing conclusions from the state of the
world as it exists now. But this is a highly dynamic situation. Today's
assumptions are next month's fallacies. We need more humility.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/0Kygf](https://archive.md/0Kygf)

~~~
Robotbeat
This is an archive of the above article. Thank you!

------
ldng
On the other hand, they have something like 65 re-infected people. Could it be
that they have a different/new strain ?

Edit I don't see why the downvotes. It is easily fact-checkable. Those 65
persons were hospitalized for their symptoms, considered treated and released
and about 2 weeks later showed symptoms again.

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
We need to wait until we have antibody testing to get a clear picture about
this.

A theory is that these asymptomatic cases simply had latent virus in their
nasal passages (thus testing positive), and not actually be building any
antibodies from an infection.

~~~
bb2018
Yeah - Id love to know if there are any cases where someone was sick enough
that they were treated, recovered, and then got sick enough they need actual
treatment again.

------
aaron695
> show mass testing success

And public masks, good contact tracking, and they say gloves but hand PPE,
like alcohol, also I assume a good isolation system that doesn't scare people
but seen no reports on this.

Investing on making testing to be cheap and quick has however been something
people missed, compared to pie in the sky things like vaccines.

Also compared to masks which are obvious but have been religiously attacked in
the West.

------
snambi
How does testing prevent the disease? Also, if someone tests -ve, is that mean
he/she is immune to the disease?

