
South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates Are Falling - ailideex
https://www.aier.org/article/south-korea-preseved-open-infection-rates-are-falling/
======
scott_s
The US can't follow the South Korean model because the US does not have the
testing infrastructure for it: [https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-
korea-scaled-co...](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-
coronavirus-testing-while-the-us-fell-dangerously-behind)

This article presents it as dueling narratives: open versus authoritarian.
This implies that, as of now, the US has some choice. But we don't. We screwed
up testing when it was small and containable, and now it's not.

~~~
cm2012
I think the idea is that if we go in lock-down for 2 weeks, infections can get
back to a manageable level - and then we can open up by testing like mad.

~~~
mullingitover
Two weeks isn't nearly enough, and nobody is on true lockdown yet. Two weeks
from now people are going to be questioning why we did the lockdowns, because
they will appear to have had no impact at all.

The general public still doesn't realize that it's going to be two _months_
before the shelter in place and general social distancing rules start to make
a difference.

Even then, after months of lockdown, it's just going to flare up again as soon
as the rules are relaxed.

~~~
cm2012
I didn't realize that. Man, we're so fucked. Batten the hatches.

------
devy
South Korea has got over the hump of death count growth NOT because they are
preserving the open society, but because they act swiftly. In fact, they acted
in late January. When did U.S. acted upon? U.S. squandered 2 months and wait
till WHO declared this is a global pandemic.

And they have tested 140k of the cases now and more, how many cases has U.S.
tested so far? Not even close.

What about contact tracing? Have you heard South Korea let confirmed cases
leave the hospital with fake name + addresses? Or knowing that family members
may have infected and still going out to the public? U.S. has. [1][2]

That's the difference you can maintain a society. Lock-up is the second last
resort. And then you will have to follow U.K. to let it be.

[1]: [https://people.com/human-interest/nj-woman-with-
coronavirus-...](https://people.com/human-interest/nj-woman-with-coronavirus-
gives-fake-information-leaves-hospital/)

[2]: [https://www.kcra.com/article/father-of-missouri-
coronavirus-...](https://www.kcra.com/article/father-of-missouri-coronavirus-
patient-violated-self-quarantine-to-take-daughter-to-school-
function/31282274#)

~~~
random42_
> What about contact tracing? Have you hear South Korea let confirmed cases
> leave the hospital with fake name + addresses? U.S. has. [1]

Not trying to defend their actions but I’d bet they were trying to avoid being
put on quarentine in the hospital to later receive a hefty bill to pay.

~~~
baq
I wouldn’t want to pay for a prison stay either... the system has all the
wrong incentives.

------
dmos62
I heard that South Korea had/has a very large supply of very accurate
coronavirus tests. Probably lots of testing is also why their death rates are
low (not only hospitalizable cases are counted). Maybe a significant motivator
in these decisions is whether or not you can test a lot of people?

~~~
drclau
A large number of available and accurate tests definitely mattered. But that
is not merely enough, someone had to make decisions and coordinate the
efforts. I have no idea who that was, but they did a great job.

~~~
yulaow
And they have to do it EARLY. It is useless to compare or even worse suggest
these solutions now.

~~~
sgroppino
EARLY is key. Experimenting theories in a scenario like is so risky -
difficult to understand why the UK went that way.

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seba_dos1
> Contrast this with developments in the few days since Italy put its entire
> country under quarantine, active cases have risen from between 5,000 and
> 6,000 to over 8,500.

Stopped reading there, it's not worth my time. It takes up to two weeks to
develop any symptoms, so remarks like that are either misguided or
intentionally misleading.

~~~
d1str0
Yes. It’s comparing apples to oranges. Basing your argument on “Well South
Korea has decreasing number of cases, the US is increasing” is an unfair
argument. China’s cases are decreasing as well and they used the martial law
options.

------
enitihas
But didn't South Korea too have aggressive location tracking and even made
those details public?

Source:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00740-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00740-y)

So not exactly CCP style lockdown but not a 2019 style free society either.
They did make the hard choices necessary to got it in control. But it wasn't
as simple as more testing.

~~~
summerlight
Preserving privacy may inherently contradict with public interest coming from
aggressive contact tracing. This is really unfortunate, but the S.Korea case
could be even worse if adequate CDC agents were not granted with the authority
to aggregate/join arbitrary private data (very likely against the subject's
will).

This was especially important for early actions taken by S.Korea's CDC since a
single super-spreader (#31) had contacts with thousands(!) of people within
just 2~3 days. I'm 99% sure that Europe and America also have similar cases,
but just remains unveiled because they couldn't really do the same thing with
the given authority. S.Korea was in a similar situation during the MERS
outbreak but now they passed a law to allow such actions.

IMHO, this trade-off is no brainer. The cost is can be controlled/minimized
while the economical/societal damages caused by full lockdown is not. And yes,
this is also not 2019 style free society.

------
misschresser
Article presents opinions based on a broad and incomplete picture. This might
be the most harmful type of publication right now, the author wants to justify
his feelings of "The U.S.'s liberty is expendable, but it doesn't have to be"
when the reality is the U.S. was not equipped in the ways S. Korea were. He
wanted to make a specific point and ignored the obvious facts that would make
the point invalid.

------
jerome-jh
What strikes me is how hard it is to get reliable information on what exactly
is being done in specific countries.

In particular: did South Korea shut down its schools?

There is "information" everywhere but no precise or exhaustive data on who did
what.

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bcrosby95
> Actually, there’s a better question: why should the U.S. copy China rather
> than South Korea?

Because it's too fucking late for the South Korea response. I'm sorry, but
asking questions like this at this point is completely useless, and the "wait,
woah, slow down" response is exactly the sort of attitude that kept us from
being able to pull off what South Korea did in the first place.

------
gok
The coronavirus containment stories in South Korea and Singapore are being
brought up a lot, but both are essentially completely irrelevant to the
situation in North America or Europe. South Korea has 9 international airports
and a single literally impassable land border; Singapore has one airport and
one tightly controlled border crossing bridge. Containment under these
circumstances is a somewhat tractable problem. It's comparable to, say,
Hawaii, which currently has 13 cases despite the widely incompetent American
government response.

Europe has hundreds of international airports and uncountable open border
crossings. Containment was never really a possibility in Europe. Containment
in mainland North America was even less likely. Even if governments wanted to
close borders between states/provinces, there's no mechanism to do so.

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neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200318193005/https://www.aier....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200318193005/https://www.aier.org/article/south-
korea-preseved-open-infection-rates-are-falling/)

------
giacaglia
They are coming back again
([https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-
kore...](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/)).
Numbers are lagging indicators, and the virus grows exponentially. They are
going to go up again

~~~
scrollaway
It's pretty clear from that very page that SK reached its inflection point
somewhere between March 5th and March 8th.

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BFatts
Yes, and S.Korea was prepped and ready with tests when the pandemic hit (or
shortly thereafter). They tested their country so they knew who had it and who
didn't so they could focus efforts. Because testing is hard to get in the U.S.
still, the rates are unknown and the only way to prevent it is with social
distancing.

------
exabrial
On a sort of related note, I presented this as an "Ask HN": Why don't [iWatch,
Garmin, Fitbit] wearables have a thermometers?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22581703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22581703)

I know "core temperature" is hard to take at the wrist, but I'm sure
_something_ could be done. Wouldn't this benefit entire nations if the
technology could be invented to have hyper-local influenza and pandemic
forecasting?

~~~
jniedrauer
My Garmin has a thermometer, but its purpose is to track barometric pressure.
It doesn't accurately reflect my body temperature. When I go running below
freezing, it usually drops down to around ~2* C. It may accurately reflect the
temperature of the skin on my wrist but it's useless for telling me that I
have a fever.

~~~
exabrial
I think the accurate readings would come when you're at rest sleeping, not
hiking in freezing cold. The motion sense capability of these wearables would
take that into affect. Garmin has a O2 sensor that comes on only when you
sleep, it would make sense this would maybe do the same.

It looks like this tech does exist in rudimentary form, for females, and it's
specifically tied for fertility tracking.

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java-man
Guess which model we (the U.S.) will choose - Chinese model or S. Korean?

Also, very cool chart in the article.

~~~
ejstronge
I was surprised that the article did not mention the key role of testing and
contact tracing - without these elements, it would not be possible for the US
to follow the South Korean model.

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carno
Article is disingenuous as fuck. Glad to see so many good comments here.

