RugbyRebels

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:
When you discover the world of academia you're just going to lose your shit. It turns out that if you can read and are, like, an expert, or you know, have a passing interest in the well being of your nation, you can learn from what other people did. I know that sounds outlandish but it's apparently a real thing!!!
.

Yes, yes, famously, outside of the awful UK, once a mistake has been made once, anywhere in the world, it is never ever made again anywhere. In fact ,forget about mistakes. Once one person learns something, everyone knows it from then on. This is why there is such an unquestionable global consensus on everything.

Ironically, I am currently inside the world of academia and, get ready, it is full to the brim of people making the same mistakes over and over again!!!

Woah, I know, right, heavy shit.

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

Certainly people make mistakes as our government seem determined to show. But to say that learning from South Korea's previous mistakes (or current example) was impossible for anyone else is asinine.

Banquo wrote:

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:
It doesn't seem to NEED better accuracy, as Germany and South Korea seem to have shown. Testing isn't an end in itself but enables tracking and tracing. If you have a false positive and no one that person has had contact with has been infected, then if you've geared up testing enough then you might have spare to test again.

If you have a false negative, you may end up dead as well as infecting more people. As is being seen.

I'm not saying that it has no effect! It's just that it's possible to do much with even inaccurate tests. If they really are showing an error rate of 30% it makes what Germany and South Korea have achieved all the more remarkable.

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:]

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:
It doesn't seem to NEED better accuracy, as Germany and South Korea seem to have shown. Testing isn't an end in itself but enables tracking and tracing. If you have a false positive and no one that person has had contact with has been infected, then if you've geared up testing enough then you might have spare to test again.

If you have a false negative, you may end up dead as well as infecting more people. As is being seen.

Stom wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

Stom wrote: You mean what Keunssbeeg said?

She's basically saying it will most likely be years before we can make a judgement as to which countries have the best and worst approaches to this. (Which broadly means we cannot be critical of them until this is all over). And I'm saying that some of the evidence is so overwhelming that we should take notice of it now.

Look, I'm no fan of hers, but she's not using every word she speaks to be nice to the govt. She most likely means...what she says.

There's an interesting thought.

Banquo wrote:

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:

Banquo wrote: If you have a false negative, you may end up dead as well as infecting more people. As is being seen.

I'm not saying that it has no effect! It's just that it's possible to do much with even inaccurate tests. If they really are showing an error rate of 30% it makes what Germany and South Korea have achieved all the more remarkable.

Couple of thing to mull over there- whether testing/tracing itself is why Germany has kept its mortality rate so low? (Italy's testing rate per capita is much higher, and Spain's comparable.....but then again I don't know if they are tracing to be fair); I also think/have read they are treating differently in Germany, certainly in intensive care. But the South Korea experience indicates a great(er) success than Germany in reducing infection spread, but with about half the level of testing per capita. So many lessons to be combined there, including how testing was used in the strategy. But on the surface your point is well made around coping well despite inaccuracy- however, another point of consideration is that heavy lockdown was implemented at the same time as the testing, and I'm not sure those conditions will still be in place when mass testing is implemented, and I think confidence in the test will have to be a lot higher in those conditions....especially if, as we see locally, 2/3rds of the deaths in one hospital are associated with false negatives. So its pretty complex. and ideally you need confidence in every moving part.

Donny osmond wrote:Ok chief, whatever. I'm not as inclined to try and debate your obtuse absolutes as Mells, so I'm out.

Late last week millions of South Koreans queued patiently at polling stations to cast their votes for a new national assembly. If any uttered words of frustration from behind their masks, they were out of earshot of their fellow voters, kept at a distance by duct tape marking appropriate intervals.

As they waited to wash their hands and pull on disposable plastic gloves before entering the booths, some may have allowed themselves to contemplate life beyond exercising their democratic right: an imminent return to work, a round of golf or, at last, a chance to shop for something more indulgent than food and hand sanitiser.

Going out for dinner, let alone voting in a national election, would have seemed almost inconceivable weeks earlier when the coronavirus threatened to exact the same relentless toll on South Koreans as it has in the US and parts of Europe.

Long before politicians in Britain accepted that the illness posed a serious threat to public health, South Korea watched the rise in reported daily infections with growing alarm. After the country reported its first case on 20 January, numbers initially remained low before climbing sharply, reaching a peak of 909 daily infections on 29 February.


Then something extraordinary happened. The steep rise in cases began to plateau. By late March, daily infections were being counted in the dozens, and then in single digits. In the space of a few weeks, South Korea had flattened the curve.

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On Wednesday South Korea reported 11 new Covid-19 cases, the fourth day in a row the number was below 15. That brought the total number of patients to 10,683, more than 8,000 of whom have recovered. With 237 deaths so far, South Korea has one of the lowest Covid-19 case mortality rates in the world, at 2.23%.

Other countries are now looking to South Korea and its three guiding principles on how to reign in the outbreak: test, trace and contain.

Perhaps most striking is South Korea’s ability to tame the coronavirus without resorting to lockdowns of the kind imposed in the UK, Italy and France. In contrast to the panic-buying witnessed elsewhere, South Koreans for the most part stayed calm. There were no reports of hoarding, and the only people queuing were waiting to be tested or to buy face masks … or to vote.

By the time the World Health Organization issued its plea in mid-March for countries to “test, test, test”, South Korea had spent weeks doing just that, quickly developing the capability to test an average of 12,000 people – and sometimes as many as 20,000 – a day at hundreds of drive-through and walk-in testing centres. The mobile centres conducted the tests free of charge within 10 minutes, with the results were sent to people’s phones within 24 hours. By mid-March more than 270,000 people had been tested.

Voting in South Korean election
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People in self-isolation cast their ballots after regular voting hours ended in South Korea’s national elections last week. Composite: Rex/Shutterstock
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Testing aside, South Korea – the most connected country in the world – also used mobile technology against the outbreak in the form of contact tracing. People who tested positive were asked to describe their recent movements, aided by GPS phone tracking, surveillance camera records and credit card transactions. Those details enabled the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to issue alerts, in real time, about where infected people had been before their positive status was confirmed.

Amid criticism that the system could trample on privacy, the alerts contained only the gender and age category of each infected person, and names and addresses of the places they had visited.


Coronavirus: the week explained - sign up for our email newsletter
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Jerome Kim, the director general of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, said South Korea had contained the virus through “decisive and transparent leadership based on data, not emotion.”

Aside from testing people and tracking, isolating and treating those infected, the government convince millions of citizens to alter their behaviour, setting out clear principles for physical distancing, and companies were encouraged to allow employees to work from home.

“There was compliance with advisories for social distancing and hygiene, like avoiding bars, churches, gyms and hagwon cram schools,” Kim said. “Voluntary cooperation by an informed populace has been a notable feature of the response.”

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Why South Korea's coronavirus death toll is comparatively low – video explainer
South Korea had already learned a harsh lesson about the cost of delayed action. In 2015 the Middle East respiratory syndrome killed 36 people, infected 186 and forced thousands into quarantine in an outbreak traced to a single visitor from overseas.

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Its approach has inevitably attracted international attention. The president, Moon Jae-in, has embarked on a campaign of “coronavirus diplomacy” with other world leaders, and the country has exported test kits to at least 20 nations including the US.

The government’s newly released playbook on how to contain the coronavirus, Flattening the curve on Covid-19: the Korean experience, says: “South Korea successfully flattened the curve on Covid-19 in 20 days without enforcing extreme draconian measures that restrict freedom and movement of people.”

While health officials remain cautious for fear of a second wave of infections, life is slowly returning to a version of normality. This week restrictions on shops, restaurants, bars, gyms, cram schools and religious services – the latter the source of the country’s biggest single outbreak – were relaxed. National parks, forests and arboretums, which are believed to carry lower risks of infection, are set to open gradually, while physical distancing will remain in place until at least early May.

“Until we reach herd immunity or we achieve similar levels with a safe and effective vaccine, the new normal, with a stress on hygiene, social distancing and potentially local crackdowns, may continue,” said Kim.

A man speaks to a nurse at a testing booth outside Yangji hospital in Seoul
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A man speaks to a nurse at a testing booth outside Yangji hospital in Seoul. Composite: Getty Images
The ruling party’s comfortable victory in last week’s national assembly elections has been interpreted as popular approval of the government’s handling of the crisis. But as in so many other countries, the highest praise is reserved for exhausted health workers.

“I think the government has done a reasonably good job,” said Lee Mi-young, 35, who spent time in hospital after contracting the virus from her husband. “I know that other countries are looking to South Korea as the numbers have gone down here, but I think it is because of the hard work of health officials, not the politicians.”

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Whichever group deserves credit, South Koreans are eyeing a time in which Covid-19 is no longer the sole determinant of the way they live. There was evidence of that in Seoul this week where people were returning to work and flocking to shopping malls and restaurants.

For Kim Tae-hyung, a 31-year-old engineer from Seoul, the cautious embrace of a post-pandemic world meant once again playing the game he loves.

“I’m a member of a community football club and we went out to play on Saturday for the first time in two months,” he said. “We were wearing masks while we played, and we were still worried about the coronavirus. But the weather was lovely. And I felt refreshed.”

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:Banquo, Italy has higher power capita testing NOW. They started much too late, rather like us, and there's no way of catching up once the virus has got beyond your ability to trace contacts.

Mellsblue wrote:

fivepointer wrote: humility....

Asking for humility from a politician of any persuasion is a thankless task.

Mellsblue wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:

fivepointer wrote: humility....

Asking for humility from a politician of any persuasion is a thankless task.

I stand corrected:

Mellsblue wrote:Sweet baby Jeebus:

Banquo wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:Sweet baby Jeebus:

why surprised?

Mellsblue wrote:

Banquo wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:Sweet baby Jeebus:

why surprised?

Not surprised. It just brings home the drop beyond the % figure OBR etc have been giving us.

Banquo wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:

Banquo wrote: why surprised?

Not surprised. It just brings home the drop beyond the % figure OBR etc have been giving us.

OBR haven't given a post covid number yet, have they?

Mellsblue wrote:

Banquo wrote:

Mellsblue wrote: Not surprised. It just brings home the drop beyond the % figure OBR etc have been giving us.

OBR haven't given a post covid number yet, have they?

I think so, Q1 at least, and it was roundly deemed to be optimistic.

Mellsblue wrote:or could it be herbal tea?!?!?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52374250

Mellsblue wrote:Could nicotine be the answer?!?!?

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus- ... 9-11977460