Originally Posted by
RedChili
South Korea has indeed had a partial lockdown. Schools have been closed, football matches have been cancelled, public gatherings including church services have been banned, there's been a social distancing campaign, restaurants have had seating restrictions, people have worn face masks, there has been a strict quarantine regime, there's been a work from home policy, and people have mostly stayed at home based on recommendations. While it hasn't been a total lockdown like in France, it's been a lot like Norway or Denmark.
Also, South Korea had started relaxing those measures on Wednesday last week. And then immediately, one infected person leads to 7,200 suspected cases, with the closing of 2,100 bars and night clubs. They had barely started opening up before they had to close down again. And all of this comes from just a single individual. Remember that probably 99% of virus carriers are asymptomatic.
The same thing has happened in Wuhan. After 76 days of a total lockdown (much more than France even), when Wuhan opened up, they immediately had new cases. The same thing has also happened in Singapore and Hong Kong. When Singapore relaxed, they went from 2,000 cases to 23,000 in a month. Hong Kong managed to quash the second wave due to a new lockdown.
What people need to understand is that Korea was praised as a model on how to fight the virus successfully. But whenever a country opens up, the virus always spikes again. All of these countries basically confirm that Giesecke was right when he said that eventually, all countries will end up in more or less the same situation as Sweden. It's just a question of how much poverty and how much damage the society's economy will be afflicted with before the virus has finished its course.
Korea has stayed far more open than most other countries, they have been trying to keep society moving while containing the virus. They have done a lot of localised shut downs in connection with hot spots, the city of Daegu, and the (sorry I forget the name) religious movement that was a massive cluster as well. So yes, they have not stayed fully and perfectly open. Neither has Sweden. Though Sweden together with Taiwan, is definitely the most open country around. Taiwan has 0.3 fatalities per million, with kids in school all the way through the epidemic so far.
Korea does not have 7,200 suspected cases from this. In their policy of testing all contacts and potential contacts of an infected person, they have identified 7,200 people that will have to be tested. And that is the key approach for why South Korea could contain a very rapid spread rather quickly without going to extreme lock down measures. Because they track and test (at least try) all potential contacts of infected people.
Of course you will see more cases once you reopen a locked society, the question is really around the ability to control the cases and keep the spread low, and keep the fatalities even lower. Unless you keep the lockdown until you have zero cases that is. The point of the lockdowns was to take an out of control situation and rein it back in. Where would the Italian numbers be f they had not instituted a lockdown?
In my view, Sweden's failure is not in keeping an open society, Sweden's failure is in keeping an open society and not managing to keep the fatalities under control.and not sufficiently keeping the spread under control. I am assuming that Sweden is ramping up testing massively, like Denmark and Norway, though unfortunately on any of the Covid-19 statistics sites I read, the Swedish number of test does not seem to get updated. The way to keep an open society, and keep the spread under control is to find your cases, and keep them isolated. The only way to do that is to test massively. Denmark is up to about 15K tests per day, and still aiming higher. But even before that, you need to make sure you don't have an explosive spread, and if you are on the way to getting that, you need to stop it.
The Korean track and trace policy causes other problems especially for this latest spike. But that would not be a problem in Scandinavia I would say. But may be a downfall in the Korean authorities' ability to get people tested this time. The information they have on the people who were there, was not always correct. It may also help explain the rapid shutdown of the entertainment district in question.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-media-reports