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Comment by 3JPLW | Hacker News Reader

Seriously? We've watched this thing spread over the past three months. Every single nation and state saw exponential growth of confirmed cases once community spread started happening — often doubling every 2-4 days. The growth continued until serious mitigations (like shutdowns and lockdowns) were put in place.

Why do you think the rest of the US is going to be different? They're just a few doublings (some days) behind.

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What did South Korea do to mitigate?

South Korea stockpiled enough supplies to do mass testing and contact tracing right out of the gate. And they have a functional government and a public that knows when to obey.

doesnt sound like what the OP was proposing

also, sk only tested people with significant ailments

There's a difference in timeframe and scope here. You can get away with testing and individual quarantines if you start early.

Now, 1 in 3 (!!) tests are coming back positive in NY. Too many people have it at this point for it to be effective.

Far as I understand sk tested and quarantined contacts ill or not.

Extensive — super extensive — testing, contact tracing, and strong quarantining of suspected and confirmed positives. From the get-go.

yes that all seems like things we could easily do in the US. i dont know why the gov doesnt push this, vs mass ineffective lockdowns

We don't have enough tests to do it. The testing backlog is getting worse — not better. The current backlog is estimated at 7-14 days in some areas.

where did sk get all their tests? they didnt know about cov2 before the outbreak. seems we could fast track test production, or do whatever they did

We absolutely could have... two months ago. There were a number of missteps that cost us very important time:

* WHO developed its protocol based on a German solution and open-sourced it mid-Jan

* The CDC decided to develop its own protocol and finalized it by end of Jan. They told local and private labs that they'd handle all of the testing and thus the FDA did not grant authorization for local and private labs to begin standing up their own testing protocol.

* By early Feb, it was becoming obvious that the CDC tests had manufacturing troubles.

* In mid-Feb the FDA re-iterated its guidance to labs to not stand up their own tests

* On Feb 29, the FDA finally allowed local labs to develop their own tests

* Two weeks later, those other tests finally started rolling in

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/23/us/politics/ap-u...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...

acted before things got bad, developed a test fast ,massive amount of testing , trace and track , aggressively quarantining people who test positive, providing financial support for people who test + and stop working

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