Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Social distancing is a drop in the bucket

Sorry, but look at how China, South Korea, Taiwan etc. are doing right now - this doesn't jive at all with "social distancing is a drop in the bucket". Even Western countries/places which started social distancing early in their local outbreaks look like they'll be a lot better off than places which didn't.

> The vast majority of young people will be totally fine

This is also quite wrong, unfortunately. A sizeable minority of young people will need hospital treatment for COVID, and perhaps intensive care. Given overwhelmed healthcare systems, they won't be "totally fine" at all. Of course, older folks are at increased risk.

I highly recommend this video from Korea (Professor Kim Woo-joo from Korea University Guro Hospital) that gives a Korean perspective on the disease and the western response to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU

A few points of interest: (He is a very respectful fellow so apologies if the summary seems a bit to the point)

- Masks help and he is slightly puzzled why the west hasn't adopted that culture

- Their testing and tracing helps and they doubt the US would allow their level of privacy invasion

- Korea is doing well because they have had to respond to pandemics and were prepared (as are Taiwan, Singapore etc)

>Sorry, but look at how China, South Korea, Taiwan etc. are doing right now

I'm taking China numbers with a LARGE grain of salt (basically I don't believe them at all given how they have lied from day one of this pandemic). I'd wager South Korea has a level of preparedness that few other countries in the world has, given that they share border with a hostile country.

Overall it seems that South Korea and Taiwan were very successful in restricting and tracking travelers (I read Taiwan totally closed the border for foreigners a couple of weeks ago) and were therefore quick to quarantine people coming from countries with outbreaks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com