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Comment by ppaattrriicckk | Hacker News Reader

I second this.

Try to have a look at the statistics of Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Norway, Thailand, Denmark: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Seems that some countries manage to _consistently_ keep the spread at a comfortable (for a lack of better word) level.

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Denmark isn't requiring masks and from what I've read, not many people are wearing them.

And Vietnam went 100 days without an new case and are now dealing with an outbreak they can't trace back to a source.

Vietnam has total confirmed cases of 642, out of 96 million population. When they have a few dozen patients, they call it a new outbreak.

The US has ~60k daily new cases - that is, 642 new patients about every 15 minutes.

But I remember very clearly the period in late February and early March when authorities in every country were making that same claim. "We only have a few dozen patients, which is nothing like the true outbreaks in Iran and Italy, we'll surely be able to get it under control without extreme measures." Is there a reason to expect Vietnam's current outbreak will follow a different trajectory?

And some of these countries made good on the claim. New Zealand has 23 active cases. Taiwan has 27. South Korea has 808 (that's after having a cult church being a hotbed of infection and its members actively hindering government intervention).

Hell, even Italy now has only 12,474 active cases.

Right, for now.

We're not even a year into a multiple year pandemic. Yes, it's great those countries have it under control now, but I don't feel comfortable assuming it will stay that way.

I don’t disagree with your numbers.

My point is Vietnam has been very strict about controlling for new cases and even then, a bunch popped up and they don’t know 100% how that happened.

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