Trump's Catholic support...or lack thereof

[Ridgerunner]

Clearly, South Korea did it right and the US did it wrong. South Korea has a few hundred dead from COVID and the US has over 100,000. So, the US should have done what South Korea did.

Some the U.S. could have done. Some it could not have done.

So Ko started preparing for a pandemic of this sort in 2015 because of the MERS infections, and had a test methodology before Covid’s first infection there. The U.S. could have done that, but did not in a credible way.

So Ko started widespread testing in January. CDC did not allow it until early March and funneled all testing through itself according to a longstanding protocol. That did not have to happen.

So Ko did widespread and intensive source tracing even including publication of identities and places where they had been. That couldn’t happen in the U.S. in quite the same way because of HIPAA and because CDC didn’t release test results in an openly identifiable way.

It also appears So Ko has been more eclectic in its methods of treatment and seems faster than FDA in getting meds, including preventive meds, on line. It would seem the U.S. could do better in regard to both things.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Don’t have time to get the citaitons, but some I have seen are: We have an older population than most countries except other “first world” countries many of which have older populations (and higher Covid death rates) than ours. Part of the reason for that is that Americans (and other first worlders) tend to live longer, though often in a debilitated state. If, for example, you need dialysis in Uganda, you’re probably out of luck. In the first world, your life will be extended considerably, but you won’t be in good condition.

That theory doesn’t work. The average age in South Korea is 2 years older than the average age in the US. Yet as of today, the number killed by covid-19 per capita is 344 per million. In South Korea the rate is 5.35. We have 64 times as many deaths and a younger population. So that theory is a hard fail.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Did I say all countries experiences are the same? No I didn’t. From what I have read, SoKo’s experience is due to other things. You ignored that, of course, so you could use the term “hard fail” to me, even though what I said about SoKo was the previous post. Couldn’t have missed it.

But as always, you’ll come up with another way to say I’m wrong.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Did I say all countries experiences are the same? No I didn’t. From what I have read, SoKo’s experience is due to other things.

You did say that:

RidgeRunner:

There are plausible explanations why first world deaths are higher than second or third world. “Response of the federal government” is not one of them.

When challenged on what those “other plausible explanations” might be, you suggested the average age as a reason. Comparison with South Korea (which you apparently recognize) strongly suggests that response of the government is a factor more than average age.

 

[Ridgerunner]

So Ko did a number of things well. As I said, the U.S. could have and should have done some of those things. Some of them we couldn’t have done.

So Ko did gain time to develop vaccines and better treatments. But it’s also faster at that than we are. But unless it does develop a vaccine in fairly short order, it’s going to ultimately have a similar number of deaths per million people that we, and the rest of the first world do; just more slowly.

I have not seen anything on the So Ko death rate for people over age 70. They have a lot more people over 70 than the U.S. does, as a percent of the population. But the percentage of deaths among that group is about the same. It may be, among other things, that So Ko has done a better job of specifically protecting the aged than we have.

 

[YADA]

I think the number of tourists could be a ‘plausable’ reason why South Korea was better able to contain COVID-19

Annual number of International arrivals to South Korea 2018 was 15,300,000
Annual number of International arrivals to United States 2018 was 79,600,000