Thread by @YossiGestetner

THREAD: Everyone is talking how S Korea handled Coronavirus well.

-Their first known case was a day BEFORE the US.

- Despite not doing what SK did, US severity cases (critically ill + dead) as of March 15 is smaller relatively speaking. (US population is 6.5 X the size of SK).

2/

For all the talk of South Korea TESTING TESTING TESTING, they have tested only 251,940 people as of Sat March 15 (not counting 17K tests with no results in). In a country of 51 million people that's not even half of a percent!

It's not so much testing as headlines suggest.

3/

Of the completed tests in South Korea, 96.7% test negative. They have no Coronavirus.

- 75 people died. That's 0.91% of cases. But they tested only a small portion of their population so how many cases are missing (and the death rate is thus maybe lower)?

Pls keep reading.

4/ As of March 2 "For parents who still must go to work, the Ministry of Ed has ordered all 9,762 kindergartens and elementary schools to run an "emergency child care" service placing teachers on duty." (ABC News) Most parents didn't send early on but the option is there!

5/

"All Day Care centers for toddlers must also provide mandatory emergency care in the event of inevitable closures." Hey #shutdownNYC crowd. This is South Korea (March 2). If you want to follow them, know the details.

cc @GovMurphy @NYCMayor @BilldeBlasio @NYGovCuomo

6/

VIA ABC (March 4): "If a daycare center [In S Korea] refuses to provide emergency child care, parents can file complaints to the government department in charge which may lead to suspension of operations of maximum 6 months."

SK is FORCING daycares 2B open! @StephenLevin33

7/

"For facilities that are unable to provide adequate day care services, the... [gov] plans expand its program that sends a child carer to each household."

Clearly, the US doesn't have this, but the idea that S Korea stuffed children/prents into homes for 2-3 weeks is FLASE!

8/

AJ 3/13/20: "In Italy, millions R locked down and more than 1K people have died from the coronavirus. But in S. Korea, which was hit by the disease at about the same time, only a few thousand are (forcibly) quarantined."

No one talking about S. Korea seems to know this!

"South Korea, which has a slightly smaller population than Italy, has around 29K people in self-quarantine. It has imposed lockdowns on some facilities and at least one apartment complex hit hardest by outbreaks. BUT SO FAR NO ENTIRE REGIONS HAVE BEEN CUT OFF."

10/ Now to Italy. As of Friday, March 13, they had 1,017 deaths and only four of those were under the age of 50; none under the age of 30.

87.9% desths are age 70+.

This shows that even a small amount of cases can snap a system and that it's mostly an issue with deep seniors.

11/ Considering all of the above, more focus needs to be placed on upping hospital/urgent care capacity even by a few percent! But instead of getting updates on this end, all we hear is "lets shutdown like South Korea" which did not even shutdown. Furthermore, no matter what

NY/NJ does at this point, there can easily be a few thousand severe cases around the corner (as per the predictions). Ok so focus on upping access at hospitals! Suspending school will only cause doctors/nurses who have school-aged children to not work & stress a stretched system.

13/ I asked someone in the Urgent Care service if they heard anything from NY State/City about preparations; about taking mild cases etc. "We haven't heard from anyone! We spent hours on the phone with the Health Department and finally we were able to pull together some sort of

14/ protocol to educate our staff and patients." This update I got a few hours ago. You know why this is the case? Because some people are more interested in shutting down NYC than focusing on the lesson from Italy: Upping access to care will make a big difference!

15/ (The day of the weeks are accurate but one date was off for Saturday. Today Sunday is March 15. Sat was March 14). Anyway, I asked an Urgent Care provider if they heard from Orange County, NY. "They are quite so far. Busy with the schools I guess," was the response.

YES! YES! YES! "Right now we have to make sure the places in this country that need more ventilators, surgical masks, they need hand sanitizers, that that is a federalized dynamic where those factories that produce those goods are put on 24/7 shifts." - @NYCMayor @BilldeBlasio

17/ At any rate, the buzzword the last 24 hours is #FlattenTheCurve which means that we should work to flatten the amount of new cases per day that it should not rise per day more than previous days. But as the amount of testing picks up, the line/curve will be steep because

18/ cases that we didn't know exist will now be counted, and also virus totals do pick up at some point until they balance out. The Flu case count (OMG, I said the word while talking abouy Coronavirus) is not the same on day one as it is on day 50. Anyway, as the curve will

19/ be steep in the coming weeks on large part due to test amounts going up, they will push for complete lockdowns. As the lockdown continues, the curve will start to flatten because at some point the total amount of new daily tests amounts will level off.

20/ People will use the new case flatline as proof that the lockdowns led to the flat; not that the leveling off of new tests per day caused it. This will be a false conclusion so the focus therefore should be on how many hospitalizations and deaths there are relative to the

21/ Case count. Basically, what is the rate? As of a few days ago, they said 10-15 percent of cases need hospitals and 1 to 3 percent will die. So look out for those. Another data point to look at is how many official cases we have as a portion of the population

22/ A third item may be to focus on what portion of completed tests (those with a ruling) come back negative. In South Korea it is 96 - 97 percent for quite a while but this too may fluctuate based on whether tests are done at random or only on suspected cases. The bottom line is

23/23 that when it comes to data, you can not look just at one point especially when there is a variable such as the amount of new testing per day compared the older days. Look at all the above data points. Anyway, thank you all for reading.