Really important story @nytimes rounding up the power of its international bureaus. Raises important currently unanswerable questions. Read it ... but ... >thread #Covid_19 1/8 nytimes.com/2020/05/03/wor…
It doesn't factor in contact tracing. It recounts the South Korea story of woman who went to church and ended up infecting hundreds of people. 2/8
The actual numbers in South Korea are 250 deaths, less than 11K cases. Would that the U.S. were in that ballpark. U.S. has 65,068 cumulative deaths today; 1.1 million cases confirmed (vast undercount since we only tested severe cases). JHU#s 4/8
The fact that South Korea knows who that "super-spreader" woman was, who she went to church with, told them all to stay home for 2 weeks -- those humble measures SAVED LIVES. It is a HUGE VICTORY, and the U.S. can't compete with it. 5/8
In contrast, the U.S. has outbreaks in at least 10,000 nursing homes and no idea who brought the virus into the facilities. We have vast community spread in virtually every state, middling testing, and completely anemic contact tracing. 6/8
PLEASE local reporters: If your gov says "reopen," ask: WHAT'S OUR CONTACT TRACING CAPACITY? When's it ramping up? How are we following positive tests? How are we enforcing quarantines? This is how South Korea did it. This is what U.S. states need to reopen. 7/8
The modeling that sparked reopening talks was when IMHE revised down from 100K-240k ... to 60K. That was Easter weekend, April 12. Guess what? We've blown past 60k in just 2 weeks since then, but completely illogically are still talking reopening. Let's stop that. 8/8
