Thread by @AbraarKaran

THREAD

1/ Fascinating piece on #SouthKorea #covid19 response.

Seoul, which is nearly twice as dense as NYC, has a new resurgence of cases in clubs/bars. Watch their response closely, which includes a relatively invasive level of digital contact tracing
newyorker.com/news/news-desk…

2/ The government uses an emergency text message system to share data on new cases with quite an intense level of detail, including the person's travel route.

These are shared w/ people near the route areas so they can assess if they have possibly crossed paths.

3/ Example of a case entry: “08:00 left home (on foot) / mask worn”... “Bus transfer to no. 7730 in front of Sangam High School → disembarked at Susaeggyo / mask worn”), as well as a six-minute stop at a local supermarket, before ending with...“15:00 tested positive"

4/ "When a patient tests positive here, Kim’s team retraces their movements based on their oral testimony, & then combs through relevant C.C.T.V. footage in order to locate others who might have been exposed."

They then use credit card data to pull up the customer's information

5/ The article cites Korea's response to 2015 MERS "during which the government’s withholding of critical information contributed to further transmissions and deaths."

Now, they have shifted toward transparency to a level that some see as violating privacy.

6/ This has in some cases led to actual identification of the patient, & subsequent harassment/stigma.

This is obviously problematic, but poses the question: if this strategy actually works to stop transmission, what tradeoffs will countries see as acceptable to save lives?

7/ "South Koreans have decided that, during an infectious-disease outbreak, there is a strong, pragmatic case to be made in favor of what might be called virtuous surveillance—a radically transparent version of people-tracking that is subject to public scrutiny"

8/ I am not advocating for this level of privacy invasion, but it will be very interesting to see if South Korea's #covid19 strategy ends up being effective in controlling the new outbreaks from bars/clubs noted earlier today in Seoul.

nytimes.com/2020/05/09/wor…

Will be very interesting to see the South Korean #covid19 response to their new outbreaks in light of their invasive digital contact tracing systems.

cc @thehowie @RanuDhillon @zeynep @jeremyfaust @JeremyKonyndyk @zeynep @carlzimmer @DrTomFrieden @InfectiousDz @choo_ek @V2019N