SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s top infectious disease expert says the country may need to reimpose social distancing restrictions it eased in April, with coronavirus transmissions creeping up in the populated Seoul metropolitan area and elsewhere in recent weeks.
Jeong stressed the importance of social distancing and avoiding crowded spaces, saying, “we will do our best to trace contacts and implement preventive measures, but there’s a limit to such efforts.”
…a tiny fact lost on many in this country.
And this is exactly where the United States is headed, with far less testing/tracing. Part of me really wants this disaster to continue right up to November, but that’s just wrong.
We won’t do any of those reasonable things, so we’re in for a tsunami in just a few weeks.
“. . . it’s becoming increasingly difficult for health workers to track the spread of COVID-19, . . .”
If contact tracing can’t work in a physically small country with a population less than California, it certainly won’t work in the U.S. to any great degree.
The hell you do. Things will get violent by then if this does because Trump will somehow try to steal the election.
The best hope we have at this point is that Trump dies from CoVid well before the election.
It did work, then they let up on social distancing restrictions and that made it harder. South Korea’s new infection curve is, until the last week, a success story. There’s no structural reason the US can’t do the same thing; hawaii and alaska are doing it, successfully. Political reasons, yes, because doing it now is admitting that it should have begun in March.
Hawaii is a horrible example. The state has been shut to non-residents now for six weeks - no one comes in without going into quarantine and even inter-island travel is restricted.
I’d say it’s a very good example and a successful example. They also placed under house arrest those tourists who did sneak in. There is no structural reason we can’t divide the US into a 1000 virtual islands and clamp down HI-style within each one. You don’t get to leave your island until it is covid-free, and if you visit an island that isn’t covid19-free you stay there, or go into quarantine if you return.
I guess you live in a different United States than I do.
The one I live in eventually got the Spanish (Kansas) flu under control by practicing enforced isolation and quarantine, at gunpoint. This one also enforces quarantine on (some) fleeing NYC’ers, forcing them into self-quarantine (via Rhode Island cop, which is effectively at gunpoint).
Are you looking for a US where this pandemic can be addressed without inconvenience to you? There’s a great home for snowflakes on some of the moons of saturn.
I’m fortunate and the pandemic has only been an “inconvenience” to me and nothing more. I have happily gone along with Washington State’s somewhat stringent measures to combat the virus.
I am by nature pessimistic as well as sensible, intelligent and have a very vivid imagination. These attributes allow me to easily understand how a reimposition of lock down on those parts of the country that have “re-opened” will be met with violence because many people are at the breaking point financially and/or they are garden variety idiot Americans for whom all this has been incomprehensible.
But, but, but…it’s all gonna go away like a miracle when the weather gets warm! And anyhow it’s a hoax! Plus, it’s no worse than flu!!
And a deplorable sense of personal responsibility and community benefit…
Pandemic as moral education–or maybe just a refresher course.
It’s your Christ-like humility that I think is your most admirable trait.
You need to shave.