> South Korea has since reported 67 deaths out of nearly 8,000 confirmed cases, after testing more than 222,000 people. In contrast, Italy has had 1,016 deaths and identified more than 15,000 cases after carrying out more than 73,000 tests on an unspecified number of people.
Surely the testing is a huge factor. Test more people you'll find more people infected, so the fatality rate will get smaller. If you're like the US and test very few you get the huge fatality rates we saw in Washington.
If you could quickly and accurately test everyone in the country today we would know how to isolate and the whole thing would be over very soon. Not having a reliable test makes this whole problem as bad as it is.
Also, as an American, I'm embarrassed by my country's response and by how my president addresses the nation. PM Lee shows how you talk to your country:
Singapore has been competent, but Taiwan's response has been more impressive.
It's very close to the hot zone, millions of people travel to and from mainland China every year, it has roughly the population of Australia living on 10% of the land Japan has, the WHO refuses any cooperation, and yet there have been under 50 cases and no local transmission.
Not only that, but as a democratic state, Taiwan's control measures have been remarkably measured.
I'd credit two factors:
1) Imposing travel limits three weeks before China even admitted there was an outbreak. After SARS, the TW government had a plan for this epidemic and a healthy skepticism for both official news and the WHO.
2) Taiwan has a relatively high trust society. People generally trust the local CDC and make a genuine effort to take preventative measures, even those primarily for the safety of others. A phone alert is generally all that's needed as a quarantine reminder for those exposed.
> After SARS, the TW government had a plan for this epidemic and a healthy skepticism for both official news and the WHO.
That's not surprising, since the WHO doesn't recognise Taiwan as an independent country and refuses to help them, I'm glad they were able to take their own successful measurements.
Romania, which is also severely underprepared for a real outbreak. At least they're locking down borders and checking people, there's a lot of them going to/from work around the EU.
JAMA article about Taiwan - they made changes after SARS to have a faster response and what they did worked to contain the spread even though there is a large flow of people to/from China.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762689
Being a small country definitely helps in situation like this, it is not likely US as a big country can be as effective as Singapore. What do you want the government to do? lock down cities with troops?
For all those interested in how Singapore can possibly be a duality of "sometimes good sometimes bad", just look at how Singapore treats its Malay population as second class citizens.
For example, if a Singaporean Malay marries a Malaysian Malay, there is still a large chance their Permanent Residency application will be denied. This usually doesn't happen to someone who marries Han Chinese, of which Singapore is 70%.
Edit: If you're saying that the "reported" death rate "appears" lower based on reported statistics, then yes testing more people can make it seem like the actual death rate is lower. Otherwise:
> 67 deaths out of nearly 8,000 cases
> 1,016 deaths and identified more than 15,000
> Surely the testing is a huge factor.
No, you can not be sure at all, especially since it is well-known that hospitals have limited capacity to treat pneumonia (ventilators and doctors trained to use them). Get sick when hospital has no capacity to treat you, and you're more likely to die. Death rate will increase very rapidly when rates of infection pass a certain point.
Testing is important, yes, but the real important part is slowing the transmission rate to a manageable level.
> If you could quickly and accurately test everyone in the country today we would know how to isolate and the whole thing would be over very soon.
Only if you can do it more-or-less completely. Otherwise, you're actually prolonging the problem. The reason we want to slow the transmission of the virus is to keep life-threatening cases at a reasonably low rate.
Surely the testing is a huge factor. Test more people you'll find more people infected, so the fatality rate will get smaller. If you're like the US and test very few you get the huge fatality rates we saw in Washington.
Uh, yes, South Korea testing lots of people shows the overall fatality rate given a functioning medical system. It also allows much better isolation, understanding of the progression of the disease, stopping that progression and so-forth. So sure, the Korea rates don't prove Korea has magic dust that cures the problem but shows the Korean model is effective.
> If you're like the US and test very few you get the huge fatality rates we saw in Washington.
Most of the fatality rate in Washington is due to it spreading in a single nursing home. IIRC, it was 19 deaths from that one nursing home.
More vigorous testing comparable to SK likely wouldn't have caught the issue in this one nursing home in time as it spread like wildfire there. Only if the testing had caught the single employee that was the source would it have made a difference.
If testing were a huge factor, we'd expect to see a disaster in Japan, which is doing _very_ little testing. Instead, it seems to be doing even better than South Korea.
I think the masks are more likely to be having an impact.
i don't understand how knowing that you have the virus makes it less likely that you will die from it. There's no cure right? and at this point, anyone with a flu or cold will assume they have it and act accordingly, right?
It makes you less likely to give it to other people. Which makes people less likely to go to the hospital. Which makes the hospital less likely to run out of beds and equipment. Which makes the people with serious cases less likely to die. Which might even be... you in a few more days if you have a case that develops complications!
It also changes how people react and what they do.
Right now I see so many people carrying on their life as usual, because they think there aren't many infected people around them. That impression is a consequence of the lack of testing. It's likely that there are quite a few people around them who are sick and spreading this disease, and if more people realized that they'd act differently.
Resources and isolation measures are also directed to places where there are a lot of known infections, but if those infections are undetected very little gets done about them.
The relative lack of testing is a nightmare in the making.
You are correct, though though actually more complex than this.
1. Death from complications takes some time. You won't really know the real numbers until enough time has passed for the serious cases to resolve one way or the other.
2. Treatment makes a difference. Odds of death increase dramatically when treatment is not available.
No it doesn't. But what you ultimately want to know is the real number of infections. Testing is the best way to estimate that number. If you test just a few people you might e.g. miss a large portion that is either asymptomatic or is categorized as having a flu or cold. In this latter case, of course, the calculated lethality is higher than in the former - i.e. if you test lots and lots of people.
> If you could quickly and accurately test everyone in the country today we would know how to isolate and the whole thing would be over very soon.
i don't understand. let's say that tests are super accurate, a negative test result does not mean you won't spread virus in the future. You may have virus the next day or an hour later. tests are important for treatments but i don't think they are effective as a basis for isolation.
Surely the testing is a huge factor. Test more people you'll find more people infected, so the fatality rate will get smaller. If you're like the US and test very few you get the huge fatality rates we saw in Washington.
If you could quickly and accurately test everyone in the country today we would know how to isolate and the whole thing would be over very soon. Not having a reliable test makes this whole problem as bad as it is.