k2aggie07 said:
Sure. But then look at how many tests S Korea has run vs US.
South Korea is interesting. They've basically taken the approach of testing anyone who shows up at a doc or ER with a sniffle. So their quantity of testing is incredibly high. What gives me hope with them is that I think we're getting a more representative idea of the spread of the virus and also its complication and mortality rates. There's a lot to be optimistic about with their numbers as they show a CFR of 0.5%.
Here in the U.S. we're apparently limiting testing based on several criteria which seem out of date now we know we have community spread issues. At it's simplest, we should be testing anyone who has all the symptoms but comes back negative for flu. Not sure the reasoning behind that not being the rule everywhere at this point, though I suspect some states are doing it on their own.
The devil is in the details though. Someone with access to more data would do us all a great favor if they could compare South Korea to the U.S. in terms of age ranges, as this seems to be more lethal to the older population.
The wild card and potentially dangerous item is obesity. There are no great stats on this how obesity and the virus combine with respect to leading to more serious or fatal cases. The obesity rate of SK is around 8%. The U.S. is 35%. Japan's at 5%.
For comparison, Italy's around 22% obesity rates are more of an analog for us than South Korea or Japan. But Germany's is around 20%, and they aren't getting their butts kicked like Italy is (Germany has 1/6 the cases of Italy, but zero deaths).
So who the hell knows.
