Fauci took the position on China transparency as early as late January. That is not opinion that is fact. Again, Fauci is the expert and again you listen to your experts. As late as February Fauci was stating the U.S. had nothing to worry about. As late as March 9th, he advised that it was okay to go cruising unless you were at risk, such as immune deficient, etc. I don't blame Fauci he was working on his 40 years of experience. We just did not know.
BTW, the first confirmed case in Great Britain looks to trace back to late October according to a Telegraph article from six days ago. U.S intelligence confirms China shut down major roads in and out of Wuhan and particularly around the lab in mid-October. I posted an article below that is fair. BTW, the U.S. was working on test kits and they knew they had a problem on January 27th. You think it is easy to mobilize a nation of 355 million? In 1941 the nation rallied around President Roosevelt and we were grossly unprepared. 79 years later all we do is snipe. It's bull****. Again, China is to blame. You want to get political. I refuse to be part of the bed ******* crowd.
How South Korea Successfully Battled COVID-19 While the U.S. Didn’t
Share on PinterestExperts say South Korea introduced testing and other measures more quickly and efficiently than the United States in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
- The United States is reporting 15 times more confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths than South Korea despite having only about six times the population.
- Experts say the disparity is due to South Korea ramping up testing more quickly and implementing preventive measures, such as school closures, earlier.
- South Korea is making tentative plans to reopen some public facilities next week while the United States is expected to keep social distancing mandates in place for at least another month.
All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date. Visit our coronavirus hub and follow our live updates page for the most recent information on the COVID-19 outbreak.
The
COVID-19 outbreak was identified in South Korea and in the United States on the same day.
In the more than 2 months since then, South Korea has reduced its rate of new daily cases to one-tenth of its peak while the United States likely won’t see that peak for weeks.
South Korea is also tentatively planning to re-open some public facilities as early as next week.
The United States, on the other hand, is likely to have social distancing measures until at least the end of April.
The reasons for the disparity in the two countries’ outcomes have to do with more than just size, experts say.
It has more to do with the United States missing a critical window to ramp up testing and implement precautionary procedures to get on top of the virus.
The United States has more than six times the population of South Korea, but it’s reporting more than 15 times the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths.
As of Sunday, the United States was
listed as having more than 150,000 known COVID-19 cases and more than 2,400 deaths.
As of today, March 30, South Korea is listed as having 9,661 cases and 158 deaths.
Hospital morgues in New York City are
expected to reach or surpass capacity soon.
Cities across the country are locked down, a last-ditch step that South Korea was able to avoid.
Experts say things might be different in the United States if the country had taken earlier actions — about a month or two ago — closer to what South Korea did.
Examining this alternate reality might also shed light on where the United States can go from here and whether at least parts of the country can still learn from and catch up with South Korea.
January 19: The same starting point
On January 19, a man
checked into an urgent care clinic north of Seattle, Washington, put on a mask, and sat in the waiting room.
The 35-year-old nonsmoker had experienced a cough and a fever for the previous four days. Twenty minutes later, he was taken to an examination room.
The patient told medical personnel he had returned from Wuhan, China, four days earlier.
A battery of tests for various illnesses came back negative. A test for COVID-19 came back positive.
On the same day (January 20 in South Korea), a woman, also 35,
arrivedTrusted Source at Incheon International Airport outside Seoul with a fever.
Like the man at the Seattle clinic, she had arrived from Wuhan, where she lived. She was taken to a hospital, where she also tested positive for COVID-19.
“It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,” President Donald Trump
told Americans on January 22.
Late January: Tests come online
On January 27, after four confirmed cases of COVID-19, South Korean health officials met with medical companies.
The officials
told the companies they needed them to develop tests for the coronavirus and that they’d rapidly approve new tests.
A week later, the first test was approved.
In early February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a coronavirus test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
However, it would prove unreliable and mostly
unusable.
“We bought ourselves some precious time early on when we closed travel to and from China. That was very important because we reduced introduction. So, we were really in excellent shape at that time,”
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee, told Healthline.
“But we were hampered shortly thereafter because our capacity to test was so curtailed, both on the public and private side,” Schaffner added. “So we didn’t know how widespread the virus was in our country because there wasn’t testing.”