[jwhite]

I think SK's numbers are becoming more reliable by the day though. The new case rate has stabilised to a small number in the range of 50 to 150 per day and the active case count is dropping at a rate of over 200 per day. The daily death rate has been below 10 the whole time I believe. If that trend continues then SK's CFR will be well known soon and I would guess not dissimilar to current estimates. Though it's always possible a false sense of security will set in and people will relax their habits and send it higher again.

Compare to Germany: weeks behind SK but already more than three times as many cases, new case rate in the last few days of 2500-4500 (SK's max: 851), daily deaths in the last few days 10-29 and heading north. Actually the death rate must reflect an amazing health care system given 30k cases, but it's early days for Germany. Their pipeline is very full, agreed I wouldn't want to make a prediction there.

EDIT: sensitivity.

[cycrutchfield]

OK, SK's new case rate is stabilizing, but they still have 5400 active cases. If even 1% of those active cases die (which is possible, since these longer-lasting cases are likely more severe), that's a total CFR of 2%. And this is for a country that everybody claims has been doing contact-tracing and testing asymptomatic people.

[cycomanic]

I find it interesting that SK is always brought up in these discussion about CFR and how now action is required. Actually SK is the prime example of a country acting quickly and early (also showing that general lockdown is not necessary in that case). They would have been even better off had it not been for patient 31.

One of the main effect of that action (apart from slowing down spread) was that they managed to keep the virus away from the most vulnerable parts of the population. Look at the age distribution in SK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102730/south-korea-coro... and compare that to Italy: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103023/coronavirus-case...

[easytiger]

Significant evidence that 50%+ of cases are asymptomatic or very mild and those people are not being tested at all. In the Uk even quite bad cases don't get a test

[mschuster91]

> Their pipeline is very full, agreed I wouldn't want to make a prediction there.

German here. I assume the recent hard lockdowns will work out pretty much for us... I'm more worried about the US, this is gonna be a mass die-off, and the Trump government's handling of the issue is... let's say abysmal.

[gindely]

German resident here. Why do you assume the recent hard lockdowns will work out? I have discovered in my time here that the German reputation for orderliness and rule following is exaggerated.

South Korea coped with the outbreak by having a test early, test often strategy, but the German strategy seems to be test eventually, test perfectly. That means that there isn't any process to flag essential workers and others as needing a good proper test. Korea's showed it's better to do a test with a high false positive and even a significant false negative many times a day and get the person out of circulation awaiting an accurate test, than to wait for them to find the symptoms concerning and ask for a proper test.

China coped with the outbreak by having actual curfews. Major lockdowns. The sort we couldn't reasonably expect. When I went to do my weekly/fortnightly shopping yesterday, I saw several police officers looking around into restaurants and on the local town square. Not hard to hide from. No-one cared what my business was.

Italy still hasn't really peaked. They did this test-free lock down strategy that Germany is doing. Apparently the amount of intercourse required for viral transmission is ridiculously low.

There's already tens of thousands of sick people here, and the government was very lethargic in their response. The peak will be huge. As I mentioned before, they gave up after Gangelt and seemed to act as if the whole thing would be minor. It took weeks after discovering a major problem existed that needed hard work before German authorities actually agreed to do hard work.

Learning lessons seems to be really hard for authorities at the moment, and I'm genuinely worried. It's like even ideas are subject to the European protectionism - better import a bad idea from Italy than an effective one from South Korea. My goal is to not get ill before there's space in the hospitals again, because any other goal seems unrealistic.