[sugardough]

South Korean here and I just wanted to add some thoughts. The real reasoning for the ridiculous ban is because they've been shutting down the gyms whenever the numbers spike but can't anymore because the business owners are in a desperate state because of the prolonged shutdowns. So it's their way of saying please don't to the gyms while avoiding a total outlash from the gym owners.

Obviously how well we're managing the pandemic while protecting civil liberty and privacy is a hot political discussion. We managed to keep things mostly under control and prevented total medical system collapse and kept the mortality rate low, while on the other side we didn't put nearly as enough resources into securing the vaccines so we're paying the price now.

[hntrowaway837]

Out of 51.7 million people, SK has had about 2000 covid deaths. How could SK have been anywhere near "total medical system collapse"?!

[sugardough]

When the hospitals run out of beds, it's a collapse in the system. It's not a "total medical system collapse" since it lasted a day or two and the number of people affected was small (probably around 10-100), but the situation could have easily been worse and we would have had one like new york last year.

[sofixa]

It was never about deaths, it was always about number of hospital beds. If hospitals are over capacity, many people will die of covid and other curable and preventable things. Think Italy or Bolivia(?) in the beginning of the pandemic, with people literally dying on the streets.

[yongjik]

You've probably heard of the parable of weeds growing on the lake. Every day it doubles, filling the lake in sixty days. When is the lake half full? At the fifty-ninth day.

SK is having >1k new patients per day now - an exponential growth means you're much closer to "total medical system collapse" than it seems.

[hntrowaway837]

You don't know what room this exponential growth has. It could near saturation, at we've often seen.