Quote:
Originally Posted by statsman
It seems to me that the lesson here is be like Hong Kong, and don’t be like Italy. Hong Kong remembered lessons from SARS and snapped to it on first word, social distancing, hygiene and so forth. Italy had no such experience and did too little, too late.
The US is both. NYC (950 diagnosed cases), Seattle (650 cases) and the Bay Area (300+ cases) are Italy (NYC didn’t close bars until today). The rest of the country is more like Hong Kong (Dallas, with 28 diagnoses cases, closed bars and gyms a few days ago). My hope is that the period of severe intervention can be less than in the areas with more severe outbreaks (weeks instead of months).
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Having lived in hong kong for 3 years, I don't think it's a fair comparison.
It's a semi-autonomous city-state with few points of entry. It's not a big, diverse country with several layers of government.
Logistically, they are experienced with past epidemics. most of the people live in large apartment towers, and half are in public housing towers, which means testing/screening can be concentrated at entries to these buildings. Culturally, there's more conformity than we have here (and that's my observation from living there, it's not a critique) and the people care a lot about being hygienic. Many people already own masks and wear them any time they get sick.
I'm glad HK, Korea, Japan, etc. have gotten things under control. I think we can learn from them, but I do not think their results are a meaningul yardstick for us.