South Korea and the United States reported its first case of COVID-19 on the same day. South Korea went into a massive testing program to identify the infected and to segregate and treat them. The United States has no effective plan to address current and future pandemics.
The United States spent weeks wallowing in federal bureaucracy regarding who can test and how. Weeks were lost and many more people became infected resulting in soaring deaths and nationwide panic.
Testing did not get off to a fast start and many infected people passed the disease on to others. It is difficult when a disease has symptoms and warns people that something is wrong. COVID-19 has no symptoms during the initial transmission time.
South Korea has a population of a bit over 51 million citizens. They experienced pandemics (SARS, MERS) because of their nearness to China and other factors. They were prepared to start implementing pandemic plans immediately.
The United States has over 331 million citizens. There was no effective program to implement when the coronavirus entered our country. The federal bungling of CDC and other federal agencies made it difficult to test and diagnose the disease.
The United States did not take adequate measures to protect the most vulnerable. Assisting living, nursing homes, and similar facilities experienced extremely high death rates as the rest of the country was trying to figure out who is infected and what can be done.
South Korea implemented testing immediately. The United States did not. The United States is testing more people daily now. Shortly ten percent of American citizens will be tested. South Korea has tested around two percent. Early testing allowed them to make faster decisions to protect and defend against COVID-19.
The United States is removing restrictions on public interaction and more testing is show increased (record levels in some states) new COVID-19 cases. Over 39,000 new cases were recorded on April 24th. By June 5th, the new daily COVID-19 cases were reported at a little over 25,000. New testing has increased the daily case count to a bit over 33,000 on June 20th.
However, the highest daily death count was recorded to be 2,531 on May 6th and it has continued to decline ever since. Today, June 21st, COVID-19 deaths were reported at 267. Four days this month (June) have seen daily death counts slightly over 1,000. There is a definite decrease in COVID-19 deaths week after week since the first week in May.
Testing is increasing the number of new COVID-19 cases and the death rate is declining at the same time. Media will alarm the public that this state or that one has recorded record-breaking new cases, yet they will not tell the public that the death rate is declining at the same time the new cases are rising.
South Korea reported its highest new daily cases of COVID-19 on March 3rd at 851. It declined to 125 by the end of March and has remained at or below 100 a day since April 1st. The last two weeks of April and the first two weeks of May showed a daily new COVID-19 case rate at ten or fewer cases. There were many days when no new cases were reported.
Similarly, the South Korean daily death count was highest on March 24 when 9 COVID-19 deaths were reported. A month later there were two days in a row with zero deaths attributed to COVID-19. They have been averaging less than one death a day for the past six weeks.
The South Korean plan to open society started and has been modified based on new cases, but no new deaths. Schools were opened and shut down immediately when COVID-19 positive students were detected.
The United States leaves the public sector to the States and each state operates on its own knowledge and philosophy. We have no national plan to address when to open and when to close schools and other activities. If the overall death rate is going down, something positive must be happening. Yet, we appear to panic, or some states’ leaders appear to remain in panic-mode!
We need a Pandemic Plan for Prevention and Preparation rather than our current plan of Pandemic Panic. If an area of the United States can open for business and the new cases do not go over a certain percentage, and the death rates remain constant or continue to decline, then maybe it is a good thing to continue removing restrictions on people.
We need something that everyone knows. We need something that is reported daily for all citizens to know where we know the number of new cases, how many are severe, how many are in the hospital, how many require ICU attention, how many are recovering, how many deaths are from or with COVID-19, and more. We need a plan and an informed public. Panic is not a plan!
Live Longer & Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin – RedOLaughlin.com