https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-dea...
If things had gone slightly differently, it's entirely possible that we'd be pointing at Italy as an example of successful containment that South Korea should have followed. They tested and contact-traced and thought they were doing quite well for the first 30 or so cases too, but reality hit them once it was far too late to do anything.
For something with a long incubation period and potentially mild symptoms (ie, infected might not go to a hospital) only widespread statistical sampling will give a reliable picture of what is happening.
When I heard countries talking about 'testing criteria' that involved travel - I think this was in mid/late February - it seemed inevitable that things were going to drift out of control. There was no way that would pick up the mild inbound cases that could spread to become clusters. It probably developed that way because actual monitoring programs were infeasible but it'd be nice to know.
This illustrates the challenge with tracing approaches: if people are not open, or not sufficiently aware of the consequences of their actions, it's very easy to miss infections.
Let's go meet in a cafe!
And that's not even the, sorry, assholes at the supermarkets. It was insane today.
