Very surprised to find out country (city) in HN's top page!
For people who are interested in current Korea's situation:
There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday.
The number of new cases have been consistently falling since April 14th.
'Intense social distancing' was stopped yesterday (April 19th),
and the Korean government is planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May 5th.
Schools are planned to open on May 6th, and the ban of churches, bars, etc. are expected to be dropped in the following days (probably tomorrow).
The KCDC is saying that to drop the 'social distancing',
there should consistently have less than 30 cases (which is true for a week)
and cases which infection routes are unknown should be less than 5% of all new cases.
(It was about 5%~10% when it was announced, and AFAIK it's now true.)
There's still some anxiety because people started to become dull to the social distancing movement - so people are worrying that new cases might increase.
What about international flights? Are airports in SK still closed? I'm pretty sure they will have to limit traffic into and out of the country despite easing social distancing.
Otherwise, won't there be a new wave of infections when they let 'outsiders' back in from places where the virus is still running rampant?
> What about international flights? Are airports in SK still closed? I'm pretty sure they will have to limit traffic into and out of the country despite easing social distancing.
Airports in South Korea has never been closed - South Korea has never banned anyone coming & going outside. A quarantine of two weeks became mandatory since April 1th, but South Korea has never closed Airports or has done a lockdown.
> Otherwise, won't there be a new wave of infections when they let 'outsiders' back in from places where the virus is still running rampant?
Definitely that's a concern, 5 out of 8 new cases yesterday were people that were infected from foreign countries. However since South Korea has never closed it's airports, people generally think it's controllable(like it always was).
> There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday.
> Korean government is planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May 5th.
Are the people divided about whether it was a good idea to wait until new cases got this low before making decisions about moving forward? Or is there very broad support for the kind of discipline it takes to wait until May 5 despite the cases being so low already?
Have people's opinions about the appropriate level of response become politicized? Have the facts and statistics and science of it all become politicized?
> Are the people divided about whether it was a good idea to wait until new cases got this low before making decisions about moving forward?
People are generally agreeing that it's a good idea to wait b.c. they also think that there's still the possibility that a new wave of outbreak can happen.
> Or is there very broad support for the kind of discipline it takes to wait until May 5 despite the cases being so low already?
The policy of dropping the 'social distancing' was decided by the KCDC (consistently have less than 30 cases / cases which infection routes are unknown should be less than 5% of all new cases) on April 12th when the count has dropped less than 30 for the first time.
The government is still saying that if a new outbreak happens within the next two weeks, the day might be pushed back. It's still very elastic.
> Have people's opinions about the appropriate level of response become politicized? Have the facts and statistics and science of it all become politicized?
It's only targeting the people of Seoul, but 97% of all people agreed that the 'social distancing' policy should be dropped sometime soon, but 64% also agreed that April 19th was too fast - hence the May 5th decision.
As GP said in another reply, the incumbent party won a landslide victory in recent congressional election (180 out of 300 seats), so it seems South Koreans generally approve how the government handled it. (Of course the timing was fortuitous for Moon: had the election happened ~45 days ago things would have been very different.)
Even for the opponents, it seems the majority criticism was that the government didn't do enough - somehow they're very angry about not blocking visitors from China. (Many conservatives have a strong pro-America, anti-China sentiment, and frequently accuse the president of being the opposite.)
You don't have to be a conservative to see how the gov't screwed up early on -- the SK gov't went against the advice of the Korean Medical Association to restrict travel from China; instead the current Moon administration made a political decision to keep their door open to China to please Xi JinPing of China. The problem for the minority party was their link to Shincheonji, a cult responsible for the majority of all coronavirus cases, and they really had to keep their head down pretty much throughout the whole ordeal.
I consider myself a newbie and neutral on SK politics and had dismissed all the criticism of Moon being a commie and all before, but I'm starting to see through the garbage now.
Well, AFAIK, expert opinions were divided: many doctors were against border closing, saying that it will cause more people to enter illegally and hide, and then we'll have a harder time tracking them. (It's just a short boat ride across the Yellow Sea from China: you can't block the entire coastline.)
We may argue which side was right in retrospect, but it's not like Moon ignored the expert consensus.
Besides, Korean Medical Association is not exactly a neutral expert organization. The current head of KMA is this guy here [1], with pickets reading "Impeachment is void! Stop framing innocent President Park! Let's rescue innocent President Park with people's power and restore her honor!" blah blah, referring to Park Geun-Hye, kicked out in 2017 after corruption scandal.
There was the election of the National Assembly on April 15th, and it ended in an overwhelming victory for the party of the government. IMHO COVID-19 has shown how the current government is different to the last government that handled MERS - which was impeached (the percentage of supporters have greatly increased during the COVID-19 outbreak).
For people who are interested in current Korea's situation:
There were 18 new cases two days ago, and 8 new cases yesterday. The number of new cases have been consistently falling since April 14th. 'Intense social distancing' was stopped yesterday (April 19th), and the Korean government is planning to drop the 'social distancing' policy on May 5th.
Schools are planned to open on May 6th, and the ban of churches, bars, etc. are expected to be dropped in the following days (probably tomorrow).
The KCDC is saying that to drop the 'social distancing', there should consistently have less than 30 cases (which is true for a week) and cases which infection routes are unknown should be less than 5% of all new cases. (It was about 5%~10% when it was announced, and AFAIK it's now true.)
There's still some anxiety because people started to become dull to the social distancing movement - so people are worrying that new cases might increase.