I see you gents had a South Korea discussion while I was sawing logs. The
Atlantic piece is largely correct, although there's no need to make gratuitous slams on the U.S. This place is no panacea: If we hadn't had the MERS goat rodeo in 2015 we'd probably be doing a lot worse. The public health authorities and politicians learned from that fiasco and the memory is fresh. I also think the fact that the huge Daegu outbreak happened early on caused a lot of people to take this seriously.
Although there has been some opposition from the press and, well, the opposition, it's been minimal. With some exceptions early on, the press here hasn't been all about scoring points or trying to make politicians look bad. From afar, that looks like one of the biggest problems the U.S. has. One example: Korea has quietly been using hydroxychloroquine on patients admitted to hospitals. It isn't a political issue--they just do it.
While I was driving this morning there was a discussion on the way forward on the radio. I hadn't thought about it, but it makes sense that countries like Korea will probably start signing agreements with individual countries that are also doing well to reopen air travel without quarantining their respective citizens. Certainly Korea-Taiwan would work and Korea-Vietnam probably for starters (the 'Nam has become a big vacation spot for Koreans). In the meantime, domestic tourism is reaching big numbers and might even do better than 2019 since we've had a tourism deficit for decades (i.e. Koreans usually spend more on tourism abroad than other people spend on tourism here).
My good buddy at
Asia Times is supposed to putting out a piece this afternoon on East vs. West responses to COVID. If he gets it out before I hit happy hour, I'll post it and possibly add some comments. It should be interesting.
Cheers,
CB (formerly known as Commander Cody as Obvert has noted)
Beer, because barley makes lousy bread.
; Julia Child
