That’s a horrible article. First, notice the scales on the two charts are drastically different (a factor of 2). They should be corrected for population, which is about 5.5x. Second, we are 2 weeks behind them at least, so we should never be superimposed on top of their chart - were not fighting the same things at the same time. South Korea has about 50,000 population corrected cases. Have they don’t a better job than most countries? Yes. In 10-14 days if our curve doesn’t flatten then we can officially say they did better than us, which is what the article is arguing. Btw, each country has their own freedoms of movement, laws, travel - it’s hard to compare reactions but only so far.
I am not sure you said anything that really contradicted the article. I basically read the article and your comments to be pretty similar:
-- Both countries showed similar growth early (in the same
relative time period).
-- South Korea was able to take measures (extreme testing and distancing) that has now been able to flatten their curve.
-- The US is now trying to take similar measures (albeit later in the process), and now we will see if the US can similarly flatten the curve.
-- However, given the US's delay compared to S. Korea in taking these measures, particularly in testing, there is reason to believe that the US curve will flatten relatively later.
One of the other things I want to address is this idea of "lets just adjust for population." Yes, the US has a much larger population than S. Korea, but that doesn't just mean we should multiply their results by the population difference ratio to get the proper comparison. The US is also a much much larger country. For comparison, the U.S. has about 90 people per square mile in population density, while South Korea has about 1,302 people per square mile. In some ways, that is the more critical factor. Take NYC for example. I would be interested to see a comparison of just their curve to the S. Korea curve. It wouldn't surprise me if it is much worse.
Either way, the real takeaway from the article, that S. Korea has already been able to flatten their curve through the measures they took was the takeaway for me that was interesting. I hope the US can do the same in the same timeline. We will see.
