2020: Whats Behind South Koreas COVID-19 Exceptionalism?

The Atlantic.
May 6,2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/whats-south-koreas-secret/611215/

Whats Behind South Koreas COVID-19 Exceptionalism?

Seven weeks ago, South Korea and the U.S. had the same number of virus deaths. Today, South Korea has fewer than 300, and the U.S. has more than 70,000.

On February 16, a Sunday, a 61_year_old woman with a fever entered the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu, South Korea. She touched her finqer to a diqital scanner. She passed through a pair of glass doors and proceeded downstairs, to the prayer hall, where she sat with approximately 1,000 other worshippers in a large windowless room. Hours later, she exited the building and left behind a trail of pathogens that would lead to thousands of infections, triggering one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world.

By the end of February, South Korea had the most COVID-19 patients of any country outside China. New confirmed cases were doubling every few days, and pharmacies were running out of face masks. More than a dozen countries imposed travel restrictions to protect their citizens from the Korean outbreak, including the U.S., which had, at the time, recorded an official COVID-19 death toll low enough to count on one hand. ....

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