South Korea Tracks Mobile Phones Over MERS Outbreak 20
An anonymous reader tips news that South Korea has stepped up its efforts to fight an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) after the number of known cases keeps increasing rapidly. World health officials are not recommending general travel restrictions, but members of the public are being advised not to do so. Nearly 2,000 schools have been closed, and 2,300 people are in quarantine. The South Korean government is also taking the unusual step of using mobile phones to track which citizens may have been in contact with confirmed MERS patients. The outbreak in South Korea has been traced back to a man who went to multiple medical centers in mid-May seeking treatment for his symptoms. The government is apologizing for its slow response to the situation, and hoping the economic damage won't be too bad.
hoping the economic damage won't be too bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
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How about hoping the human toll won't be too bad.
When the economic system suffers, humans suffer, so it's a vicious cycle.
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A few people have died, but they were all elderly, and last I heard, the number was in the single digits. Much like with H1N1 and H1N5, those primarily at risk are the elderly, young children, and those with weakened or impaired immune systems. A generally healthy person, while feeling horribly sick, should have little chance of it being fatal.
I am living and working in Seoul, and much of the day to day life is pretty well normal, even with the school closures and people in quarantine. I have noticed zero c
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I wonder what would happen if this "accidentally" spread to North Korea?
Would they be able to handle a serious disease outbreak?
Re:hoping the economic damage won't be too bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
Due to people there being less mobile and the gov't having police state-like control over the population, an outbreak in N. Korea will likely be at least as well-contained as in western nations or better.
Anyways if you wanted to kill N. Koreans by intentionally introducing a virus there (germ warfare), MERS is pretty silly. There are tons of more effective biological agents than that.
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I have noticed zero change in the normal day-to-day life here, aside from a much larger presence of people wearing masks over their mouths.
That's pretty silly, the mask thing. It's the people INFECTED with the virus who should be wearing masks, not healthy people trying to avoid the disease. (but then infected people should be quarantined in a hospital and not walking about on the street, so...)
What people should be doing instead is wearing thick, heavy gloves in public places. Almost all flu virus transmissions happen from your hand touching a virus-coated surface and then touching your face with your hand. Wearing gloves means that your skin
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That's pretty silly, the mask thing. It's the people INFECTED with the virus who should be wearing masks, not healthy people trying to avoid the disease.
And what happens when you are incubating, possibly infectious, and develop a cough or sneeze? You let one rip in public, and get yourself checked out when you can? Or you wear a mask, to help reduce the transmission by an infected but asymptomatic person.
It also helps (even if trivially) with protecting the wearer.
It might not be a high-value protection, but it's low cost, and lowering the transmission rate in crowded areas, even a tiny amount, can have a huge effect on the spread of the disease.
American officials were quoted as saying (Score:2)
"This is brilliant! We should have thought of this as an excuse to track everyone."
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Americans don't need excuses.
what about the phones? (Score:1)
All of these news stories mention using mobile phones to track patients. None seem to explain how they intend to do this. For example: Can a patient leave his phone at home (as it is tracked) and wander about? What's to stop him/her from doing this? The article never explains even though mentioned in the headline.
that won't work (Score:1)