On how to beat the coronavirus

This is a good news, bad news story. The bad news is what you’ve been hearing. Yes, I’m tired of hearing about the virus, too. That’s why I’ll skip right to the good news.

The good news is we humans are capable of learning. We may be slow learners. We may also do some really block-headed stuff. However, we can learn.

We can learn from what China first and now South Korea have done and are doing. Lots of movement restrictions, testing and lots more testing, tracking exposure to every possible person, all to wipe out pockets of infection, can flatten the curve and eventually stop the spread of this virus.

Why is it those things have worked so well in China and South Korea? Having spent a little time in both countries, I have a guess.

Both countries have cultures of social cooperation. Sure, people there are plenty competitive with each other. A cheerful Korean grandmother won’t hesitate to rap a man smartly on the shins with a cane if he’s daydreaming or looking at his smart phone and doesn’t step aside to let her on the bus first. When it matters, though, almost everyone pulls together.

I saw a remarkable example in Foshan, China. Visualize an intersection of two 6-lane streets with cars, trucks and buses plus literally hundreds of bicycles being ridden by commuters on their way to work in the early morning. Some bicyclists are going straight and some need to cross.

Their movements were like those of schools of fish, groups of riders flowing along in one direction, then one person slowing to allow another to cross in front, then moving back together again without mishap, this happening over and over and over.

That behavior, like it’s not an evil loss of freedom to care for the welfare of those around one, has served China and South Korea well in the face of the pandemic.

It seems awfully long ago when, back in February, China seemed to be stumbling over itself daily as the new, or novel, coronavirus spread in a city of 11 million people. As I write this it appears you can now count the number of new cases of Covid-19 in China each day on your fingers. New cases there now are coming from travelers entering the country.

South Korea first detected the virus inside its borders in mid-January. Within 24 hours a case was reported in Washington state, the first in the U.S.

At its peak over 900 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in South Korea in a single day, on Feb. 29. Then the tide turned. Three weeks later new South Korean cases are down to under 100 per day.

In a Jan. 27 meeting in Seoul between the Korean CDC and 20 medical companies, the South Korean government asked the companies to develop tests to detect the new coronavirus. Eight days later the first of those tests was in use. In a small country of over 51 million people, 290,000 South Koreans have now been tested and more than 8,000 Covid-19 infections identified.

Here at home we’re not doing quite as well, to put it mildly. As I write this new Covid-19 cases are being confirmed at the rate of 2,500 per day in the US and climbing. The disease is being spread as people, many young and not visibly ill, travel about. The cruelest fallout is the virus popping up in nursing homes in Washington, Kansas, South Carolina, Illinois, and heartbreakingly, in a veterans home in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

News media, social media, public and private groups and businesses are finally spreading the same message, though. Don’t travel if you don’t have to. Don’t even go out of the house if you don’t have to. Practice social distancing. Wash your hands well and often. Don’t spread the disease. Flatten the curve.

Antisocial media, though, still spews conspiracy theories. Government created the virus, they say. It’s a deep state plan to take your guns, they say. It’s fake news to discredit the president. There’s a lot more. Sigh.

Two Journal columnists recently wrote similarly that they feared more people would be hurt by overreaction — canceling events and staying home — than by the spread of the disease itself. Well guess what? Looking back at what it took to finally stop this disease from spreading, it will look exactly like overreaction!

This is not a polite disease that tells us when someone’s got it so we can send them to a two-week timeout. It’s an invisible enemy. We have to assume we are all ill until proven otherwise. Yes, that’s overreaction. That’s how we’ll beat this virus.

Dave Finkelnburg is a longtime Idahoan, a former newspaper journalist, and is currently semi-retired from an engineering career.