Viral Tweet Praises Korea But Doesn’t Mention Japan
In a recent viral tweet, Vincent Rajkumar – a professor at the Mayo Clinic – said the following:
South Korea followed the textbook principles of epidemiology. Kept deaths 40 times lower all the way till 75% of population fully vaccinated. This is success.
His tweet was accompanied by a chart showing the cumulative Covid death rate in the U.S., U.K. and Korea, with the line for Korea being much lower than the other two. In a follow-up tweet, Rajkumar identified the measures that supposedly account for Korea’s success, basically masks and contact tracing.
The implication is that if only the U.S. and U.K. had “followed the textbook principles of epidemiology” like Korea, they too could have achieved very low Covid death rates. But I’m not convinced.
First, there’s one small technical detail, which is that the U.K. did try both masks and contact tracing, and neither had much impact on the epidemic’s trajectory.
A recent report by the Public Accounts Committee concluded that Test and Trace (the U.K.’s contact tracing scheme) had “not achieved its main objective”, despite an “eye watering” budget. £37 billion here, £37 billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money…
So far so bad for idea that all we needed was masks and contact tracing. But there’s another reason to doubt the implication of Rajkumar’s tweet: Japan achieved exactly the same outcomes as Korea, and it did almost nothing until the start of this year.
In 2020, Japan had zero days of mandatory business closures and zero days of mandatory stay-at-home orders. The country relied on “limited contact tracing” (a designation given in the Oxford Blavatnik School’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker). This is in contrast to Korea, which used “comprehensive contact tracing”.
The chart below plots the stringency index for Japan, Korea and the U.K. Apart from a brief period at the start of 2020: the U.K.’s index has consistently been highest, while Japan’s has consistently been lowest.
In spite of this, both Japan and Korea have had zero excess mortality to date, whereas the U.K. – the most stringent of the three countries – has had between 6 and 20% excess mortality, depending on how you compute it.
The experience of Japan, combined with the global pattern of excess mortality, suggests that some cultural or biological factor that’s unique to East Asia explains the low death rates – and indeed the low infection rates – in that region. This factor could be more diligent social distancing or perhaps greater prior immunity.
Whatever the explanation, it’s unlikely Korea’s success could have been replicated in Britain – even if we’d ploughed the entire NHS budget into Test and Trace.
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He doesn’t mention Taiwan. 17 deaths in over 12 months from COVID, until the vaccinations began, then 700+ deaths from COVID and 900+ deaths from the vaccine since then. Textbook stuff, hey Professor?
Yup, and as I mentioned on a thread the other day, unless Taiwan actually opens up the country to foreign travellers, such that the vaccines can shield the population (I know, just roll with it), then all of those vaccine related deaths will have been ‘wasted’. Will they open up? These countries in the far east are health obsessed so I doubt they’ll open up soon. By the time they start to feel ready to open up the vaccines will be out of date so a new round will be required with further vaccine deaths. Weapons grade idiocy. All from a bunch of countries with supposedly world beating levels of average IQ. I have some friends in Korea and it sounds like life is pretty oppressive there. Mask on all the time as soon as you leave your flat (houses aren’t really a thing there). Vaccines required for lots of stuff. To be honest even if I could travel there (visa free travel has been suspended and you need a ‘reason’ to be granted one) I wouldn’t want to at the moment as life seems pretty miserable. So far Japan seems to be doing the best from a sceptic point… Read more »
Politely: “vaccines”.
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This post has been altered by persons unknown.
What do people think is the best term to use instead of “vaccines”? Terms like “so-called vaccines” or “pseudo-vaccines” (or slapping on some inverted commas if the communication is written) don’t really do it for me. I’d like a term that conveys what these substances actually ARE that are being injected, not what they AREN’T, or simply that the standard characterisation is wrong.
“Spike protein catalysts”?
Jabs is pretty generic
It’s definitely NOT “immunization.”
I’ve sometimes used the term “mitigation drug”, or more precisely “C19 mitigation drug”, based on it’s functionality – if you believe in the content of the leaflets promoting it’s use. My logic for using that term is that is not necessarily capable of preventing any infection, just reducing the severity of it if it happens, so the term complies with modern dictionary definitions.
Indeed… and perhaps Vincent Rajkumar should take a look at what’s going down there in Belgium…?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vUJKgtinvg
Same as Singapore, Vietnam and others. Vietnam had 35 deaths throughout 18 months of pandemic and then the injections started around four months ago. In those four months, 22,000 people have died.
Have you got a link to a good source about those death rates in Taiwan? The regime there will certainly have serious biowar defences and I would have thought it would also have a serious offensive biowar capability, but however serious it is there is nonetheless such a thing as a surprise blow that demonstrates that the balance of power is not what was previously thought.
So he should go and live in South Korea where he can reduce his risk of dying from a very low number to slightly lower number and follow slavishly everything he’s told to do.
Perhaps North Korea sounds more suitable for him?
plus it’s a super green country just look at the lack of light pollution.
Mostly vegan, and only two meals a day, it’s practically the template for the New Normal.
Of course there’s one Fat person leading it, just like the New Normal.
Considering there is massive research needed on role prior immunity to coronaviruses which flit across East Asia regularly, the Professor is either ignorant or using manipulated data to score his scientific/political points. Which is fine for now but in 5 years when the truth is revealed will cause a further erosion in thirst of science. Make your hypothesis, fine. But then test it by looking at all conflicting data or secondary data points. Seek to prove yourself wrong, and if you can’t, you likely have hit upon a scientific truth. Until you do so, you are just a flim-flam man with a PhD.
The good folk at wattsupwithat and their allies are still fighting their corner 12 years after Climategate aroused suspicions within large swaths of the public that perhaps The Science is not settled at all.
Sad but good point. But, sort to proves my point: science is less trusted in people’s real lives than ever before. We just need to keep challenging assumptions and pointing to facts that make their thesis probably false.
I don’t care about polls, if you look at people’s real actions, the loss of trust in politically motivated science is falling.
I don’t get out much these days but when I do there is virtually no mask wearing even when the nearby primary school kicks out.
The two small supermarkets I sometimes visit are almost Covid free; token unused sanitizer and screens around the tills that they were always going to keep citing protecting the staff from everyday lurgies.
As you say, judge the public by what they do, not as the press describe them.
Just look at the fans at sporting events. In my area, 100,000 people attend college football games every Saturday. I see maybe 200 people wearing masks and most stadiums do not require proof of vaccination to attend. And this is just the people inside the stadiums. There are 20,000 more people outside the stadium soaking in the game-day atmosphere.
(Some might say these are outdoor events, and thus the risk is lower. However, everyone who goes to a game spends plenty of time inside at concession stands or rest rooms. There have been no documented “super spreader” events or even tiny-spreader events. So, yes, people are showing us in mass how unfrightened they are of COVID.)
All meaningless figures and statistics and speculation over nothing. All it takes is for another ‘Variant’ to hit Korea to turn their ‘success’ into a ‘failure’.
Just another non-story to keep the Covid Circus running and running.
Anyone here booked their third ‘booster’ shot yet?
If you don’t, Javid will punish you!
I’m due to get one, won’t, but so far they have failed to tell me how or where.
Updated my QR code vax passport yesterday so I’m not on the naughty step yet.
Mission creep for the microwave cleverphone continues: from advertising machine to a wallet for an internal passport… How long until a communications waystation between a microchip implant and a big computer is added to the list?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea …. maybe it already is.
Remember spring 2020, all the papers crowing about how the Eastern European countries were doing soooo well on account of masks and whatnot. Then that autumn all the papers asking how those masks and whatnot failed to stop the second wave. In the end, they generally had worse outcomes that the UK.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea …. not looking so good either
I met a chap who was trapped for months in Slovenia in Spring 2020 (own business and 2nd home there so not too bad).
They went mask nuts from the start but as there weren’t many masks about it meant wrapping towels and T shirts around their faces to go for essential shopping only.
In March 2020 S.Korea was reporting a mortality rate of ?+1%. This was derived from the numbers hospitalised with Covid against those who died of Covid.
They then conducted mass testing of several hundred thousand random citizens and found that a high proportion of them had already contracted Covid and survived without noticing, predominantly younger people.
This brought their mortality rate down to the much lower levels that we became familiar with.
So in short, not labelling every death as covid like the UK and cases were actually cases, as in needing hospital treatment.
Sorry about the grey box thing, was meant to be underscore.
Should read Broadcast on BBC Radio news before UK lockdown began
It was comparing the number of deaths, which remained much the same, to a far higher incidence of those who had contracted the disease than was previously understood. Decreased the mortality rate by a factor of ten or more.
The number of people who have actually been infected by this virus is probably 5 to 10 fold higher than official numbers. This changes the denominator (cases), which changes the infection fatality rate. It makes it many times SMALLER – actually lower than the flu in age groups under, say, 40.
Error.
No need to look that far.
Within the UK we have significant excess deaths in England and Scotland, but Wales and NI didn’t exceed 4 standard deviations from the mean. England peaked at about 30 standard deviations from the mean in spring 2020, Scotland a little lower at 20.
It is worth noting that this effect was seen for all age groups, not just at population-wide level, and that the differences were seen before the individual nations of the UK started their petty one-upmanship game of who could have policies more stringent from those imposed by Westminster.
There is something rather weird about the way covid has manifested its impact around the world. Perhaps if we knew why we’d know rather a lot about what the virus does and where it originally came from.
One factor that is hardly ever discussed is that some immunocompromised people may carry the virus for a very long time. In particular I recall a report of one South African HIV patient being infected by multiple mutations of coronavirus and testing PCR positive for multiple months. So maybe if the population contains more of such long-term spreaders it is more difficult to curb the epidemic.
It is probably THE main reason why Zero Covid is such nonsense. The other reason is animals: 80% of deer in some US state were reported as infected IIRC.
Not that it matters very much, of course. I bet the same “weird waves” and what not would have been observed for any other cold virus before the pandemic if we had ever bothered to do such a crazy amount of testing.
The deer population seems to be weathering the COVID plague quite well. I see 10 to 20 deer in my back yard almost every week. In fact, I’ve never seen more deer in residential neighborhoods. This actually tells me far fewer people are hunting deer – probably because they can’t afford this expensive hobby/sport.
If we only counted deaths that were ‘from covid’ rather than ‘with covid’ our rates might show a similiar curve.
Obesity is much much rarer in Japan and Korea than it is here. They are all health nuts. It’s not just about calories. Their diet is just much healthier.
I used to go quite frequently and always got called fat (yes they do tell you! Less so in Japan) even though my BMI is within normal range by UK standards (towards upper end but still).
Japan, Korea?
Lets not forget that we live in a country where MP’s openly take bribes. My MP’s bribes amount to £61,000 a year
Those same MP’s then have us locked up for speaking to our families or celebrating Christmas
Rotten to the core
Both Japan and Korea have serious problems with corruption (although much improved vs a decade or three ago). Yet they manage to operate well functioning high tech societies.
My point is why worry about J or K, lets start a process of locking our MP’s up
If only people did that, there would be no need to carry on endlessly analysing statistics and figures, none of which can be proved to be true for a start.
We are only eleventh in the World Corruption league, but our MOs are working hard on that.
Japanese society is not necessarily ‘healthy’ – when you can buy ‘soiled’ knickers from automatic vending machines there:
https://www.techinasia.com/japan-used-panty-vending-machines-fact-fiction
I think you’ll find the Japanese and Koreans take bribes too. And a lot of products that used to be Made in Japan are now Made in China – the Japanese despise their own people too, when it comes to making profits.
Germany hat contact tracing in place from the start, it also went for surgical masks or even FFP2 masks only later on, heavily enforced, often mandated outside.
It’s currently in panic mode.
In particular as Sweden has now done not just as well but better than it since the first wave was over.
Those corrupted pseudo-science propagandists like Rajkamur are a disgrace and danger to the human race.
Because people were using multiple hats and leaving them all over the place. It blew the system
Yep. two-three months ago, someone told me that in Sweden the waves lagged other European countries, so they were bound to get another large wave … Oh, not!
The situation is bad enough
Stop trying to make wa…
According to official German narrative everyone has already died in Sweden.
That’s handy, now they don’t have to explain the inconvenient truth that government mandates don’t work.
I would have gone for Spain, lived in Barcelona in the past, a city I love. But after speaking to my best friend there, who was incarcerated in a tiny apartment with her 9-year old son for almost 3 months solid (literally, the lad wasn’t allowed out at all, not even to go for a walk), who was afraid she would get in trouble with the police because she had gone to the supermarket and bought chocolate, I changed my mind and will never look at the country the same again.
And apparently they are still nuts with the masks, a friend of mine visited over the summer and was thrown out of a shop for having forgot to put his on. And they’ve been required to wear them outside for more than a year now, I have a friend who has to wear them about 16 hours a day (work, getting to work, etc.). Spanish lungs from young to old will be ruined.
They have banned future shutdowns and medical apartheid though in Spain and have had many fewer travel restrictions than here. Take the muzzle madness out and Spain has been better than UK, after the initial insane reaction. The best you can say on this government is they have given a way out to the sceptical, even if the media communication has meant many have been unaware of those get out’s.
Many European countries though are more hardline than Spain now.
They can’t afford future shutsdowns! Have you seen their numbers lately, while all of Europe the numbers are going through the roof, they’re almost flat. I don’t believe it for a second, they’re probably just not testing.
True that more countries are going more hardline – although NL is still reasonable, it’s getting worse and that is being driven 100% by the politicians (who in turn are almost undoubtedly being driven by Brussels).
I don’t know if your name means you are based in Notts, I used to live there. I would love to see the nassi pass introduced there and somebody try to enforce it…
I have an acquaintance in Southern Spain who reported that everybody is relaxed and ignoring the restrictions there.
I can imagine, sourthern Spain is easier-going in general. And Catalonia is a law onto itself. My friend says even her son keeps reminding her to wear her face rag properly. She has asthma and in the beginning was very worried (she also had cancer a few years ago) and was wearing masks before they were required. Now she wears them under her nose/chin when she can.
My comment to you was intended to be under your comment about Cyprus, not sure how it ended up there (probably because I’m half asleep).
I’ve just done some quick numbers (almost literally on the back of a napkin, so they are not perfect, but they are ball-park correct) of 3 bordering countries, all very similar in terms of culture, living standards, health care: Germany, NL, Belgium In spring 2020 Germany and NL took an approach not that far removed from Sweden, Belgium went bat-shit cray cray and was more in line with the French incarceration and masking mode. I’ve taken figures from worldometer. At beginning of November 2020 deaths per million were as follows: Germ – approx. 126 per mil NL – approx. 439 per mil Bel – 1067 per mil Over summer 2020 Germany had introduced masks, it was one of the excuses used to force it on NL, which held out until December 2020 – “look how well the Germans are doing”. Until they no longer were. Over winter 2020/21, not only did the German deaths per mil. catch up with NL, they passed us, even though they have been getting increasingly stringent/crazy (very typical – they said that the virus was verboten and it will obey, jawohl!) November 2021 Germ – 1153 deaths per mil NL – 1080 per mil Bel… Read more »
A casual glance shows the same pattern in rise & fall of infection, the rest is just statistics, evidently there will be variability in each geolocation, humidity for one, lifestyle another.
Sod all to do with government intervention, probably a lot to do with recording methods & surveillance, a +test doesn’t = sickness.
Cyprus rolls out trial for electronic scanning of ‘Safe Pass’ or ‘Covipass’, call it what you will, obtained through being double jabbed. This country has gone from an island paradise to a ‘Police State’ in under two years. Mask wearing still mandatory outdoors, huge fines for non-compliance.
https://cyprus-mail.com/2021/11/08/coronavirus-trial-period-for-safepass-scan-begins/
I was considering emigrating to Cyprus for a short while. Their handling of the pandemic rapidly convinced me to drop these plans and treat the country with all due respect that a banana republic deserves.
In fact I’m not even going for vacation there, it’s in the same category as China now.
Same here, but my new home would have been the Netherlands.
No chance now.
Unless we know the average number of cycles each country was using in their PCR tests, comparison is futile.
The ONLY worthwhile excess death rate is that from crematoria and/or funeral directors and these tell a different story to the official figures in the UK.
Ignoramuses in English-speaking countries call SARSCoV2 “Covid” (the name for a type of pneumonia brought about by a SARSCoV2 infection as one of its causative factors, seen mostly in people over 80 suffering from existing chronic illnesses), or sometimes they use “coronavirus” without an article (why not go the whole hog and call it “virus”, or for added infantile effect, “Mr Virus”), but what I would like to know is what SARSCoV2 is called by the general population in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
If it’s called something like “new SARS”, that’s a major cultural difference with the West right there.
After the British government advised on maskwearing and social distancing, someone I know was hassled by plainclothes transport police officers on a train for nothing other than the fact that he was wearing a mask. (I should clarify that it was an N95 surgical mask, not a ski mask 🙂 .) Others reported being laughed at by other passengers in that period. You wouldn’t get that in East Asia.
COVID-19 is the official WHO designation of the disease and SARS CoV 2 is the virus. Seems like we’ve found the ignoramus.
Calling it the ‘Covid virus’ is OK by me because it’s the virus wot causes ‘Covid’ innit.
“Vaccinated patients are dying of Covid due to waning immunity, says Dr Susan Hopkins“. (She’s the “chief medical adviser” at the regime’s Health Security Agency.)
If she were to spin any more, she could be an ice dancer.
So the line is this: “Loads of people who were ‘vaccinated’ are dying. So make sure you all get ‘vaccinated’ some more! Do your bit for the Nation!”
You know what they say about doing the same thing multiple times and expecting different results.
When I get a full tank, I can drive a car for a while, until the tank gets empty. Then I have to fill it again. And then again, after a bit of more driving. But according to your “logic”, that’s insanity, as I am repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results (actually, the latter part only according to you). So I should just give up on filling the tank and driving altogether, then it would be “logical”. I think you cracked the case, Sherlock.
But we could drive our bodies perfectly well before these ‘Covid injections’ came along.
Another one at Imperial College:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/s.hopkins
Here, you can write to her and tell her how much you admire her work and how grateful the nation is:
s.hopkins@imperial.ac.uk
Your conclusion is correct, Noah, but did you notice how you inadvertantly made another correct discovery : that ‘excsess mortality’ is a bogus bit of data?:
“between 6 and 20% excess mortality, depending on how you compute it.”
AS said – it’s another modelling variable, where you takes your pick – not useful real data. Thanks for confirmation of that point.
When I first saw the headline, I had a suspicion that that person was hired by(or bribed by) Korean government. Because the government has driven tireless and fearsome ‘anti Japan campaign’ from the beginning. They have always tried to make Korea look better than Japan. So.. but maybe this is not the case or.. maybe not. As a Korean expat, I feel people here are not interested. It is natural. Korea is too far away from here. But a few things I would like to say are Korean government is as corrupted as government here, mainstream media there are only propaganda machine, and Korean skeptics are treated like lunatics. The situation is pretty much similar. The number of official vaccine deaths is as much as covid deaths but coercing people to get jabbed is getting worse everyday. Thanks to government’s ruthless vaccine drive, now more than 70 % of whole population is double jabbed. What an achievement in such a short period of time. Vaccine passport has been introduced on the 1st of November. Before that, more than 6 people should not be gathered. That might have changed now but only for double jabbed. Oh, when you are not jabbed,… Read more »
The ongoing COVID-19 nonsense here in the United States exists solely and exclusively because our governments have failed to use the correct treatment. They used so-called “vaccines” when Japan has just proven, in less than ONE MONTH, that Ivermectin can wipe out the disease. IVM was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 2015. One of the 3 most important drugs in human history: Aspirin, Penicillin, and Ivermectin. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
They all used early treatment with antivirals from the beginning of pandemy
“suggests that some cultural or biological factor that’s unique to East Asia explains the low death rates – and indeed the low infection rates – in that region.”
Erm.
It could be, however we know in the West we all have some existing cross reactive immunity too.
It could be that East Asians have better metabolic health, lower ACE2-increasing medicines prescribed in older cohorts or a diet contributing anti-adrogens that lessen expression of TMPRSS2.
Or it could be that some countries have grossly abused and over used a test that in and of itself signifies nothing.
I favour the latter explanation.
I’m not aware of any cultural mechanism that could shield from viruses, especially in densely populated East Asian cities?
If Dr Carl implies a greater collectivist culture is responsible, manifested in greater adherence to NPIs (masking, contract tracing, WFH, social distancing, washing hands), the evidence I’ve seen shows this is the least likely explanation.