Asian Boss
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020
36:56 · 6.6M views · Mar 28, 2020
Asian Boss interviews Professor Kim Woo-joo of Korea University Guro Hospital about COVID-19 in early 2020. He covers masks, testing, aerosol spread, and South Korea's response.
In early pandemic threads, HN commenters pointed to it as an uninterrupted, practical expert view from Korea on masks, testing and airborne spread.
9 comments from Hacker News
I agree there's a lot of misconceptions and myths about masks. It clearly is not a panacea, it's really difficult (or even impossible) to quantify the impact, especially when combined with other precautions. Plus there's very little research about how masks affect this particular virus, because it's always somewhat specific. IMO the best thing we can do is look at experience from countries that managed to get the infection under control, like SK. I highly recommend these interviews with one of their leading experts, what he says makes a lot of sense: [LINK] this video When he says face masks are one of the effective measures, I'd probably trust him ... The question is what exactly should be the rules. Our country is in a lockdown for ~2 months now, and most of the time face masks were required when leaving the house. We're probably going to relax the rules a bit soon, only requiring them when closed spaced, etc. Which probably makes sense, it's pointless to wear a mask when jogging alone in the woods, or something like that (and people were not following that perfectly anyway). My personal opinion is that face masks do help, partly because they limit how far your droplets reach, partly because it limits how frequently you touch your face. Even a simple home-made mask or scarf will help with that. I think a lot of the "do not wear masks" recommendations in many countries is due to concerns that a recommendation to wear a face mask would make the shortage even worse.
To learn more about coronavirus, treatment and vaccine development from the perspective of doctors in S. Korea, try watching these interviews in order. Each is about 30 - 50 min long. I posted the links and the dates they were uploaded. The videos are excellent because the doctors are not interrupted with questions. 1) 2020.03.27 1st interview with Professor Kim, leading expert on coronavirus in Korea. In Korean with excellent English subtitles. this video 2) 2020.04.14 2nd interview with Professor Kim, leading expert on coronavirus in Korea. In Korean with excellent English subtitles. [LINK] 3) 2020.04.25 Interview with the Director General of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) about COVID-19 Vaccine. It's in English. [LINK] 4) Note in the interview with Prof Kim uploaded on 2020.04.14, they were still not sure if a recovered patient testing positive again was due to reactivation/reinfection or not. They were still trying to confirm it as of 2020.04.14. But it seems the yna.co.kr article posted on 2020.04.29 confirms recovered coronavirus patients may have tested positive again due to traces of virus fragments that have been inactivated. 5) I'm hoping the Youtube channel will upload another interview with Prof Kim about covid-19 soon.
According to the Corona expert in South Korea, masks help a great deal. His assumption on why the WHO only recommends masks in Asia and not anywhere else is due to the limited amount of supply anywhere but in Asia. In Asia people like already own masks. Anywhere else people would first need to stock up. Leading to shortages. As such, it's better not to recommend them so medical professionals are prioritized. It's also interesting that in in Europe/US they focus on a person not getting a disease. In Asia they often wear a masks if the person isn't feeling well. Meaning, the mask is to prevent the person who is wearing it from infecting others. This bit is often glossed over. The video is available at this video . I don't know exactly where they discussed the masks. The entire video is great, so suggest to watch the whole thing. Note: It also talks about spreading by touching your nose and then someone or some surface.
I highly recommend this video from Korea (Professor Kim Woo-joo from Korea University Guro Hospital) that gives a Korean perspective on the disease and the western response to it: this video A few points of interest: (He is a very respectful fellow so apologies if the summary seems a bit to the point) - Masks help and he is slightly puzzled why the west hasn't adopted that culture - Their testing and tracing helps and they doubt the US would allow their level of privacy invasion - Korea is doing well because they have had to respond to pandemics and were prepared (as are Taiwan, Singapore etc)
> The numbers from Korea, Italy and the Diamond princess are not good but they are not world-ending either. You lumped Korea and Italy together which is strange. Then apparently (seeing your comment chain) you tried to transpose it onto US and rest of the world. Korea was ready (experience with previous outbreaks). They started early. They tested like there's no tomorrow and are still doing that. Test - isolate, test - isolate, test - isolate. Everybody wearing masks - negative, positive, or untested. Everybody [1] And their health infra is impeccable. They are people with a great civic sense (I have lived there for months). 1. this video