South of the border

No, not that border — the 38th Parallel

Journalism, they say, is the first draft of history. If that’s the case, then newspapers have a good start on writing the history of the covid-19 crisis. The stories are piling up. As they should. It’s that dangerous.

One story making the rounds: South Korea, of all places, has kept a lid on the virus. Why “of all places”? Because its capital, Seoul, has a population density nearly twice that of New York, N.Y. And tens of millions of people visit every year, many of them international tourists, many of them from mainland China. Somebody said

Seoul has the world’s fourth largest metropolitan economy. This is not a small town.

And although North Korea claims it has handled the virus even better than its neighbors/cousins, few people in the world believe anything coming out of North Korea. Not press releases, not golf scores by its leaders. South Korea, on the other hand, is a democracy with a free press keeping watch.

The government of South Korea issued a report the other day about its response to the coronavirus. Let that sink in: While other governments are hunkering down, still, and trying to come up with masks and testing kits, still, the South Koreans are issuing reports concerning its successes. And how others can copy it. If others would.

According to Business Insider, our allies below the 38th Parallel used information, high-tech communications, and tests, tests, tests. Including a lot of “contact tracing.” Which means following up on when and where folks were in the hours and days before they tested positive for the (often hidden) disease.

“South Korea successfully flattened the curve of covid-19 in 20 days without enforcing extreme draconian measures that restrict freedom and movement of people,” the authors of the report noted.

It wasn’t dumb luck that kept the numbers down. In February, the country experienced a spike in cases — just as happened on these shores in March.

But quickly, the government in Seoul flooded the country with testing kits, found infected and potentially exposed people, and quarantined them. (This is what the United States government is doing now.) According to Business Insider:

“Since Feb, 29, South Korea’s daily new case totals have, for the most part, been lower than the day prior. The country has reported about 10,600 coronavirus cases and 229 deaths so far — among the lowest of any country.

“Unlike China and the U.S., South Korea never implemented large-scale lockdowns, aside from shutting down schools and imposing a curfew in some cities.

“According to the new report, that’s because the government communicated how many people were infected in each geographic area and city in real time, constantly updating national and local government websites that tracked cases and the number of residents tested. It also provided free smartphone apps that sent people emergency text alerts about spikes in infections in their local area.”

So far, so good. But then it might get creepy to red-blooded Americans.

The South Koreans were able to put apps on their phones that rang alarms when an exposed person walked away from a quarantined area. Um . . .

The Washington Post said the government of South Korea used GPS phone tracking, credit-card records and surveillance using video cameras to track where an infected person had been. And reported it, even to the point of alerting folks who might walk upon a street where an exposed person had been. Another alarm would go off on your phone if you approached a place where somebody had been a few hours before.

Something tells us that that would not go down well in the United States. Whereas the president of South Korea praised his country the other day for its “interdependence,” the word “independence” is more important in this country. The government tracking exposed people as they buy gasoline and take-out may be popular below the 38th Parallel, but not below the Mason-Dixon — or above it, or west of it, or on it.

But this is only the first draft of history. More chapters are going to be written in the coming months. Which lessons will be learned, and accepted, depends entirely on whether the story has a happy ending. For that, stay tuned.