I learned the origin story of Korea today. According to legend, there was a she-bear and a tigress living together in a cave. They both prayed to the divine king Hwanung to be made human. He told them to stay out of the sunlight for 100 days eating only 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort herbs.
The tigress got hungry and left the cave after only 20 days, but the she-bear stayed put. Deciding she was the more responsible one, Hwanung made the she-bear a human in the spring. They copulated and she gave birth to Dangun, the founder of the first Korean kingdom.
I thought it apropos that the country was founded because a she-bear followed social distancing guidelines. Apparently, I wasn't the only one to notice the parallel either. This story was actually referenced by the government when attempting to persuade people to follow the guidelines.
Nevertheless, I think crediting Confucianism or origin stories with the success of the Korean COVID-19 success is mistaken. Perhaps things were different when the outbreak started, but as long as I've been here, people don't seem to adhere to the social distancing guidelines much. I see a lot more tigresses than she-bears on the subway.
Instead I would credit effective government policy. Not only is testing free and widely available, but if you do need to self-isolate, the government will deliver food to you for free so you don't have to leave the house to eat. People who can't earn money because they're in isolation get a government subsidy to stay home. And all of this is relatively affordable to do because the policies were enacted swiftly before a large caseload built up.
Korea has a population of over 50 million, and yet there have only been around 11 thousand cases since the outbreak started. For comparison, last month New York had 11 thousand cases in a single day. It's a lot cheaper and easier to use these subsidies when the numbers are so small. Now that the number of cases in the US is in the millions, I don't know if it's even possible to emulate these policies.
