Author: GIKorea

I would say that this is what unemployment insurance is for instead of implementing a universal basic income:

Nearly 60 percent of Koreans say they oppose introducing a universal basic income in response to the economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a survey conducted on Friday by Embrain Public, a local pollster, 57.6 percent of those questioned said they were against giving every citizen 1 million won ($830), while 39.8 percent said they were in favor. The rest (2.6 percent) did not respond.

Among supporters of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, 57.7 percent were in favor of the idea, whereas 81.5 percent of the main opposition United Future Party were against it.

The findings come as politicians across the country discuss the need for support for people whose businesses have been hit hard by COVID-19.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully this gives people cautious optimism that the worst of the coronavirus spread will be over once the temperatures warm:

The virus that causes Covid-19 may have a temperature sweet spot at which it spreads fastest, a new study has suggested, but experts say people should avoid falling into the trap of thinking it will react to seasonal changes in exactly the same way as other pathogens, like those that cause the common cold or influenza.

The study, by a team from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, the capital of south China’s Guangdong province, sought to determine how the spread of the new coronavirus might be affected by changes in season and temperature.

Published last month, though yet to be peer-reviewed, the report suggested heat had a significant role to play in how the virus behaves.

“Temperature could significantly change Covid-19 transmission,” it said. “And there might be a best temperature for viral transmission.”

The “virus is highly sensitive to high temperature”, which could prevent it from spreading in warmer countries, while the opposite appeared to be true in colder climes, the study said.

As a result, it suggested that “countries and regions with a lower temperature adopt the strictest control measures”.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This was a Chinese study, so like with any information coming from China be suspicious of its accuracy:

People with type A blood are more likely to catch coronavirus while those with type O seem more resistant, a preliminary study of about 2,000 patients in China showed. 

A team of Chinese researchers, led by Wang Xinghuan from the Centre for Evidence-Based and Translational Medicine at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, conducted the study. 

They took blood group patterns of patients in Wuhan and Shenzhen and compared them to local healthy populations. They found that blood type A patients showed a higher rate of infection and tended to develop more severe symptoms.

In the general population, type O blood (34 percent) is more common than type A (32 percent). But in the infected, this was reversed, with type O people at 25 percent and type A at 41 percent. People with type O blood made up 25 percent of deaths in the research. Normally, people with type O blood account for 32 percent Wuhan’s population. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I am surprised this did not happen sooner:

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said Wednesday that it will suspend all routine visa services from Thursday for an unspecified period of time in keeping with the State Department’s measures to respond to the new coronavirus outbreak.

The embassy said in a statement that it “will cancel all routine immigrant and nonimmigrant visa appointments” starting Thursday. However, this will not affect the existing visa waiver program, and services to U.S. citizens will continue.

The visa waiver enables Korean nationals to travel to the United States for tourism or business purposes for 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

If people from Europe are spreading the coronavirus so much you would think the Moon administration would either restrict travel or put people into mandatory quarantine:

In Busan, a 24-year-old Korean male who recently traveled around Europe, including Italy, which now has the second-highest number of infections after China, tested positive for the coronavirus on March 10 upon his return to Korea, Busan officials said.

The man left for Europe on Feb. 9, returned to Korea on March 4 and started showing symptoms from March 9. Nevertheless, he dined at a restaurant, went to a coffee shop and rode the Busan subway until he finally tested positive on March 10.  

A 44-year-old Korean woman in Gwangju likewise traveled to Europe for two weeks earlier this month and came down with a cough last Wednesday. She arrived in Korea last Thursday but was able to pass through customs at Incheon International Airport because her temperature was within the normal range, said Gwangju officials. She took an airport limousine from Incheon to Gwangju, which was a four-hour ride, and mostly stayed home till she tested positive for the virus last Saturday. 

In Seoul, a French female national who arrived in Korea on March 9 started showing symptoms of a cough last Wednesday and turned out positive on Friday. Her male Korean friend was also tested and turned out positive Saturday. Seoul officials believe the French national contracted the disease from her father in France, who informed his daughter last Thursday that he was infected. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

President Trump is absolutely right about South Korea’s slow start, but I would not say South Korea had a “great number of deaths”. The mortality rate is very low in South Korea:

 U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that South Korea did a “good job” handling the coronavirus outbreak but also had “tremendous problems” at the start.

Trump made the remark at a White House press briefing as he defended his own administration’s response to the growing outbreak in the United States.

“I noticed a lot of people are talking about South Korea because they’ve done a good job on one side, but on the other side, tremendous problems at the beginning,” he said. “They had tremendous problems and great numbers of death.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but South Korea current has 8,236 positive infections with 75 deaths. That is a .009 mortality rate currently. As long as Americans handle this issue smartly by not getting the elderly and those with compromised immune systems infected the mortality rate should remain low in the U.S. as well.