97. Another Country

(This week, I looked again at the Channel 4 documentary
“The country that beat the virus”, first shown on 13 May.
Watch and weep.)

In South Korea they’re wary - they got scarred
by MERS: bureaucracy means people die.
The medics do the briefing, run the show
but this time round, they’ll tell the people straight
the measures that they need to take, and why.
They need a test developing; they blitz
the process. Normally, they’d have to wait
a year. Now, it’s a week. They’re ready, keen
to trace the contacts. Takes ten minutes max
to call up phone, health records, credit card.
A kid puts up this map. People can see
the places, contacts, times. Eight million hits.
No lockdown. They don’t need to. This machine
locates the virus, stops it in its tracks.