3 ms·

Viruses can be stopped. See South Korea, China, and Taiwan for a few examples. Sure, the Chinese approach would not be possible in a democracy. But Taiwan? My f

by ttul 6y ago

Viruses can be stopped. See South Korea, China, and Taiwan for a few examples. Sure, the Chinese approach would not be possible in a democracy. But Taiwan? My friends there continue to live a very free life, yet COVID-19 is nowhere to be seen... Arguably, they are much freer than we are in North America and Europe right now.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 6y ago
And New Zealand. And somehow Australia just reported their first day with no new cases in 6 months.
- kgc 6y ago
  Both New Zealand and Australia performed strict lockdowns. The US/Europe is unlikely to be able to achieve the same level of compliance needed to make those successful.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Depends on time scale, suppose for argument no vaccine works, then these countries just have to have massive border control and limit travel massively as they are now. There is no ‘they are much freer’ argument in the diverse states, because people are dealing with this thing in a huge diversity of ways. Some people have exactly the same life, but they wear a mask, no big deal...
timr 6y ago
"Viruses can be stopped. See South Korea, China, and Taiwan for a few examples." China just had an outbreak of hundreds cases in the Uighur region. What seems more likely: that China has truly "stopped" the virus, and it just re-appeared, miraculously, in one of the most heavily travel restricted places on earth...or that it's actually spreading in China, and testing isn't catching it? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54687533 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54687533 Also, you'll note the following quote in the story linked above: "Asymptomatic cases are not counted in China's official tally of 85,810 confirmed infections." As for South Korea, it still has regular outbreaks, including some large ones: https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-pandemics-india-archive-fefbdcf72cafd86c34ecb989e70c4c33 https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-pandemics-india-ar... Taiwan's success at managing the virus has come ~entirely from strict border controls. Being a tiny island nation certainly helps with this. They still have cases, but so far, they're all amongst travelers: https://time.com/5905129/taiwan-coronavirus-record/ https://time.com/5905129/taiwan-coronavirus-record/ The overall picture here is that some nations have done better than others at controlling the virus (at considerable expense) but almost nobody can claim to have "stopped" it.
- GregarianChild 6y ago
  The Time article you cite is simplistic in regards of Taiwan's Covid response. Let me cite what I wrote 5 months ago in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290800 about Taiwan: ----------- The country has 23M inhabitants, most of them are clustered in a few densely populated metro areas (Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung–Changhua, Taoyuan–Zhongli, Tainan and Hsinchu). Taiwan had many daily flights to/from China, including daily directs from Wuhan (stopped 31 December 2019). Taiwan is one of the world's older countries (median age ~43). Taiwan permitted the docking of the Diamond Princess [2] and allowed passengers to disembark in Keelung (near Taipei), on 31 January, before the ship left for Japan. The ship was subsequently found to have numerous confirmed infections onboard. In reaction, Taiwan's government published the 50 locations where the cruise ship travelers may have visited and asked around 600k citizens who may have been in contact with the tour group to conduct symptom monitoring and self-quarantine if necessary. None were confirmed to have COVID-19 after 14 days had passed. (The only advantage Taiwan had was that facemasks were widely used and even expected on public transport for years.) For all those reasons, Taiwan was at unusually high risk from Covid. Yet, no lockdown. No country managed the disease better than Taiwan. We should learn from Taiwan. See [1] for an analysis of Taiwan's response from early March 2020. It is interesting to reflect upon why most countries ignored Taiwan. The World Health Organization's locking out Taiwan on China's request is probably one reason. Is it the only one? [1] C. Y. Wang, C. Y. Ng, R. H. Brook, Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan: Big Data Analytics, New Technology, and Proactive Testing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32125371/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32125371/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Princess_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Princess_(ship)
  - timr 6y ago
    Regardless of what you think of the response, facts from now trump facts from five months ago. The point of citing the Time article was to show that they continue to have imported cases on a regular basis (fact), and that they prevent these from spreading by strict border controls (fact), not to provide commentary on the quality of their overall response. Taiwan is a tiny island, with relatively little international travel (compared to the US, China, etc). If they have no cases internally, and they seal the borders before those cases are introduced, then almost nothing else matters. Small, isolated, island countries can do this -- but even then (i.e. New Zealand) one mistake will mean rapid endemic spread. So sure, as long as Taiwan continues to effectively isolate itself from the outside world, they can probably carry on. But they're not going to: they're already talking about re-establishing travel with the rest of Asia. It's virtually impossible for a country like the US to do the same thing Taiwan did. Even if we could seal the borders like Taiwan, our population is about 13 times larger, we have large land borders with other countries, and a proportionally large number of expatriate residents with right-of-return. Even with our bans on international travelers, the US has had 6.6 million foreign arrivals in 2020 [1]. Effectively 25% of the entire population of Taiwan has arrived in the US in 2020. And that's just non-citizens. [1] https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data
kgc 6y ago
South Korea's approach was different from China's and relied heavily on widespread testing.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Where did they say it was the same?

by ttul 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pessimizer 6y ago

And New Zealand. And somehow Australia just reported their first day with no new cases in 6 months.

kgc 6y ago
Both New Zealand and Australia performed strict lockdowns. The US/Europe is unlikely to be able to achieve the same level of compliance needed to make those successful.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Depends on time scale, suppose for argument no vaccine works, then these countries just have to have massive border control and limit travel massively as they are now. There is no ‘they are much freer’ argument in the diverse states, because people are dealing with this thing in a huge diversity of ways. Some people have exactly the same life, but they wear a mask, no big deal...

timr 6y ago

"Viruses can be stopped. See South Korea, China, and Taiwan for a few examples." China just had an outbreak of hundreds cases in the Uighur region. What seems more likely: that China has truly "stopped" the virus, and it just re-appeared, miraculously, in one of the most heavily travel restricted places on earth...or that it's actually spreading in China, and testing isn't catching it? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54687533 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54687533 Also, you'll note the following quote in the story linked above: "Asymptomatic cases are not counted in China's official tally of 85,810 confirmed infections." As for South Korea, it still has regular outbreaks, including some large ones: https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-pandemics-india-archive-fefbdcf72cafd86c34ecb989e70c4c33 https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-pandemics-india-ar... Taiwan's success at managing the virus has come ~entirely from strict border controls. Being a tiny island nation certainly helps with this. They still have cases, but so far, they're all amongst travelers: https://time.com/5905129/taiwan-coronavirus-record/ https://time.com/5905129/taiwan-coronavirus-record/ The overall picture here is that some nations have done better than others at controlling the virus (at considerable expense) but almost nobody can claim to have "stopped" it.

GregarianChild 6y ago
The Time article you cite is simplistic in regards of Taiwan's Covid response. Let me cite what I wrote 5 months ago in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290800 about Taiwan: ----------- The country has 23M inhabitants, most of them are clustered in a few densely populated metro areas (Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung–Changhua, Taoyuan–Zhongli, Tainan and Hsinchu). Taiwan had many daily flights to/from China, including daily directs from Wuhan (stopped 31 December 2019). Taiwan is one of the world's older countries (median age ~43). Taiwan permitted the docking of the Diamond Princess [2] and allowed passengers to disembark in Keelung (near Taipei), on 31 January, before the ship left for Japan. The ship was subsequently found to have numerous confirmed infections onboard. In reaction, Taiwan's government published the 50 locations where the cruise ship travelers may have visited and asked around 600k citizens who may have been in contact with the tour group to conduct symptom monitoring and self-quarantine if necessary. None were confirmed to have COVID-19 after 14 days had passed. (The only advantage Taiwan had was that facemasks were widely used and even expected on public transport for years.) For all those reasons, Taiwan was at unusually high risk from Covid. Yet, no lockdown. No country managed the disease better than Taiwan. We should learn from Taiwan. See [1] for an analysis of Taiwan's response from early March 2020. It is interesting to reflect upon why most countries ignored Taiwan. The World Health Organization's locking out Taiwan on China's request is probably one reason. Is it the only one? [1] C. Y. Wang, C. Y. Ng, R. H. Brook, Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan: Big Data Analytics, New Technology, and Proactive Testing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32125371/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32125371/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Princess_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Princess_(ship)
- timr 6y ago
  Regardless of what you think of the response, facts from now trump facts from five months ago. The point of citing the Time article was to show that they continue to have imported cases on a regular basis (fact), and that they prevent these from spreading by strict border controls (fact), not to provide commentary on the quality of their overall response. Taiwan is a tiny island, with relatively little international travel (compared to the US, China, etc). If they have no cases internally, and they seal the borders before those cases are introduced, then almost nothing else matters. Small, isolated, island countries can do this -- but even then (i.e. New Zealand) one mistake will mean rapid endemic spread. So sure, as long as Taiwan continues to effectively isolate itself from the outside world, they can probably carry on. But they're not going to: they're already talking about re-establishing travel with the rest of Asia. It's virtually impossible for a country like the US to do the same thing Taiwan did. Even if we could seal the borders like Taiwan, our population is about 13 times larger, we have large land borders with other countries, and a proportionally large number of expatriate residents with right-of-return. Even with our bans on international travelers, the US has had 6.6 million foreign arrivals in 2020 [1]. Effectively 25% of the entire population of Taiwan has arrived in the US in 2020. And that's just non-citizens. [1] https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data

kgc 6y ago

South Korea's approach was different from China's and relied heavily on widespread testing.

bobthepanda 6y ago
Where did they say it was the same?