3 ms·

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=232

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

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