19 ms·

Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

144 points by timjones 6y ago

blakesterz 6y ago
It's hard to tell why you might want to listen to this from just the title: "But Taiwan has also been taking a relatively experimental approach to the pandemic with technology. Like working with civic hackers to code its way out of the pandemic. Today on the show, we dive into Taiwan's pandemic policies and ask: Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach?"
- zbrozek 6y ago
  Things like the "where do I get masks" map don't seem antithetical to personal privacy the way a contact tracing tool is. That's pretty low-hanging fruit that we didn't appear to make any attempt to pick.
  - ISL 6y ago
    Volunteer groups like findthemasks did, but in a get-PPE-to-hospitals context. I am unaware of a US implementation of a direct copy of the Taiwanese webapp. In the US through at least May, health authorities were scrambling to get enough PPE to keep the healthcare system functional.
  - adrianmonk 6y ago
    Not to mention the scrapped plan to just simply mail masks to every US household: https://www.postal-reporter.com/blog/white-house-axed-usps-plan-to-send-5-masks-to-every-american-household/ https://www.postal-reporter.com/blog/white-house-axed-usps-p...
  - awnird 6y ago
    I don't think a Masks Map would work in a country where the population believes COVID is fake, and masks are an Islamic plot. Don't you have to address those fundamental issues first?
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      Trump and QAnon followers in the US don't just believe COVID is fake, they commonly throw tantrums, threaten, and actively attack, and even murder people wearing masks and asking them to wear masks. QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene Refuses to Wear Mask at Congressional Swearing-In https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-congresswoman-marjorie-taylor-greene-175851346.html https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-congresswoman-marjorie-taylor-g... St. Louis County man threatens to 'shoot up' church over mask request https://www.kshb.com/news/crime/st-louis-county-man-threatens-to-shoot-up-church-over-mask-request https://www.kshb.com/news/crime/st-louis-county-man-threaten... Family Charged In Security Guard's Death After Mask Dispute https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/05/850618310/family-charged-in-murder-of-security-guard-after-mask-dispute https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... US family 'murdered shop guard for enforcing mask policy' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52540266 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52540266 NYPD: Woman Attacked By Couple After Asking Them To Wear Face Masks In Elevator https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/11/18/brooklyn-face-mask-attack/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/11/18/brooklyn-face-mask-a... ATTACKED FOR WEARING MY MASK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kII1ST3Z2Xk&ab_channel=JonFoor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kII1ST3Z2Xk&ab_channel=JonFo... Men attack Target employee after refusing to wear face mask https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI5Xbw4ec-0&ab_channel=WPLGLocal10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI5Xbw4ec-0&ab_channel=WPLGL... Woman attacked in N.J. Staples after asking customer to wear mask https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87kJWYt_foY&ab_channel=NJ.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87kJWYt_foY&ab_channel=NJ.co... There are many other examples.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Contact tracing isn't antithetical to personal privacy. I suppose you can say it compromises absolute personal privacy, but so does someone seeing you in a store, so it's not very interesting. Singapore has certainly decided to show how bad it can be, but the root of that is an authoritarian mandate, not the contact tracing itself.
    - zbrozek 6y ago
      Good luck convincing many people in the US of the same. I'm certainly not convinced. As you point out, Singapore has already abused the system. If some abuse is technically possible, it's probably already happening. But there's a lot of room outside of "do nothing" and "omnipresent perfect surveillance" to do good things with civic technology, including non-pandemic stuff. Why aren't all public records online and searchable through a single engine? Or all forms editable and submittable? Or budgets and financial reports navigable or comparable? I'd love to be able to know how some random municipality is going to gouge me before I move there. There's loads of room for good solutions for these and tons of other pain points. But as far as I can tell, American government is scared of letting go so the private sector can develop these things. And it's not imaginative or technically competent enough to want or develop this kind of stuff on its own. Or maybe it's not organized or unified enough?
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        Singapore isn't making some dubious technical violation of their system, they are putting in place a top down mandate requiring it. My point is that it is a consequence of their politics more than of the contact tracing being technically possible.
- tt433 6y ago
  I'll address why one would listen: to learn about some ways not to be the epicenter of a pandemic ever again.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    > not to be the epicenter of a pandemic Are we talking about the US? In what metric is the USA the epicenter? In deaths per capita? In infections per capita? I’m pretty sure US leads in testing per capita. I’m not being snarky, I really don’t know if you are referring to USA, and in what way.
    - zaphod4prez 6y ago
      We have a very high number of cases per capita, and while we do perform a lot of tests, it's not like we lead in tests per capita. [Here's a good graph to play around with](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=earliest..latest&country=USA~GBR~CAN~BRA~AUS~IND~ESP~DEU~FRA~AUT~ARG~BEL~BLR~BOL~BGR~CHN~COL~COM~CUB~DNK~EuropeanUnion~Europe~GEO~GRC~HUN~ISL~IDN~IRN~IRQ~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~MNE~MCO~MEX~MDA&region=World&testsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=ea...). We are middling to low in terms of tests per confirmed case (aka its not just that we're performing more tests than others), [here's that graph](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-10-15..latest&country=USA~GBR~CAN~BRA~AUS~IND~ESP~DEU~FRA~AUT~ARG~BEL~BLR~BOL~BGR~CHN~COL~COM~CUB~DNK~EuropeanUnion~Europe~GEO~GRC~HUN~ISL~IDN~IRN~IRQ~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~MNE~MCO~MEX~MDA&region=World&testsPerCaseMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=20...). And our case fatality rate is pretty good but not amazing (among first-world countries at least) [graph](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-11-10..2020-12-19&country=USA~GBR~CAN~BRA~AUS~IND~ESP~DEU~FRA~AUT~BEL~BLR~BGR~CHN~COM~CUB~DNK~GEO~GRC~HUN~ISL~IDN~IRN~IRQ~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~MNE~MCO~MDA~BHR~NLD~NZL~NOR~PRT~QAT~RUS&region=World&cfrMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=20...) ([Here's US vs World + regions CFR](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-11-10..2020-12-19&country=USA~OWID_WRL~Europe~SouthAmerica~Asia~Africa&region=World&cfrMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=20...)). Note, you have to play around w selecting different countries and dates on that website, I wish they had some kind "select by GDP quartile" or something.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  read the transcript, link at the bottom. The issue isn't that we don't have leadership that would work with "groups" who do similar to what was done in Taiwan the issue is government would want control over the groups to include who was in them. pretty much they would drive the innovation right out the door. then they would turn around and clamp down on anyone who dared do similar work that was not part of the government sanctioned cooperative effort. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/949764249 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/949764249
- f430 6y ago
  > Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach? Would the US ever admit their exceptionalism is perhaps flawed? Would the Europeans ever admit their exceptionalism led to ignoring Taiwan's alarm bells? I highly doubt it. They are not stupid, they know what's going on in China and they are not telling everybody else because they are worried of losing credibility as leaders. Almost all of our current response assumes the Chinese Communist Party is capable of being transparent and honest. This is what worries me but perhaps the Chinese money has too much sway on YC and Silicon Valley in general to realize you are all being led into a death trap. Pay attention to January 6th very carefully. A few hedge fund managers I speak to tells me they are hedged for a potentially a massive shock. Similarly, the market seems to show that Biden's increase in corporate/wealth tax will become a reality at a time when the market desperately needs lower taxes and less punishment for the wealthy. Some extreme end of the hedge fund managers think that the USD is going to collapse but I believe that this is just another ploy by people who bought Gold years ago are trying to dump their positions on people who buy this shit up. the USD will never be allowed to fail because the rest of the world's currency is backed by it.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Overall yes, but exactly what you mean by "China" here is highly ambiguous.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      To be fair, I would never count Taiwan as China, but I honestly don't know what > They are not stupid, they know what's going on in China and they are not telling everybody else because they are worried of losing credibility as leaders. means. The rest of the post is about Taiwan. Is the insinuation that the politicians know they controlled it better in Taiwan, the PRC, or both? Or is this about stuff in Xinjiang totally separate from quarantining?
    - f430 6y ago
      China as in Communist China
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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osgovernment 6y ago
The US government is full of corruption and closed-source companies basically destroying almost all open source collaborative efforts based on greed. Unless a leader steps in that truly understands this and works to get rid of it, then I don't think the US will ever be able to compete.
- Guthur 6y ago
  What are you actually talking about, your just touting rhetorical nonsense with no actual content or thought beyond you on hypocritical echo. "Woe is me the government is corrupt, won't the government save me from their corruption". Take power away from the government and you'll find it a lot easier.
- brixon 6y ago
  One of the big issues for these kinds of things is that the United States has 51+ governments. The Federal Government has limited power and for a lot of stuff the 50 states can do their own thing. The Civil War did move more power to the Federal Gov, but the States are still very independent.
- pp19dd 6y ago
  One problem is the complexity. To expand on what someone else said about US having 51 governments, the Federal government is also further fragmented. 2+ million people, and 5-10 million contractors (individuals who aren't full time employees but work alongside them). The true numbers aren't federated and there's not even a clear accounting of how many agencies there are - best estimates (including Federal sources) put it at somewhere around 130 - 270 - 440 agencies. Seriously, no one knows for sure, the org chart is not maintained or always that out of date. When a new person comes in to head an agency and bring about positive technological change, someone who genuinely knows technology and its potential, they're usually unprepared for what they see. Their tenure is usually time-limited and they hope to bring about change fast. Certainly not stick around for 8+ years to see things through, because that just doesn't happen and it really does take that long. For one simple thing they're trying to do, they find out that it's locked in by multiple years-long contracts that aren't synchronized with their timelines. For example, a contract for a CDN expires possibly years after they would realistically stick around so they can't change that. Or a contract for cloud services they don't want in the long run might need to be renewed soon so they might choose to renew it so they can focus on their projects instead of migrating and upgrading existing pieces for the next few years, because it really takes awhile. Or they find out that four separate departments purchased four separate transcription services at different times and for different lengths, so attempting to standardize it is wasteful on the account of having already paid for the service a few times over. I'm describing an environment with lots of moving parts, many that have been locked-in for unworkable periods of time. An environment that has many individuals working at duplicative or cross-purposes, not even intentionally - just because they didn't coordinate. An environment that will take years for someone to map out before they can truly grasp what's happening or streamline it. The new person who comes in now has to deal with existing contracts, things that might be counterproductive to what they are trying to do and they can't be just canceled or legally or even just easily modified. At that point, ... sadly, many such people just go for cosmetic appearances of progress. Even well meaning individuals - and entire groups - end up settling for a shortcut and then bolting. That's what happens on an agency level. But what about centralizing and standardizing technology? Turns out, that's been attempted several times and forgotten. Before GSA's 18F group came to be in the aftermath of the healthcare site debacle, there was another group that was put together and elevated to do just that- bring innovation and centralization to GSA and to the federal government. So, when 18F got stood up as a group to revamp tech federally, a group meant to do innovation centrally was fundamentally duplicated in that very step. There were role and identity collisions and they had to spend some time integrating while growing and anyone dealing with 18F in the early years first looked up who they were really dealing with - as in, the pedigree of old or new blood. Whether any strategic lessons were learned here is anyone's guess, but, people who know better have argued that this innovation function shouldn't be centralized but evenly deployed in agencies. As in certainly bring in more tech savvy people to federal service, but spread them out permanently and empower them. GSA's 18F tried to do that in a limited fashion. 18F is a group of well meaning individuals who've done a lot and certainly demonstrated their expertise. But, to be blunt, some of their work has clearly hit those very impassable barriers, the contract limits, the invisible limits anyway despite the effort. They've - I think - attempted to do good and embed their employees in agencies when they approach a project so that goes toward spreading people out in the field, but, I don't think their shadowing times and force sizes were realistic. As large as they might have gotten at their peak, it was nowhere enough to cover the workforce size I described. And when engaged, they've certainly been treated badly by resident long term employees, who considered them a flavor of the month and expected the projects they were engaging with on to be minor and short-lived. Because, for one, they've seen what happened to the previous innovation group. If you look through 18F's github repository and really dig into some of the larger projects they've worked on, you can see the barriers they ran into and limits of what agencies were willing to engage on. One particular site had been rebuilt by them, and --- I confess much improved, both visually and in content. However, the login function would take you to a vendor site that was built a decade ago and contracted for another decade. Too complex to rebuild, surely. And too vital to mess with. So the site redesign had a jarring transition to a part where they couldn't contribute to the actual functional piece. This was just my attempt to explain why things aren't changing.
s5300 6y ago
Keep in mind that a key feature of government is having a monopoly on violence within its jurisdiction...
- djsumdog 6y ago
  That is absolutely true, but what are you implying in this context? Was Taiwan harsher with draconian lockdown policies early on?
  - GregarianChild 6y ago
    Taiwan never had a lockdown! See the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25539398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25539398 Taiwanese policies were not just much more successful in containing the virus, but also much less draconian.
    - tasogare 6y ago
      Japan didn’t either and both countries are performing way better than the West. I’m glad I’m living in a place that is taking the big picture into account (economic wellness of everyone) instead of hyperfocussing on saving few years of life of a very restricted demographic.
  - s5300 6y ago
    This was much less about the topic at hand and more-so about a worldwide fact about governments that I often see some HN users forgetting about. Not that it's a HN user thing either - I run into it quite often in life. So many people that just aren't aware of or don't understand that a monopoly on violence goes hand in hand with a non-failed state/government.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  In Taiwan the memory of military rule isn't all stale, and the current party in power is the one that is explicitly not the KMT with a romanticized view of the past. So I'd say the Taiwan situation is excellent Services per Authoritarian buck. And to turn it around, while armed Civilians do erode the Government monopoly on violence, I will refuse to blame that for our current dysfunction. We suck, without or without the 2nd amendment.
gitgreen 6y ago
As a programmer in state government this approach is not feasible for many reasons the chief of which is that at almost every level of government we lack technocrats. In the very unlikely event that one is appointed or hired that has Audrey Tang's(from the podcast, digital minister for Taiwan) background I predict that the amount of pushback received from other levels of government and unions would smother any software with similar utility to that of the mask finder. I can't wait to jump to private industry.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Yes the current Taiwanese government is truly one of the world's finest, and the US governance one of the worst. One of the reason I enjoy reading https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/ and other in depth discussions of public transit is that it's really quite the barometer for overall civic function. The rate of new public transit is also a fine derivative, and as such even more "low latency".
  - eric_khun 6y ago
    Something I really enjoy at Taiwan is the bike sharing system they've put all around the country. Liking it at a point where I've wrote an essaye about it[1]. It's cheap, everywhere, and built on a really high standard [1] https://erickhun.com/posts/taiwan-youbike-bike-sharing/ https://erickhun.com/posts/taiwan-youbike-bike-sharing/
    - puppymaster 6y ago
      They are trialing 2nd version of the system and it's better in every way - as in all the things you wish can be improved, they went ahead and did it (more solid bike, faster card swipe, better lock)
    - qlk1123 6y ago
      However, in most cities the trafic is just so bad that riding a bike on the road is risking your own life.
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
Those are some really incredible Covid numbers for Taiwan, just, incredible. Having spent time there and seem some poorer areas and very dense areas, 7 deaths is unbelievably great.
- m_mueller 6y ago
  Think about what that implies regarding the difference a competent government makes. Half a million dead, maybe even more, in the US alone. Granted, Taiwan was in some way lucky to have had SARS to get the acceptance needed to install their emergency law, but still, others had too and did scratch. Switzerland even gave up its stockpile of pandemic supply two years ago.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    Are Germany and Italy equally or more incompetent to USA?
    - m_mueller 6y ago
      If you just compare to continental countries that are very interconnected (lots of travel, import+export), I'd say Germany is doing a bit better but still not as successful as you'd wish. I think it really shows when the highest executives have a higher scientific education.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  They could also have motivations to use more specific testing or lower PCR amplification cycles. The PCR amplifications of over 40+ in the US and EU lead to many false positives. There could also be genetic factors found in only South East Asians. Also, they're an island, just like NZ. There are a lot of variables, but the biggest factor: they're literally an island.
  - ff7c11 6y ago
    The UK is also "literally an island", though 4 times as big as Taiwan. Taiwan banned flights from China early on, and now only allows entry to residents and those on business. The UK has still not stopped international travel. Quarantine on arrival in the UK is weak and unenforced, compared to Taiwan where the only way out of the airport is in a quarantine taxi to an approved place and you get tracked by your phone for 2 weeks. By consistently refusing to take timely action, and refusing to take things seriously, the UK forefeited its island advantage.
rhacker 6y ago
I don't fully get the title from the content, but perhaps NPR is saying that we should have a different control structure for health related maters... Like for example in Star Trek the only people that can override the captain is the doctor. For medical emergencies they can basically force some course of action. It seems in most countries the top brass is making decisions even though they are not technically qualified to do so.
- AnHonestComment 6y ago
  Doctors can’t override the captain, except on medical choices and only narrowly. They can relieve the captain — but they can do that in the US, too.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  If the government is going to tell me I can't leave my house, I want that decision being made by an elected official with some accountability to the public, not by a staff doctor of some sort.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    I hear you, and I understand your reasoning. And yet... Let's say it's an election year, and the decision is going to be made just a few months before the election. Let's say that the lives saved by a stay-at-home order will be mostly saved after the election, but the pain of the lockdown will be before it. (If any of that sounds familiar, it should.) Now how much do you trust your elected official? Still more than the doctor? I trust the doctor to be non-political. Sometimes I really need that. I trust the elected official to more politically cued in. Sometimes we need that. I don't know how to pick. I want a balance, not one or the other.
  - xxpor 6y ago
    In Ohio, the only person in county government with power to arrest the (elected) sheriff is the (elected) coroner.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
slumdev 6y ago
A handful of states attempted to fork the US government 160 years ago. Didn't go well.
sradman 6y ago
This is a 24 minute Planet Money podcast named Fork the Government but the HN title has been changed to match the title in the HTML header. The show interviews two civic hackers [1] Howard Wu and Audrey Tang (Taiwan's Digital Minister) about the technical aspects of Taiwan's coronavirus response. Taiwan has had a total of 815 cases and 7 deaths [2] in a population of 23 million. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_technology [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Taiwan
- timr 6y ago
  > Taiwan has had a total of 815 cases and 7 deaths [2] in a population of 23 million. They also closed their borders to China in January, and in March to the rest of the world. The US, by comparison, has had 7.2M international arrivals in 2020 -- and that's just non-citizens: https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data Point being: it's easy to overstate the importance of measures like these. If you had to draw one bright-line difference between Taiwan's response, and the response of ~most other nations, it's that they closed their borders early and kept them closed.
  - sradman 6y ago
    They also carefully managed the quarantine of the first set of returning travellers. They were sent home with a kit that included a thermometer and a set of surgical masks to use and public health officials contacted them daily via SMS and/or voice.
    - timr 6y ago
      Yes, they are strict about their quarantine. It's much easier to do that when you don't have to quarantine millions of people. Consider that we know that the virus was spreading in the US in January (via Europe), and there's phylogenetic and blood-screening evidence that it was here as early as late 2019. Even the strictest quarantine wouldn't have helped much at that point.
Diederich 6y ago
Cool! She was the primary author on one of the first Perl6 compiler implementations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming)
tasty_freeze 6y ago
Is this the same Audrey Tang who created a haskell-based version of Perl6 for a number of years?
- ytch 6y ago
  Yes, also many perl modules: https://metacpan.org/author/AUDREYT https://metacpan.org/author/AUDREYT
- qlk1123 6y ago
  Yes. I don't know how to extend this answer tobe more informative. Yes.
uptime 6y ago
Nice to see Audrey Tang getting props. There was a similar interview with @miyagawa on rebuild.fm that is a good listen.
- mncharity 6y ago
  There are also quite a few interview videos, and assorted articles. One fun bit from an interview on handling disinformation, was the comment that Taiwan has living memory of the trauma of SARS lockdown, and of its fight for press freedom. Making them disinclined to go back, to lockdowns, or to use takedowns for disinformation. Forcing other solutions. Like using humor, to defuse misinformation, and to increase precaution compliance. A very sharp, nice person. Fun to work with. Was active in the perl and haskell communities. Her focus shifted some years back to civics tech. Emphasizing open source, open data, radical transparency, voluntary association, digital democracy, and more.
deleted 6y ago
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danieltrembath 6y ago
Audrey Tang (featured in the audio) conducted a long form interview with Tyler Cowen a few months ago in which they talked about this kind of civic development. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/audrey-tang/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/audrey-tang/

144 points by timjones 6y ago

It's hard to tell why you might want to listen to this from just the title: "But Taiwan has also been taking a relatively experimental approach to the pandemic with technology. Like working with civic hackers to code its way out of the pandemic. Today on the show, we dive into Taiwan's pandemic policies and ask: Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach?"

zbrozek 6y ago
Things like the "where do I get masks" map don't seem antithetical to personal privacy the way a contact tracing tool is. That's pretty low-hanging fruit that we didn't appear to make any attempt to pick.
- ISL 6y ago
  Volunteer groups like findthemasks did, but in a get-PPE-to-hospitals context. I am unaware of a US implementation of a direct copy of the Taiwanese webapp. In the US through at least May, health authorities were scrambling to get enough PPE to keep the healthcare system functional.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  Not to mention the scrapped plan to just simply mail masks to every US household: https://www.postal-reporter.com/blog/white-house-axed-usps-plan-to-send-5-masks-to-every-american-household/ https://www.postal-reporter.com/blog/white-house-axed-usps-p...
- awnird 6y ago
  I don't think a Masks Map would work in a country where the population believes COVID is fake, and masks are an Islamic plot. Don't you have to address those fundamental issues first?
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    Trump and QAnon followers in the US don't just believe COVID is fake, they commonly throw tantrums, threaten, and actively attack, and even murder people wearing masks and asking them to wear masks. QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene Refuses to Wear Mask at Congressional Swearing-In https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-congresswoman-marjorie-taylor-greene-175851346.html https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-congresswoman-marjorie-taylor-g... St. Louis County man threatens to 'shoot up' church over mask request https://www.kshb.com/news/crime/st-louis-county-man-threatens-to-shoot-up-church-over-mask-request https://www.kshb.com/news/crime/st-louis-county-man-threaten... Family Charged In Security Guard's Death After Mask Dispute https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/05/850618310/family-charged-in-murder-of-security-guard-after-mask-dispute https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... US family 'murdered shop guard for enforcing mask policy' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52540266 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52540266 NYPD: Woman Attacked By Couple After Asking Them To Wear Face Masks In Elevator https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/11/18/brooklyn-face-mask-attack/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/11/18/brooklyn-face-mask-a... ATTACKED FOR WEARING MY MASK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kII1ST3Z2Xk&ab_channel=JonFoor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kII1ST3Z2Xk&ab_channel=JonFo... Men attack Target employee after refusing to wear face mask https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI5Xbw4ec-0&ab_channel=WPLGLocal10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI5Xbw4ec-0&ab_channel=WPLGL... Woman attacked in N.J. Staples after asking customer to wear mask https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87kJWYt_foY&ab_channel=NJ.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87kJWYt_foY&ab_channel=NJ.co... There are many other examples.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Contact tracing isn't antithetical to personal privacy. I suppose you can say it compromises absolute personal privacy, but so does someone seeing you in a store, so it's not very interesting. Singapore has certainly decided to show how bad it can be, but the root of that is an authoritarian mandate, not the contact tracing itself.
  - zbrozek 6y ago
    Good luck convincing many people in the US of the same. I'm certainly not convinced. As you point out, Singapore has already abused the system. If some abuse is technically possible, it's probably already happening. But there's a lot of room outside of "do nothing" and "omnipresent perfect surveillance" to do good things with civic technology, including non-pandemic stuff. Why aren't all public records online and searchable through a single engine? Or all forms editable and submittable? Or budgets and financial reports navigable or comparable? I'd love to be able to know how some random municipality is going to gouge me before I move there. There's loads of room for good solutions for these and tons of other pain points. But as far as I can tell, American government is scared of letting go so the private sector can develop these things. And it's not imaginative or technically competent enough to want or develop this kind of stuff on its own. Or maybe it's not organized or unified enough?
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Singapore isn't making some dubious technical violation of their system, they are putting in place a top down mandate requiring it. My point is that it is a consequence of their politics more than of the contact tracing being technically possible.
tt433 6y ago
I'll address why one would listen: to learn about some ways not to be the epicenter of a pandemic ever again.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  > not to be the epicenter of a pandemic Are we talking about the US? In what metric is the USA the epicenter? In deaths per capita? In infections per capita? I’m pretty sure US leads in testing per capita. I’m not being snarky, I really don’t know if you are referring to USA, and in what way.
  - zaphod4prez 6y ago
    We have a very high number of cases per capita, and while we do perform a lot of tests, it's not like we lead in tests per capita. [Here's a good graph to play around with](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=earliest..latest&country=USA~GBR~CAN~BRA~AUS~IND~ESP~DEU~FRA~AUT~ARG~BEL~BLR~BOL~BGR~CHN~COL~COM~CUB~DNK~EuropeanUnion~Europe~GEO~GRC~HUN~ISL~IDN~IRN~IRQ~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~MNE~MCO~MEX~MDA&region=World&testsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=ea...). We are middling to low in terms of tests per confirmed case (aka its not just that we're performing more tests than others), [here's that graph](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-10-15..latest&country=USA~GBR~CAN~BRA~AUS~IND~ESP~DEU~FRA~AUT~ARG~BEL~BLR~BOL~BGR~CHN~COL~COM~CUB~DNK~EuropeanUnion~Europe~GEO~GRC~HUN~ISL~IDN~IRN~IRQ~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~MNE~MCO~MEX~MDA&region=World&testsPerCaseMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=20...). And our case fatality rate is pretty good but not amazing (among first-world countries at least) [graph](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-11-10..2020-12-19&country=USA~GBR~CAN~BRA~AUS~IND~ESP~DEU~FRA~AUT~BEL~BLR~BGR~CHN~COM~CUB~DNK~GEO~GRC~HUN~ISL~IDN~IRN~IRQ~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~MNE~MCO~MDA~BHR~NLD~NZL~NOR~PRT~QAT~RUS&region=World&cfrMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=20...) ([Here's US vs World + regions CFR](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-11-10..2020-12-19&country=USA~OWID_WRL~Europe~SouthAmerica~Asia~Africa&region=World&cfrMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=20...)). Note, you have to play around w selecting different countries and dates on that website, I wish they had some kind "select by GDP quartile" or something.
Shivetya 6y ago
read the transcript, link at the bottom. The issue isn't that we don't have leadership that would work with "groups" who do similar to what was done in Taiwan the issue is government would want control over the groups to include who was in them. pretty much they would drive the innovation right out the door. then they would turn around and clamp down on anyone who dared do similar work that was not part of the government sanctioned cooperative effort. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/949764249 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/949764249
f430 6y ago
> Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach? Would the US ever admit their exceptionalism is perhaps flawed? Would the Europeans ever admit their exceptionalism led to ignoring Taiwan's alarm bells? I highly doubt it. They are not stupid, they know what's going on in China and they are not telling everybody else because they are worried of losing credibility as leaders. Almost all of our current response assumes the Chinese Communist Party is capable of being transparent and honest. This is what worries me but perhaps the Chinese money has too much sway on YC and Silicon Valley in general to realize you are all being led into a death trap. Pay attention to January 6th very carefully. A few hedge fund managers I speak to tells me they are hedged for a potentially a massive shock. Similarly, the market seems to show that Biden's increase in corporate/wealth tax will become a reality at a time when the market desperately needs lower taxes and less punishment for the wealthy. Some extreme end of the hedge fund managers think that the USD is going to collapse but I believe that this is just another ploy by people who bought Gold years ago are trying to dump their positions on people who buy this shit up. the USD will never be allowed to fail because the rest of the world's currency is backed by it.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Overall yes, but exactly what you mean by "China" here is highly ambiguous.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    To be fair, I would never count Taiwan as China, but I honestly don't know what > They are not stupid, they know what's going on in China and they are not telling everybody else because they are worried of losing credibility as leaders. means. The rest of the post is about Taiwan. Is the insinuation that the politicians know they controlled it better in Taiwan, the PRC, or both? Or is this about stuff in Xinjiang totally separate from quarantining?
  - f430 6y ago
    China as in Communist China
- Ericson2314 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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osgovernment 6y ago

The US government is full of corruption and closed-source companies basically destroying almost all open source collaborative efforts based on greed. Unless a leader steps in that truly understands this and works to get rid of it, then I don't think the US will ever be able to compete.

Guthur 6y ago
What are you actually talking about, your just touting rhetorical nonsense with no actual content or thought beyond you on hypocritical echo. "Woe is me the government is corrupt, won't the government save me from their corruption". Take power away from the government and you'll find it a lot easier.
brixon 6y ago
One of the big issues for these kinds of things is that the United States has 51+ governments. The Federal Government has limited power and for a lot of stuff the 50 states can do their own thing. The Civil War did move more power to the Federal Gov, but the States are still very independent.
pp19dd 6y ago
One problem is the complexity. To expand on what someone else said about US having 51 governments, the Federal government is also further fragmented. 2+ million people, and 5-10 million contractors (individuals who aren't full time employees but work alongside them). The true numbers aren't federated and there's not even a clear accounting of how many agencies there are - best estimates (including Federal sources) put it at somewhere around 130 - 270 - 440 agencies. Seriously, no one knows for sure, the org chart is not maintained or always that out of date. When a new person comes in to head an agency and bring about positive technological change, someone who genuinely knows technology and its potential, they're usually unprepared for what they see. Their tenure is usually time-limited and they hope to bring about change fast. Certainly not stick around for 8+ years to see things through, because that just doesn't happen and it really does take that long. For one simple thing they're trying to do, they find out that it's locked in by multiple years-long contracts that aren't synchronized with their timelines. For example, a contract for a CDN expires possibly years after they would realistically stick around so they can't change that. Or a contract for cloud services they don't want in the long run might need to be renewed soon so they might choose to renew it so they can focus on their projects instead of migrating and upgrading existing pieces for the next few years, because it really takes awhile. Or they find out that four separate departments purchased four separate transcription services at different times and for different lengths, so attempting to standardize it is wasteful on the account of having already paid for the service a few times over. I'm describing an environment with lots of moving parts, many that have been locked-in for unworkable periods of time. An environment that has many individuals working at duplicative or cross-purposes, not even intentionally - just because they didn't coordinate. An environment that will take years for someone to map out before they can truly grasp what's happening or streamline it. The new person who comes in now has to deal with existing contracts, things that might be counterproductive to what they are trying to do and they can't be just canceled or legally or even just easily modified. At that point, ... sadly, many such people just go for cosmetic appearances of progress. Even well meaning individuals - and entire groups - end up settling for a shortcut and then bolting. That's what happens on an agency level. But what about centralizing and standardizing technology? Turns out, that's been attempted several times and forgotten. Before GSA's 18F group came to be in the aftermath of the healthcare site debacle, there was another group that was put together and elevated to do just that- bring innovation and centralization to GSA and to the federal government. So, when 18F got stood up as a group to revamp tech federally, a group meant to do innovation centrally was fundamentally duplicated in that very step. There were role and identity collisions and they had to spend some time integrating while growing and anyone dealing with 18F in the early years first looked up who they were really dealing with - as in, the pedigree of old or new blood. Whether any strategic lessons were learned here is anyone's guess, but, people who know better have argued that this innovation function shouldn't be centralized but evenly deployed in agencies. As in certainly bring in more tech savvy people to federal service, but spread them out permanently and empower them. GSA's 18F tried to do that in a limited fashion. 18F is a group of well meaning individuals who've done a lot and certainly demonstrated their expertise. But, to be blunt, some of their work has clearly hit those very impassable barriers, the contract limits, the invisible limits anyway despite the effort. They've - I think - attempted to do good and embed their employees in agencies when they approach a project so that goes toward spreading people out in the field, but, I don't think their shadowing times and force sizes were realistic. As large as they might have gotten at their peak, it was nowhere enough to cover the workforce size I described. And when engaged, they've certainly been treated badly by resident long term employees, who considered them a flavor of the month and expected the projects they were engaging with on to be minor and short-lived. Because, for one, they've seen what happened to the previous innovation group. If you look through 18F's github repository and really dig into some of the larger projects they've worked on, you can see the barriers they ran into and limits of what agencies were willing to engage on. One particular site had been rebuilt by them, and --- I confess much improved, both visually and in content. However, the login function would take you to a vendor site that was built a decade ago and contracted for another decade. Too complex to rebuild, surely. And too vital to mess with. So the site redesign had a jarring transition to a part where they couldn't contribute to the actual functional piece. This was just my attempt to explain why things aren't changing.

s5300 6y ago

Keep in mind that a key feature of government is having a monopoly on violence within its jurisdiction...

djsumdog 6y ago
That is absolutely true, but what are you implying in this context? Was Taiwan harsher with draconian lockdown policies early on?
- GregarianChild 6y ago
  Taiwan never had a lockdown! See the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25539398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25539398 Taiwanese policies were not just much more successful in containing the virus, but also much less draconian.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    Japan didn’t either and both countries are performing way better than the West. I’m glad I’m living in a place that is taking the big picture into account (economic wellness of everyone) instead of hyperfocussing on saving few years of life of a very restricted demographic.
- s5300 6y ago
  This was much less about the topic at hand and more-so about a worldwide fact about governments that I often see some HN users forgetting about. Not that it's a HN user thing either - I run into it quite often in life. So many people that just aren't aware of or don't understand that a monopoly on violence goes hand in hand with a non-failed state/government.
Ericson2314 6y ago
In Taiwan the memory of military rule isn't all stale, and the current party in power is the one that is explicitly not the KMT with a romanticized view of the past. So I'd say the Taiwan situation is excellent Services per Authoritarian buck. And to turn it around, while armed Civilians do erode the Government monopoly on violence, I will refuse to blame that for our current dysfunction. We suck, without or without the 2nd amendment.

gitgreen 6y ago

As a programmer in state government this approach is not feasible for many reasons the chief of which is that at almost every level of government we lack technocrats. In the very unlikely event that one is appointed or hired that has Audrey Tang's(from the podcast, digital minister for Taiwan) background I predict that the amount of pushback received from other levels of government and unions would smother any software with similar utility to that of the mask finder. I can't wait to jump to private industry.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Yes the current Taiwanese government is truly one of the world's finest, and the US governance one of the worst. One of the reason I enjoy reading https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/ and other in depth discussions of public transit is that it's really quite the barometer for overall civic function. The rate of new public transit is also a fine derivative, and as such even more "low latency".
- eric_khun 6y ago
  Something I really enjoy at Taiwan is the bike sharing system they've put all around the country. Liking it at a point where I've wrote an essaye about it[1]. It's cheap, everywhere, and built on a really high standard [1] https://erickhun.com/posts/taiwan-youbike-bike-sharing/ https://erickhun.com/posts/taiwan-youbike-bike-sharing/
  - puppymaster 6y ago
    They are trialing 2nd version of the system and it's better in every way - as in all the things you wish can be improved, they went ahead and did it (more solid bike, faster card swipe, better lock)
  - qlk1123 6y ago
    However, in most cities the trafic is just so bad that riding a bike on the road is risking your own life.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago

Those are some really incredible Covid numbers for Taiwan, just, incredible. Having spent time there and seem some poorer areas and very dense areas, 7 deaths is unbelievably great.

m_mueller 6y ago
Think about what that implies regarding the difference a competent government makes. Half a million dead, maybe even more, in the US alone. Granted, Taiwan was in some way lucky to have had SARS to get the acceptance needed to install their emergency law, but still, others had too and did scratch. Switzerland even gave up its stockpile of pandemic supply two years ago.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  Are Germany and Italy equally or more incompetent to USA?
  - m_mueller 6y ago
    If you just compare to continental countries that are very interconnected (lots of travel, import+export), I'd say Germany is doing a bit better but still not as successful as you'd wish. I think it really shows when the highest executives have a higher scientific education.
djsumdog 6y ago
They could also have motivations to use more specific testing or lower PCR amplification cycles. The PCR amplifications of over 40+ in the US and EU lead to many false positives. There could also be genetic factors found in only South East Asians. Also, they're an island, just like NZ. There are a lot of variables, but the biggest factor: they're literally an island.
- ff7c11 6y ago
  The UK is also "literally an island", though 4 times as big as Taiwan. Taiwan banned flights from China early on, and now only allows entry to residents and those on business. The UK has still not stopped international travel. Quarantine on arrival in the UK is weak and unenforced, compared to Taiwan where the only way out of the airport is in a quarantine taxi to an approved place and you get tracked by your phone for 2 weeks. By consistently refusing to take timely action, and refusing to take things seriously, the UK forefeited its island advantage.

rhacker 6y ago

I don't fully get the title from the content, but perhaps NPR is saying that we should have a different control structure for health related maters... Like for example in Star Trek the only people that can override the captain is the doctor. For medical emergencies they can basically force some course of action. It seems in most countries the top brass is making decisions even though they are not technically qualified to do so.

AnHonestComment 6y ago
Doctors can’t override the captain, except on medical choices and only narrowly. They can relieve the captain — but they can do that in the US, too.
throwaway201103 6y ago
If the government is going to tell me I can't leave my house, I want that decision being made by an elected official with some accountability to the public, not by a staff doctor of some sort.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I hear you, and I understand your reasoning. And yet... Let's say it's an election year, and the decision is going to be made just a few months before the election. Let's say that the lives saved by a stay-at-home order will be mostly saved after the election, but the pain of the lockdown will be before it. (If any of that sounds familiar, it should.) Now how much do you trust your elected official? Still more than the doctor? I trust the doctor to be non-political. Sometimes I really need that. I trust the elected official to more politically cued in. Sometimes we need that. I don't know how to pick. I want a balance, not one or the other.
- xxpor 6y ago
  In Ohio, the only person in county government with power to arrest the (elected) sheriff is the (elected) coroner.
0xffff2 6y ago

slumdev 6y ago

A handful of states attempted to fork the US government 160 years ago. Didn't go well.

sradman 6y ago

This is a 24 minute Planet Money podcast named Fork the Government but the HN title has been changed to match the title in the HTML header. The show interviews two civic hackers [1] Howard Wu and Audrey Tang (Taiwan's Digital Minister) about the technical aspects of Taiwan's coronavirus response. Taiwan has had a total of 815 cases and 7 deaths [2] in a population of 23 million. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_technology [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Taiwan

timr 6y ago
> Taiwan has had a total of 815 cases and 7 deaths [2] in a population of 23 million. They also closed their borders to China in January, and in March to the rest of the world. The US, by comparison, has had 7.2M international arrivals in 2020 -- and that's just non-citizens: https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data Point being: it's easy to overstate the importance of measures like these. If you had to draw one bright-line difference between Taiwan's response, and the response of ~most other nations, it's that they closed their borders early and kept them closed.
- sradman 6y ago
  They also carefully managed the quarantine of the first set of returning travellers. They were sent home with a kit that included a thermometer and a set of surgical masks to use and public health officials contacted them daily via SMS and/or voice.
  - timr 6y ago
    Yes, they are strict about their quarantine. It's much easier to do that when you don't have to quarantine millions of people. Consider that we know that the virus was spreading in the US in January (via Europe), and there's phylogenetic and blood-screening evidence that it was here as early as late 2019. Even the strictest quarantine wouldn't have helped much at that point.

Diederich 6y ago

Cool! She was the primary author on one of the first Perl6 compiler implementations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming)

tasty_freeze 6y ago

Is this the same Audrey Tang who created a haskell-based version of Perl6 for a number of years?

ytch 6y ago
Yes, also many perl modules: https://metacpan.org/author/AUDREYT https://metacpan.org/author/AUDREYT
qlk1123 6y ago
Yes. I don't know how to extend this answer tobe more informative. Yes.

uptime 6y ago

Nice to see Audrey Tang getting props. There was a similar interview with @miyagawa on rebuild.fm that is a good listen.

mncharity 6y ago
There are also quite a few interview videos, and assorted articles. One fun bit from an interview on handling disinformation, was the comment that Taiwan has living memory of the trauma of SARS lockdown, and of its fight for press freedom. Making them disinclined to go back, to lockdowns, or to use takedowns for disinformation. Forcing other solutions. Like using humor, to defuse misinformation, and to increase precaution compliance. A very sharp, nice person. Fun to work with. Was active in the perl and haskell communities. Her focus shifted some years back to civics tech. Emphasizing open source, open data, radical transparency, voluntary association, digital democracy, and more.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

danieltrembath 6y ago

Audrey Tang (featured in the audio) conducted a long form interview with Tyler Cowen a few months ago in which they talked about this kind of civic development. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/audrey-tang/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/audrey-tang/