I grant you that Taiwan had a very small number of confirmed cases early on. Then they closed their borders. Taiwan deserves credit for reacting quickly enough

I grant you that Taiwan had a very small number of confirmed cases early on. Then they closed their borders. Taiwan deserves credit for reacting quickly enough that they could do contact tracing to eradicate a small number of cases. But you keep missing the point: it's much easier to do this when you're an island nation with a paucity of international travelers. Even in a year where international arrivals are down by >80%, the US had more than a quarter of Taiwan's population arrive internationally. And that's just visa arrivals.