5 ms·

Taiwan repeating world's Covid mistakes: Lock it down, now

6 points by georgecmu 5y ago

spyckie2 5y ago
My dad (we're Taiwanese) once told me the difference between Asian and Western societies is mostly in fault tolerance strategies - how each society prevents important societal systems and functions from failing. Asian societies beat the fear of mistakes into you from a young age - everyone being so afraid of doing anything wrong that few things go wrong. Hence, they tend to build systems that depends upon no one making mistakes, and it often works out. Western societies assume mistakes will always occur and build systems that accounts for failure with contingency plans and backup strategies to ensure mistakes are limited in their damage. I've thought about this a lot with the pandemic. Initially, strategies of staving off covid aligned very well with Asian society (shaming everyone into the proper behavior of wearing masks, getting checked, staying at home if you're sick, etc). However, this strategy relies on no one making mistakes (basically, everyone behaving). Contrast that to the US, where getting people to behave was nigh impossible, but with vaccinations, you don't care if some people misbehave because after herd immunity, the system is stabilized. The Asian strategy of fault tolerance is easy to roll out, quickly followed, and effective - but brittle and non permanent. It relies on people not making mistakes ever, and with human behavior, mistakes are bound to happen. In contrast, the Western strategy is a lot more work, a lot slower to roll out, but a more permanent solution. Solve it once and for all, and move on. Of course, a mix of both strategies is best; put on the short term band-aid of following orders, and follow it with the robust solution of herd immunity. And it seems that both sides messed up because of ideological blind spots.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  I've thought about this too and believe a major factor is the population - life is cheap in Asia because of the numbers. We don't care unless a lot of people start dying. Even if preventive laws exist (for example, wearing helmet is compulsory while driving two-wheelers) a lot of Asians are lax with it and sometimes ignore it (common excuses include hot weather). An accident in Asian coutries is often a small footnote in the media where as in western societies it may be a prominent news. Ofcourse, there are exceptions like Korea, Japan and Singapore, but they also have fewer population than other asian countries.
webmobdev 5y ago
Some things Taiwan can learn from India: - A "Lockdown" is a very blunt weapon in the fight against COVID. It is effective in temporarily containing COVID but comes at a huge economic cost. A complete lockdown should only be done when the healthcare infrastructure is near breaking point. In fact, the whole point of a lockdown is to provide a temporary relief so that the healthcare infrastructure can be upgraded to deal with the predicted increase of cases in the future. - Mandatory masking, social distancing norms and reasonable restrictions on people's movement and gathering should continue till the Pandemic is over (remember, the vaccines do not prevent COVID, they only ensure it doesn't become serious enough to warrant hospitalisations). - Vaccination of the population needs to be priority number one and needs to be done quickly. Once the virus spreads, it also mutates at a faster rate and thus current vaccines may not work on future mutations of the virus. Thus, if any country can manufacture the vaccine on its own, they should use their emergency powers to disregard vaccine patents or license and should manufacture it.
- volker48 5y ago
  > remember, the vaccines do not prevent COVID, they only ensure it doesn't become serious enough to warrant hospitalisations What exactly is the ~95% effectiveness of the vaccines then?
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    From what I understand, it means that the vaccine is effective in teaching our immune system to successfully identify the virus / infected cells and fight it within a certain time period (which maybe anywhere between a few months to a year after vaccination - since the vaccines are new, no one is sure how long the effects last). So if you are vaccinated, and get exposed and infected by the virus, you may experience none to mild to medium symptoms (it depends on how healthy your immune system is). But the vaccine ensures that your immune system can ultimately defeat the virus and ensures the disease caused by the virus doesn't become a full blown covid case requiring hospitalisation. Note that during this period you will still be a carrier for the virus and can potentially spread it to others. Even the current covid treatment protocol is designed to just aid your body to fight the virus successfully, and to ensure that your immune system doesn't harm you while fighting the virus (lung damage in covid cases are due to our our immune system mistakenly attacking some of our healthy cells). This is an excellent video that explains it better than me - https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9jDIKKUBg https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9jDIKKUBg ...

6 points by georgecmu 5y ago

My dad (we're Taiwanese) once told me the difference between Asian and Western societies is mostly in fault tolerance strategies - how each society prevents important societal systems and functions from failing. Asian societies beat the fear of mistakes into you from a young age - everyone being so afraid of doing anything wrong that few things go wrong. Hence, they tend to build systems that depends upon no one making mistakes, and it often works out. Western societies assume mistakes will always occur and build systems that accounts for failure with contingency plans and backup strategies to ensure mistakes are limited in their damage. I've thought about this a lot with the pandemic. Initially, strategies of staving off covid aligned very well with Asian society (shaming everyone into the proper behavior of wearing masks, getting checked, staying at home if you're sick, etc). However, this strategy relies on no one making mistakes (basically, everyone behaving). Contrast that to the US, where getting people to behave was nigh impossible, but with vaccinations, you don't care if some people misbehave because after herd immunity, the system is stabilized. The Asian strategy of fault tolerance is easy to roll out, quickly followed, and effective - but brittle and non permanent. It relies on people not making mistakes ever, and with human behavior, mistakes are bound to happen. In contrast, the Western strategy is a lot more work, a lot slower to roll out, but a more permanent solution. Solve it once and for all, and move on. Of course, a mix of both strategies is best; put on the short term band-aid of following orders, and follow it with the robust solution of herd immunity. And it seems that both sides messed up because of ideological blind spots.

webmobdev 5y ago
I've thought about this too and believe a major factor is the population - life is cheap in Asia because of the numbers. We don't care unless a lot of people start dying. Even if preventive laws exist (for example, wearing helmet is compulsory while driving two-wheelers) a lot of Asians are lax with it and sometimes ignore it (common excuses include hot weather). An accident in Asian coutries is often a small footnote in the media where as in western societies it may be a prominent news. Ofcourse, there are exceptions like Korea, Japan and Singapore, but they also have fewer population than other asian countries.

webmobdev 5y ago

Some things Taiwan can learn from India: - A "Lockdown" is a very blunt weapon in the fight against COVID. It is effective in temporarily containing COVID but comes at a huge economic cost. A complete lockdown should only be done when the healthcare infrastructure is near breaking point. In fact, the whole point of a lockdown is to provide a temporary relief so that the healthcare infrastructure can be upgraded to deal with the predicted increase of cases in the future. - Mandatory masking, social distancing norms and reasonable restrictions on people's movement and gathering should continue till the Pandemic is over (remember, the vaccines do not prevent COVID, they only ensure it doesn't become serious enough to warrant hospitalisations). - Vaccination of the population needs to be priority number one and needs to be done quickly. Once the virus spreads, it also mutates at a faster rate and thus current vaccines may not work on future mutations of the virus. Thus, if any country can manufacture the vaccine on its own, they should use their emergency powers to disregard vaccine patents or license and should manufacture it.

volker48 5y ago
> remember, the vaccines do not prevent COVID, they only ensure it doesn't become serious enough to warrant hospitalisations What exactly is the ~95% effectiveness of the vaccines then?
- webmobdev 5y ago
  From what I understand, it means that the vaccine is effective in teaching our immune system to successfully identify the virus / infected cells and fight it within a certain time period (which maybe anywhere between a few months to a year after vaccination - since the vaccines are new, no one is sure how long the effects last). So if you are vaccinated, and get exposed and infected by the virus, you may experience none to mild to medium symptoms (it depends on how healthy your immune system is). But the vaccine ensures that your immune system can ultimately defeat the virus and ensures the disease caused by the virus doesn't become a full blown covid case requiring hospitalisation. Note that during this period you will still be a carrier for the virus and can potentially spread it to others. Even the current covid treatment protocol is designed to just aid your body to fight the virus successfully, and to ensure that your immune system doesn't harm you while fighting the virus (lung damage in covid cases are due to our our immune system mistakenly attacking some of our healthy cells). This is an excellent video that explains it better than me - https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9jDIKKUBg https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9jDIKKUBg ...