3 ms·

> The initial outbreak. I don't know if this was ever, in any practical sense, possible. (Honestly, I don't know, maybe it was). Yes, Taiwan did it, as describ

• ineedasername 4y ago
  No. Using Taiwan to make this claim is incorrect-- or insufficient-- in at least two ways. Also keep in mind that I said for all practical purposes, which is very different than theoretically possible. But taking things one at a time: 1) Taiwan has failed to continue it's early accomplishments. It has now has had hundreds of thousands of cases. I'll preemptively address a to this that Taiwan's current cases are a separate topic from it's initial success. This is not an unreasonable point, though I myself do not think they can be separated. A discuss there however seems outside the scope of my response to you. 2) Taiwan was uniquely suited for it's early effective response to COVID. It had learned the lessons from prior scares such as 2003 and put excellent measures in place to to respond to future issues. It was only able to succeed early in the pandemic because of actions taken years earlier. In the context of my comment it is unreasonable to deny my claim on the basis that, had the entire world 10+ years earlier acted differently that Taiwan's success could have been replicated. I clearly made "initial outbreak" the context of my comment while Taiwan's success was rooted in far far earlier actions. The actions listed in your linked article were only so rapidly possible due to that decade long preparation. You might reasonably claim "had the rest of the world followed Taiwan's example 10+ years earlier..." But that would not be a contextual response to my comment. At the initial point of outbreak, especially with early cases in Italy traced back to 2019 & what we know of asymptomatic cases and spread rates, my claim stands: it may have, in any practical sense, been impossible at initial outbreak to have stopped things in their tracks. (I am open to further discussion that I may be wrong, but the example of Taiwan is not sufficient to demonstrate that) The sociopolitical situation in some areas would quite literally have made it impossible as well. In the US for example even the patchwork response by states, often less extreme in restrictions than other areas of the world, prompted sporadic violence including a number of murders over simple mask requirements-- a strict policy in Taiwan that is credited with it's early success. IIRC there was at least one such murder in Germany as well. Finally: I will concede that worldwide response was spotty and inconsistent and that a better job could have been done.