Monday, 26 October 2020

Taiwan and Covid-19: an apology

 An earlier message may have given the impression that Taiwan relied solely on traditional methods to combat the virus. In fact, a sophisticated digital tracking system was soon developed as this article from May 2020 showed. 

However, what chiefly distinguishes Taiwan from the UK and US is that they learned from a previous epidemic by drawing up a plan for a future medical emergency, implementing it at the first sign of danger  and sticking to it. Their disease-control system was "oven-ready" when they needed it. Obama claims to have drawn up a pandemic play-book which Trump ignored. Hunt did worse. Not only did he not implement recommendations from an official inquiry, he actually ran down community health and a tried-and-tested contact tracing system.


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