Buy, borrow or steal a copy of the current Private Eye magazine. You may not care for the way it attacks politicians (of all stripes) and institutions, but you can throw away the rest of the magazine if you wish. It is worth it just for page 8 which contains Phil Hammond MD's rounded portrait of what I have merely touched on in previous posts: the success of Taiwan in overcoming Covid-19. He details the "route map out of the pandemic" which avoided "lockdowns, excess deaths and economic carnage".
The Sars-Cov-2 virus may be rising again across Europe and America, but Taiwan hasn't had a locally transmitted infection for more than 200 days. This is all the more surprising givn it's a crowded democratic island of 23m people off the coast of China, with direct flights to Wuhan and many densely populated cities. Many residents live close together in apartments. In Sars 2003, it was the third worst affected country; yet in 2020, it has had only 555 confirmed cases and seven deaths, with no lockdowns and no second wave.
Equally impressive, GDP is predicted to rise by 1.56 per cent in 2020 and life is near to normal.
Nor is Taiwan run by a totalitarian or even a socialist government. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party is a full member of Liberal International.
Hammond lays out how Taiwan achieved its enviable figures with the active compliance of the population and confidence in the health system overall. "Citizens do not live in fear of accessing medical care in case they pick up Covid," he writes. Perhaps he had a certain Welsh group of hospitals in mind?
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