How Taiwan Conquered the Coronavirus with Common Sense

This is Ms. Tsai Ing-Wen. She is the first female President of Taiwan. She also leads the country with the best response to COVID-19.

Let's look at some of her stats and then her steps.

Stats:

• Taiwan is geographically right next to China, and had daily flights to Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus.
• When the epidemic began, John Hopkins university predicted Taiwan would be the second hardest hit country.
• Right now, they have a population of 23 million, out of which only 427 are affected, and 6 deaths. For comparison, Canada has 37 million people, more than 40,000 cases and over 2000 dead. Not to mention, Taiwan's 23 million live in an area smaller than Nova Scotia.

Now let's see how they handled their epidemic.

Short summary: Masks, hand wash, travel ban, aggressive tracking and quarantine. Also, ignore the WHO.

Result: Everything is open, economy hasn't crashed, curve is basically flat.

Details:

• early action (from January 1, 2020). Starts to board flights from China and check passengers for symptoms.
• Travel ban from ALL flights from Wuhan, and then China, shortly after.
• Put a triage centre in airport to identify possible cases
• Strict quarantine: you get paid for staying in quarantine, get food delivered to your house, get your symptoms checked thrice a day. Break quarantine and you are fined several month's salary. They would do this for all POSSIBLE cases, not just positive cases.
• Aggressive hand washing - every public building had sanitizing stations, and you get your temperature checked before you enter. You are not allowed to enter a building if you show symptoms.
• Masks - Everyone MUST wear masks when out. Taiwan saw they have 40 million masks in their stockpile, so they cranked up production to 10 million masks PER DAY and put a price limit on the masks to prevent price gouging.
• They integrated travel, immigration, customs and health care databases and included cellphone tracking to identify possible cases and improve contact tracing.
• QUARANTINE the sick, not the healthy - was their motto.

Today, Taiwan is a classic example of using common sense and the old age methods with new technology to control an epidemic. They went hard, they went aggressive - AND THEY WENT EARLY. Today their parks, restaurants, schools, offices, public services are all open, and yet their numbers are low.

Compare this to Canada where we had no travel restrictions, no forced home quarantine, no database integration, no masks (STILL NO INSTRUCTION ON MASKS), no aggressive stockpiling of PPEs, no protection from PRICE GOUGING or PANIC BUYING, no hand washing in public buildings, NO AIRPORT measures ... the list goes on.

Sources:

https://www.thestar.com/podcasts/thismatters/2020/04/22/23-million-people-6-deaths-how-taiwan-tackled-the-covid-19-crisis.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/asia/taiwan-coronavirus-response-who-intl-hnk/index.html

A Tale of 3 Women: Jacinda Ardern, Dr. Henry and Dr. Tam

Let's talk about three women.

Two of them are smart. The third one - Let's say I am not a fan.

1. Jacinda Ardern

They say a leader is tested in a crisis, and how you deal with it makes or breaks you. By that definition, Ms. Ardern should be the leader of the world. Her first crisis was last year during the horrific mosque shooting in Christchurch. The whole world saw how she dealt with the fall out, with empathy, determination, unity and determination. Now let's see how she dealt with the corona virus:

• COVID-19 testing is widespread
• Out of 5 million, only 12 people died
• Banned travellers from China in early February, before a single case in NZ
• Banned foreigners from NZ in mid-March, with only a handful of cases
• National lockdown from early March, much earlier then other Western nations
• Unveiled a four level alert system
• With a degree in communications, kept her citizens abreast of events, and used empathy in her Facebook live sessions
• Inspired a collective effort from all NZ, public health departments and hospitals.

Though it's early to say, by all counts, her efforts seem to be working.

2. Dr. Bonnie Henry 

She is the Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia, and the first province to see a spike in the number of growths of COVID-19 positive cases. Yet, as of now, whether you go by confirmed cases or hospitalizations, by raw numbers or a per capita comparison, the virus has steadily grown in Ontario and Quebec, but flattened in BC. Why? It is her leadership, as well as luck and timing.

• She looked at the data from Quebec's March break and correctly deduced it's mostly community transmission from USA. This was at a time when Dr. Theresa Tam was saying the "risk is low".
• She immediately asked BC citizens to STOP ALL TRAVEL outside of Canada. This was on March 11, the same day Doug Ford of Ontario was telling people to travel on March break and "have a good time".
• She immediately put a halt to health workers working in more than one place. This immediately broke the back of community transmission. As a comparison, Ontario did this only last week (4 weeks later).
• Improved testing per capital (Ontario is still behind its goals), reserve stock piling of PPE and focus on social distancing.
• Unified messaging and response to the public, and a better health care system than other provinces.
• She saw the data and introduced corrective BOLD measures in BC much before the rest of Canada caught on.
• Dr. Henry's direct experience in overseeing Toronto's SARS and Canada's H1N1 outbreaks is the type of background that's impossible to quantify in a situation like this.

3. Dr. Theresa Tam

Now let us quantify the "contributions" of Canada's top doctor.

• On Dec 31, 2019, Taiwan warned WHO about the virus spreading from human to human. WHO rejected the idea. Guess who sits on the oversight committee of WHO? That's right, Dr. Tam. This is the committee that is there to make sure WHO does the right thing, and NOT bow to pressure from China. 
• On Jan 14, 2020, WHO tweeted the virus was NOT transmitting from human to human. This, despite doctors treating patients in China getting sick. Dr. Tam did not stop them, but actually repeated that rubbish, despite warnings from Taiwan and Singapore.
• Jan 20, China finally admitted the virus was transmitting from human to human. Dr Tam insisted there was no risk to Canadians. Flights continued from China.
• Jan 25, first Canadian case, a man who returned from Wuhan.
• Jan 26, second Canadian case, that man's wife. Dr. Tam insisted risk is "low".
• Jan 27. Dr Tam chastised those worrying about the virus as "racism".
• Jan 31, Trump acted on his "China ban". Meanwhile Dr Tam continued to insist there is no risk, and travellers continued to come here from China. Canada's numbers showed a steady rise.
• Feb 19 to March 4 - As Iran became the new hotspot, Dr. Tam continued to resist calls for travel bans. By this time, Singapore, New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, USA, Italy had all acted on travel restrictions, but not her. Canada's numbers now began to rise sharply as returnees from Iran began to show signs of infection. 
• By March 4, returnees from USA were showing signs of infection. One of them rode the TTC and Go before testing positive. Dr. Tam insisted the "risk is low". She also said travel bans were of no use. She also said don't wear masks.
• March 12 - Mrs. Trudeau tested positive, and all hell broke loose.
• March 30, the CDC says you should wear masks. Dr. Tam still denies it's of any use.

This is why Dr. Theresa Tam needs to be fired.