How Taiwan beat covid

Can you give a summary for those of us who don't want to allow all those tracking cookies?

Countries that have populations that listen and follow guidance do not need draconian legislation.  That is always in the back pocket in places such as Taiwan?

The people of countries such as UK exercise their "right do die and kill others"....often loudly and by waving banners.

I've been to Taipei......people are not the same there as in Leicester?

Experience from SARS, high trust in government, effective quarantine with support, free masks, excellent healthcare system, unusual approach to government messaging (propaganda if you prefer).

“Whenever there’s a trending rumour, we make sure there’s humour over rumour. Within two hours, we roll out two pictures, each with less than 200 characters and that goes even more viral than the disinformation,” Tang says. The idea is that people would see the disinformation and a funny clarification on the same day, she says. That way, after they wake up the following day, the long-term association will likely be “joy and humour”, rather than “anger and outrage”.

The most replicable factor in Taiwan’s success is the country’s high-trust open source culture, says Amy Studdart, a senior advisor at the International Republican Institute, an NGO focusing on digital democracy. “Taiwan has been smart about changing the institutions and structure of government and they have transformed citizens’ expectations of what the government does.”

But Daniel Faraci, director at consultancy Grassroots Political Consulting points out that parts of Taiwan’s approach could be difficult to replicate in the West, where social media are more often weaponised to sow discord than to fight disinformation. “Taiwan has a level of sophistication where the community and government are working together,” says Faraci. “Here [in the US] we don’t have those types of systems: we have websites.”

Bob @ Fatbloke said

Countries that have populations that listen and follow guidance do not need draconian legislation.  That is always in the back pocket in places such as Taiwan?

The people of countries such as UK exercise their "right do die and kill others"....often loudly and by waving banners.

I've been to Taipei......people are not the same there as in Leicester?

I wonder how much of that is down to having a superpower on the doorstep itching to take over again. 

Looking at the trouble in the Netherlands makes it clear what works in one culture may not work in another.

GhostOfArielAdam said

Bob @ Fatbloke said

Countries that have populations that listen and follow guidance do not need draconian legislation.  That is always in the back pocket in places such as Taiwan?

The people of countries such as UK exercise their "right do die and kill others"....often loudly and by waving banners.

I've been to Taipei......people are not the same there as in Leicester?

I wonder how much of that is down to having a superpower on the doorstep itching to take over again. 

And how much due to leadership, clear consistent rules and leaders leading by example. 'You must not travel, but I'm off to Scotland on a totally pointless day out'

Edited by Stolenfaces

mph said

Looking at the trouble in the Netherlands makes it clear what works in one culture may not work in another.

The, dare I say it, rightwing government here was initially more concerned with the economy than the health of people. It's dithered, been inconsistent, been hypocritical and clearly incompetent, privatising the vaccination service during the pandemic and not getting to grips with vaccination, being one of the worst performing countries in Europe. It has also been hit and fallen through a tax and subsidy scandal bankrupting thousands of people who had fostered children and has been refusing to compensate them properly. This has caused untold anger in some areas of society. While one can't condone the rioting, this rightwing neoliberal government is typical of its type, fucking useless! Still, like BloJo, it might win enough seats in the next election to carry on having the premiership. You can't make it up! 

I suppose it is like the Uk where 25-35% of the electorate feel well heeled enough to vote for shit dishonest and incompetent government because they think it will save them taxes while everything is decays around the, The only saving grace is that PR acts as a brake on the more extreme effects.

Edited by vanBrughuis

Seven steps to the gutter eh?  Pretty good, even in PP terms.

If you wish to discuss party politics, please take it to the General Politics group.

Bob @ Fatbloke said

Seven steps to the gutter eh?  Pretty good, even in PP terms.

If you are referring to my post, 80,000 people who foster children bankrupted through actions of a government which refuses to take responsibility, is the gutter. It is one of many government actions that has created anger in the Netherlands while it looks after the rich. The pandemic is probably not the main reason for the rioting and protesting but the spark. 

The fact is, the more rightwing a government, the more incompetent they seem to be in tackling the pandemic.

Edited by vanBrughuis

Richard Winn said

If you wish to discuss party politics, please take it to the General Politics group.

Huh? 

Richard Winn said

If you wish to discuss party politics, please take it to the General Politics group.

Difficult to make something so political as government decision making, which the OP is about, apolitical. The OP was such a political post, I thought it was in the Gerneral Politics thread.

The better a countries health care system is the more people fail to look after themselves (smoking, diet e.t.c.) in the knowledge they will be saved. Air ambulances , advanced cancer treatments , expensive sustaining medications e.t.c.

The better a countries health care system is the more vulnerable people there are that could and die in a pandemic, where the ability to sustain life, that would have otherwise been extinct suddenly changes.

I think this may well be one of the reasons for a lot of the relative ("apparent") success or failure in preventing a rise is excess deaths.

The Wired article makes some good points about how quickly Taiwan responded this time last year. One point I don't think the Wired article gives enough emphasis to is the value of having a good social care system in place already, and that it gave them a platform to make sure that isolation isn't too onerous so people instructed to isolate actually do it. It goes beyond the daily payment described in Wired. this from an opinion piece in the BMJ (https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/07/21/what-we-can-learn-from-taiwans-response-to-the-covid-19-epidemic/):

>>>Taiwan’s pandemic control measures were complemented by effective social care. As well as free access to testing, the government also finances the cost of 14 day quarantine. Everyone under quarantine was compensated with USD $35 per day. Local government staff make daily phone calls to those under quarantine to offer assistance, and provide them with a care package that includes 14 surgical masks, detailed instructions on quarantine, free online access to exercise videos, and free online access to movies. Taiwan’s government recognizes that the general public are a crucial partner for the success of pandemic control.

I've heard a lot of talk about the Taiwanese and also South Korean populations being more compliant as if it's somehow inherent to those cultures. As far as I can make out, it has a lot more to do with the governments having given their people good reasons to believe that the governments know what they're doing and making sure that any restrictions put in place are easy to follow.

Worth bearing in mind that Taiwan and South Korea both overthrew dictatorships by popular protest in the late 1980s and since then, both have seen former presidents investigated for the corruption at a level I suspect would have been shrugged off as no big deal in Britain. I can't claim any special insight into either country but I get the impression of populations accustomed to holding their governments to higher standards than we do which is likely to help everyone pull together in a crisis.

More people who can't distinguish between the COVID group and General Politics ...  :-(