Is Taiwan A Better Example than South Korea of How to Respond to COVID-19?
Dr. Tara O makes a very compelling case that the international media should be looking at Taiwan as a great example of what to do to combat COVID-19 instead of South Korea:
Taiwan recognized the threat early on and rapidly began to take measures. It inspected and screened travelers from Wuhan, the epicenter of the SARS CoV-2, as early as December 31, 2019. It also actively monitored travelers from Wuhan who had already entered Taiwan on December 20, 2019 and onwards. It had developed screening, testing, and quarantine protocols early based on lessons from the SARS 2003 outbreak. It also engaged in aggressive contact tracing to ensure everyone that came into contact with an infected person was quarantined and tested. On February 6, 2020, Taiwan banned travel from China.
Unlike Taiwan, South Korea never banned travel from China, although the Korean Medical Association (KMA) and the public called for such measures multiple times. South Korea eventually restricted travel from Wuhan on February 2, 2020, but it was not until after China had already quarantined the City of Wuhan on January 23, 2020. KMA, on February 3, made its fifth request to the government to ban entry from China, saying South Korea is losing its “golden time” of prevention, and it will become “regional spreads.” KMA also highlighted inadequate tracking of visitors from China. KMA’s concerns and the government’s inadequate tracing are not reflected in foreign reports that praise South Korea’s tracing.
On January 31, 2020, 11,345 people traveled from China to South Korea. Multiplying by 30 days, that would be more than 340,350 people in one month. If 1% were infected with the coronavirus, that would be 3,403 infected people entering South Korea.
East Asia Research Center
I highly recommend reading the rest at the link.
What I think Dr. O is getting after is that the international media has been heaping great praise on President Moon’s response to COVID-19 without mentioning his administration’s previous missteps which also included lack of masks and testing. Even the testing today there is misinformation in the international media about free testing in South Korea, but don’t mention that a sick person needs to have a CT Scan or an X-ray done before a coronavirus test can be conducted. The cost of the CT scan and X-ray could dissuade people from getting tested.
The only reason why I can think of that the international media isn’t instead lavishing praise on Taiwan is because they don’t want to deal with the backlash from China. So the Moon administration has become a better example to damage the Trump administration with. Pointing out the Moon administration’s failings does not help with that goal and thus why they only focus on things that the Moon administration has done right.
Anyone else have any alternate theories on why the international media is not focusing on what the Moon administration has done wrong?
Much better!!!
Absolutely better. Moon, on the other hand, has the Beijing Seal of Approval.
News media afraid of Emperor Xi’s Ambassador Twitter trolls and visa retribution for recognizing their rogue neighbors as being better than the PRC.
Why Taiwanese or South Korean models? Why not the American model? After all, ROK Drop says the US under Trump has done a magnificent job preparing for this disease, so much so that the President himself has to go with hat in hand to the Commie Moon to beg for Coronavirus detection test kits. This is right after Mr. President Trump boasted several times to his press that the US is testing far more people than South Korea is.
So that leaves the last one important question to be answered here. The US banned Chinese travelers back in January (something that Ms O complained that Moon didn’t do), so how did that go for the US? Why are there 13,000 dead in the US, with the number of daily deaths at 1000 people?
Beijing Man seems unhappy her; but keeps coming back… I heard about guys like that… 🙄
Well over 700,000* people from China came to the US after the Wuhan Flu started and the ban was implemented, so do the math, bright boy…
* (Not counting those traveling through a third country.)
Right. You have just explained why the ban against didn’t work for the US and why it wouldn’t have worked for Korea as well. 🙄
Beijing Man; A hard ban against anyone with a commie passport from red china would have worked but only half measures were taken in the US because of political correctness. In Korea no measures were taken because commie moon is a lackey of Xi.
@Korean Man, please point out where I said the US did a “magnificent job of preparing for this disease”?
The US failed to realize that we all live next door to China in this globalist culture. Taiwan and South Korea have long experience with the situation.
charliem, you do realize Taiwan and South Korea took widely divergent paths, right? : 😕
I think the mistake the US government made was thinking the travel ban from China would stop a massive infection from happening in the US. We now know that it appears most of the infections affecting New York came in from Europe. Chinese travelers to Europe infected Europeans who then came to the US and infected Americans.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/health/new-york-coronavirus-outbreak-europe-origin/index.html
When you look at the outbreak in the US it has only been New York where the health care system has had a hard time keeping up with cases. The other hot spot of Washington State, its health care system has been able to keep up and the Army is even taking down the triage hospital they built in the convention center in Seattle that was never used because the demand was not there.
A lot of the panic over hospital overcrowding, PPE, and ventilators is based off computer models that have so far proven inaccurate.
In California researchers are trying to figure out what is going on there because there has been no mass infections. A theory Stanford researchers are working on is that the virus had been there longer than known because of the amount of Chinese travelers before the travel ban and herd immunity was developed early:
https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-covid-19-herd-immunity-california/6091220/
Where the US government initially failed was the test kits because the CDC was controlling the testing and pushed out initially defective test kits. Private labs were not able to push out their own tests because they needed FDA certification. It really wasn’t until private industry got involved that more test kits were pushed out once the FDA got out of the way.
This is what South Korea did early on was rely on private labs to develop test kits and get them pushed out for use. This was something Korea learned from the prior SARS outbreak. I have no doubt that in a future outbreaks private labs will be called on instead of relying on the CDC.
The other mistake was not asking people to wear masks like what is seen in Asia. I bet the CDC was hoping to stop a run on masks so medical providers have them, but as we are seeing now many people are being innovative and making cloth masks.
All the rightwinger Americans here blaming SK for not banning Chinese, should read GI Korea’s last post why the banning of Chinese wouldn’t have worked anyway. As for the American CDC and WHO lying to the world that the masks are not going to be helpful to control the spread is one of the sinister moves of all time. The results speak for itself. The disease is spreading far more rapidly through Western countries where the mask-wearing is discouraged and seen as uncool. Such backward thinking has been deadly. And you Americans like to make fun of Korean fan death myths. But that myth is not deadly like the Western belief that wearing face masks are useless.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/will-not-be-forgotten-donald-trump-tweets-thank-you-to-pm-modi-indians-for-allowing-export-of-covid-19-drug/story-4jvYIBkiNBeJySuYSOEf7J.html
@setnaffa, what amazes me about the whole hydroxychloroquine is how it seems the media and others want this drug to fail just because Trump mentioned it.
If hydroxychloroquine really is a wonder drug that miraculously cure this, then it would have been already touted as the wonder drug by all the medical experts around the world, and you wouldn’t see all those deaths in Italy, Spain, and now the US.
It looks more like you want Trump to be right so bad, you’re ignoring the reality that it’s not the wonder drug as it’s touted by Trump.
I didn’t say it was a cure. The drug has early indications of being successfully at relieving symptoms of people who are sick. Korean-American Daniel Dae Kim credited the drug cocktail that included hydroxychloroquine for his recovery from COVID-19.
GIKorea, the point is, the drug may help some people in some cases. And even that is dicey. Yet Trump is making it into a wonder drug that will cure the disease. That’s where the problem comes from. That, and the fact that he claimed back in Februrary that all this will go away in April when the temperature warms up. We are well into April, and the daily deaths of Americans has almost hit 1000. Where are the Trump supporters now on that? Your explanation?
Korean Man, I am going to help you build credibility. It is amazingly simple. Just post these words:
“Xi Jinping looks like an ugly little Winnie the Pooh.”
Just write it as a joke.
Xi Jinping looks like an ugly little Winnie the Pooh
😀
Globalist hate hydroxychloroquine because they can’t make any money off of it.
Well, now we’re reasonably certain Korean Man is not Chinese, in spite of repeating Chinese agitprop for a week or so.
Good call CH.
It is frustrating trying to translate Trumpian to people who clearly don’t want to listen. This is what Trump said about the virus going away in April:
He said a lot of people think the virus will go away in April. He did not conclude it would go away, he was simply hoping the people that believed the warm weather would kill the virus were right. Trump is trying to be optimistic to balance out all the doom and gloom because he has to balance out the fear to keep people confident that is okay to go back to work one day.
If Trump came out and declared in February a lockdown across the country the people criticizing him now for not doing a lockdown would be criticizing him for fear mongering and being a dictator and whatever talking points they come up with for implementing a lockdown in February.
As far hydroxychloroquine this is what Trump’s POV on it basically is:
Trump is a news junky and he keeps hearing people being helped by hydroxychloroquine is basically wondering why not allow someone to try it if their doctor said it is safe for them to use just like Daniel Dae Kim’s doctor did that helped him recover?