[ LETTERS ]

Firm, fair, rational quarantine I arrived in Taiwan on March 11. On my seventh day in the country, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) contacted me and told me not to leave my accommodation. The authorities had changed their policy: All European arrivals from March 5 had to go into quarantine until they had been in the country for a period of 14 days. The following morning, a woman from the CECC visited me at the apartment. She told me they were tracking my mobile phone to make sure I complied with the quarantine and gave me a thermometer. I had clear instructions to fill in a health sheet each day and contact them if I developed symptoms. To protect my girlfriend, who I am living with, the woman gave me 14 masks — two for each day. I was rung each morning of the quarantine by both the CECC and the local police. At no point did I have any symptoms. Some people would have judged this as being “over the top” or “draconian” a couple of weeks ago. However, take a look at the numbers: Cases in Taiwan increased by 152 during my quarantine period, with the vast majority developing symptoms while in isolation. The UK, on the other hand, had nearly 7,000 new cases, and that is not including many who are undiagnosed. As for my quarantine being “draconian,” well, this weekend my girlfriend and I went on a trip to Taroko National Park, and next weekend we are going to Taipei. For now, the Taiwanese authorities have escalated their immigration and quarantine policy to stay a step ahead of the virus, and they continue to remain proactive, not reactive. History will judge them to have acted with appropriate force. Other countries should take note. Should the general public wear face masks?

EDITORIAL CARTOON

EDITORIAL CARTOON

The East-West divide in COVID-19 control

East Asian nations are outperforming the US and Europe in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that the outbreak began in China, to which the rest of East Asia is very closely bound by trade and travel. The US and Europe should be learning as rapidly as possible about the East Asian approaches, which could still save vast numbers of lives in the West and the rest of the world. An important starting point for comparison is the number of confirmed cases and COVID-19 deaths per million population. It is as if the two regions are in different worlds. Europe and the US are engulfed in the pandemic: confirmed cases per million range from 814 (UK) to 3,036 (Spain), and deaths per million range from 24 to 300. In the East Asian countries, confirmed cases per million range from three (Vietnam) to 253 (Singapore), and deaths per million from zero to four. East Asian countries are not systematically undercounting either cases or deaths relative to their Western counterparts. Both regions have tested a similar proportion of their populations. Importantly, the differences between the two regions do not reflect firmer economic lockdowns in East Asia. Google has recently published fascinating data on the reduction of activity in various sectors of the economy. The disruptions to normal life (comparing the end of last month with a baseline of Jan. 3 to Feb. 6) are less severe in East Asia. The disparity between East Asian and Western countries’ public health and economic outcomes reflects three key differences between the regions. For starters, the East Asian countries were far better prepared for a new disease outbreak. The 2003 SARS outbreak was a wake-up call, and frequent waves of dengue fever in several East Asian countries reinforced the message. In Europe and the US, concerns over SARS, Ebola,

By Jeffrey Sachs

It is now or never for global leadership on COVID-19

This week, leaders from medicine, economics, politics and civil society are uniting to demand immediate and coordinated international action in the next few days to mobilize the resources needed to address the COVID-19 crisis, prevent the current health catastrophe from becoming one of the worst in history and avert a global depression. As a letter to the world’s leaders notes, because we are so far behind the COVID-19 curve, many lives are being lost needlessly, other health issues are being ignored, and societies and economies are being devastated. During the global financial crisis of 2008, G20 leaders worked to coordinate a global response. And in other previous emergencies — such as tsunamis, civil wars, or epidemics — coalitions of countries have convened donor conferences to generate the necessary resources. Today, we need both: a G20 task force to coordinate international support and a donors’ conference to make that support effective. A decade ago, the immediate economic crisis could be surmounted when the undercapitalization of the global banking system was addressed. This time, the economic crisis will not end until the health emergency is addressed, and the health emergency will not end by addressing the disease in one country alone. It can end only when all countries recover from COVID-19 and it is prevented from returning on a regular basis. All healthcare systems and societies — even the most sophisticated and richest — are buckling under the strain caused by the coronavirus. However, if we do nothing as it spreads in African, Asian, and Latin American cities and smaller communities — which have little testing equipment and fragile health systems, and where social distancing will be impossible to achieve — it will cause devastation, persist and perhaps inevitably fuel other outbreaks worldwide. PUBLIC FUNDING The only way we can end the crisis sooner rather than later

By Jeremy Farrar, Erik Berglof and Gordon Brown

EDITORIAL: China’s lies and dubious statistics

China on Tuesday reported zero COVID-19 deaths for the first time since it began publishing daily figures on infection rates in January, and at midnight on Wednesday it lifted the lockdown on Wuhan. While China appears to be experiencing a downward trend of the virus, the governments of Taiwan and other nations around the world should treat the news with extreme caution for a number of reasons. First, it is important to recognize that Beijing has a long history of massaging statistics, most notably its own economic data. Many observers believe China routinely exaggerates GDP growth by about 2 percent. Concerns that China has been cooking the books on COVID-19 infection data were given added weight on Wednesday last week, when Bloomberg reported the leak of a classified US intelligence report for the White House on China’s accounting of the virus. The report concluded that Beijing had been intentionally under-reporting total cases and deaths, and that its data is “fake.” It is certainly in the interests of the Chinese Communist Party to play down the crisis — to mitigate the damage of its initial cover-up, get China’s economy moving again, and provide good news for both internal and external consumption. Second, there is increasing evidence to suggest that Chinese-made COVID-19 testing kits are inaccurate. The Slovak government purchased 1.2 million Chinese antibody testing kits for 15 million euros (US$16 million). On delivery they were found to be unreliable and unable to detect COVID-19 in its early stages. Other European nations, including Spain, the Czech Republic and Turkey, have also returned Chinese testing kits after finding them to be faulty. Turkish officials reported an accuracy rate of less than 35 percent for the first batch of testing kits the nation received. Coupled with reports from within China during the early stages of the outbreak that

Being productive from at home

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit businesses hard globally. Almost all of Western Europe is enforcing mandatory rules for people to work from home unless there are valid reasons for them to do otherwise, such as essential services. In Taiwan, major manufacturing companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co are putting their non-production employees in remote work mode to contain the viral spread. Home office might last for several months and this could become a permanent trend after the virus outbreak. While this change of work style is an immediate relief from unnecessary exposure to the viral risk, it might also inherit productivity cost especially over the long term. While one bright side of having to work from home is that it saves time previously spent commuting, it could be a burden to many people. For example, many find it hard to unplug after work; many find it easier to get distracted by children; many struggle with communication among coworkers; and most of them find it hard to concentrate due to the layout at home, which is not meant to be conducive for work. To improve productivity for those who are adjusting to this newfound flexibility of working from home, it is important to find ways to put that productivity back on track while working at home. For working parents, it is a good idea to work out a roster with each other for managing their children, as childcare might not be available in these challenging days. This enables the other person to engage in uninterrupted work. Short chunks of focus are key. Working at home does not entitle you to the luxury of having eight solid continuous hours a day to work on your craft. Neither is eight hours healthy nor necessary, as research on the basic rest-activity

By Joo Kwang Chan and Ng Ming Shan 曾裕光，吳明珊

Trump, Biden need a PRC policy

To prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from interfering in the US’ November election the way it did with Taiwan in January, US President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, should present a united front on US-China policy. Beijing’s anti-US propaganda campaign long has been under way, with the usual accusations of “hegemonism,“ “containment” and “keeping China down” — all intended to put policymakers and opinion leaders on the defensive by invoking China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of the West. The campaign has two other purposes. First, it seeks to further exacerbate political divisions in US society, and to destabilize and enervate governmental institutions. The second is to affect US national security policymaking in ways that advance the strategic interests of Beijing and Moscow at the expense of the US, and its security allies and partners. Now the COVID-19 pandemic has arrived conveniently in time to stall the US economy, and deepen partisan divisions over the cause of the outbreak and the government’s response. It also has opened a whole new disinformation front, with Beijing sources accusing the US Army of releasing the disease, denying its Chinese origins, and labeling US officials as racist and xenophobic. The presidential candidates have the pandemic and a host of other domestic and foreign policy issues to debate between now and November. However, the one issue they need to remove from partisan contention is the US’ single most important national security challenge: the existential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Given their respective histories on China, they should be able to present a united front and eliminate Beijing’s efforts to further inflame US society, and debilitate the US government and military establishment. They should start by fully embracing the core US national security reality embodied in the

By Joseph Bosco

Doubts over virus data exist even inside PRC

On March 27, the Chinese-language Beijing News reported that Jiangxi Province police officers, whose duties include enforcing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, clashed with police from Hubei Province on a bridge at the border between the two provinces. The incident arose because the Jiangxi police were blocking people from Hubei from entering Jiangxi, including a large number of migrant workers who wanted to return to work. The crowd started shouting “keep going, Hubei,” attacked the Jiangxi police and overturned police vehicles. The clash highlights points raised in a March 24 opinion piece in the People’s Daily, headlined: “Respect science: Drop the preoccupation with ‘zero increase’” — meaning the target of reaching zero new COVID-19 cases. The writer asked: “Might some localities make false reports about the epidemic situation to give the appearance of having achieved ‘zero increase,’ in order to restart work and production or just for the sake of ‘political correctness?’” The dispute on the bridge reflects three underlying problems: First, there is a lack of trust between local authorities. The people from Hubei who wanted to enter Jiangxi Province were carrying “health green QR codes” issued by Hubei authorities, as required by the Notice Concerning Strict Implementation of Regulations Concerning the Entry of Persons into Jiujiang City. However, Jiangxi evidently did not recognize this certification. Second, local authorities lack trust in the national government. China’s central government had declared that Hubei had achieved zero new COVID-19 cases, and the government had officially lifted the lockdown on Hubei Province and its capital, Wuhan. Nevertheless, Jiangxi did not believe the figures released by the central authorities. Jiangxi officials felt that letting people from Hubei enter their province would make it more difficult for them to achieve the political goal of a “zero increase” in cases. The third problem is China’s culture of falsification, of which

By Yu Kung 愚工

EDITORIAL CARTOON

EDITORIAL CARTOON

Rescuing the Great Barrier Reef: How much can be saved?

When coral scientist Zoe Richards left the Great Barrier Reef’s Lizard Island in late January, she was feeling optimistic. Richards is a taxonomist. Since 2011 she has recorded and monitored 245 coral species at 14 locations around the island’s research station, about 270km north of Cairns, Australia. In 2017, Richards saw “mass destruction of the reef.” Back-to-back mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017, and cyclones in 2014 and 2015, had wreaked havoc. However, in January she saw thousands of new colonies of fast-growing Acropora corals that had “claimed the space” left by dead and degraded corals. In a three-year window without spiraling heat or churning cyclones, some corals were in an adolescent bloom — not mature enough to spawn, but getting close. “It was an incredible recovery,” said Richards, a senior research fellow at Curtin University in Perth. “But I knew if it was hit again, it would be trouble — and that’s exactly what happened.” Mass bleaching returned to Lizard Island this year — perhaps not as badly as in previous years — but enough, Richards said, to turn the clock back on the recovery she had seen. This summer has delivered a third mass bleaching for the reef in just five years. The back-to-back bleaching of 2016 and 2017 was mostly confined to the northern and central sections. Data from aerial surveys is still being analyzed, but the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has said preliminary results suggest that this year’s bleaching had a much broader footprint. When bleaching is mild, corals can and do recover, although it can make them more susceptible to disease, but severe bleaching can kill corals. Estimates are that the 2016 bleaching killed about 29 percent of the reef’s shallow water corals and the 2017 event took another 19 percent. Some scientists are now concerned global heating may have reached a point

By Graham Readfearn

How scientists are tracking people to help tame COVID-19

It was not ordered up by Washington, it does not have a catchy name and its members do not get paid, but COVID-19 Mobility Data Network could mean the difference between life and death. The network sprang up voluntarily among universities, epidemiologists, public health departments, database providers, advertising technology companies and social media giants such as Facebook. Their mission is to fight the pandemic’s spread by testing the effectiveness of stay-at-home and social distancing policies using a single tool: your cellphone’s physical location. The new data-sharing relationship is just one way companies, academics and public health officials are teaming up to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The network is analyzing the data and sharing insights with governments in states like Massachusetts and California; in cities such as Boston, New York and Miami; and in other countries, including India, Italy and Spain. “A lot of these companies just came out of the woodwork,” said Andrew Schroeder, vice president of research and analysis for public-health nonprofit Direct Relief and one of the network’s coordinators. “There’s a lot of location data out there,” which needs to be shaped “into something that’s not just the Wild West, but is passing through an expert filter on what this means for public health,” he said. The data show whether people are complying with stay-at-home and social distancing orders that have spread across the US and countries around the globe. For example, people taking trips outside their neighborhoods in San Francisco decreased 40 to 50 percent, but dropped only 20 to 30 percent in other parts of California, Shroeder said. In New York City, residents were more mobile during the week than they were on weekends, and mobility rates were higher on Staten Island than in lower Manhattan, he said. Facebook on Monday said that it was expanding the kinds of location

By Naomi Nix and Kurt Wagner

EDITORIAL: Keep recall focused on Han Kuo-yu

The recall of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) has begun, as the Kaohsiung City Election Commission on Tuesday said that campaigners have met the signature threshold for a vote, which is likely to happen in mid-June. Many factors would complicate the outcome, and Han and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the coming months would try to stack the cards in their favor. For the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), there is a risk that they would try to turn the vote into a fight between the pan-blue and pan-green camps. On the national level, it should keep its distance, and leave the vote to Kaohsiung residents. KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) has to support Han, although there is a possibility that mobilizing the party’s national resources for a local issue would do more harm than good. It looks certain that Han has no intention of resigning to pre-empt the recall, and there is reason to believe that he would challenge Chiang for the party chairmanship next year. Internal divisions within the KMT are likely to emerge in the coming months regardless of whether Han is recalled. Chiang must find a way to rein him in, while appearing to be supportive, to bolster his own chances of remaining chairman. The KMT-majority Kaohsiung City Council is planning to postpone the coming session for a month, ostensibly as part of the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to test holding council meetings remotely. The next session was to start on Thursday next week, and a plenary question-and-answer session, in which Han would face scrutiny over his performance, would have taken place on May 20, a month before the recall vote. The postponement means the session would come after the vote. Was this a KMT ruse to ensure that Han does not have the opportunity for more gaffes

Taiwan must prepare for attack

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might act aggressively against Taiwan amid the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. While no one is seeking a war, the Republic of China and its friends should responsibly prepare for various contingencies and enhance deterrence against China. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to maritime ports in Zhejiang, China, raised eyebrows among China-watchers. Some have said that Xi conducted the trip to signal the economy’s reopening or to offer assurances to the Zhejiang faction, while others have said that the province is home to the East Sea Fleet, which would figure prominently in any blockade or even invasion of Taiwan. A blockade or invasion is unlikely, but should not be dismissed as alarmist: Beijing has never renounced the use of force against Taiwan, and the People’s Liberation Army has behaved provocatively over the past few months. As China’s economic performance weakens and unemployment rises, the CCP might become desperate for noneconomic legitimation — namely, a political “victory” on the issue of Taiwan. The CCP has always had the motive to coerce Taiwan, but it might regard the chaos of the pandemic as a unique opportunity to secure its objectives. While the US and Japanese militaries retain fearsome capabilities, the US and Japanese responses to the coronavirus have been unimpressive, and several key military assets would not operate at full capacity for weeks, possibly months. The end of monsoon season opens a “window of attack” across the Taiwan Strait from next month to July. Taiwan can counteract the CCP’s attempts to coerce it. Communications between the central government and local authorities could be affected by Chinese cybercapabilities, so Taiwan should prepare for distributed governance and consider diffusing stores of food, seeds, weapons and vehicle fuel across the nation. Civil defense drills might also be advisable. As oil prices are at historic lows, restocking gasoline and

By Joe Webster

Virus shows failures of China, not its success

The pandemic has taken a turn for the worse in Europe and the US, and even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been diagnosed with COVID-19. Members of the 50 Cent Army and other Internet users with red-tinted glasses are spreading the view that this proves the failure of democracy and the success of China’s authoritarian regime, while praising the effects of the Wuhan lockdown. Are they right? The US and European democracies have responded appropriately to epidemics in the past and they successfully eradicated smallpox and the bubonic plague, but the current response has been chaotic. This merely shows that the root of the problem is not to be found in democratic countries, but rather in the contacts between democracies and authoritarian regimes. The reason the epidemic has spread so rapidly in Europe and the US is that they so readily trusted China’s totalitarian regime and its subsidiary, the WHO, and delayed their responses. Democratic Taiwan remains wary of China and does not easily trust any Chinese information, and that is the cause of its success in handling the pandemic. Late last year, doctors in the Wuhan area started mentioning a new infectious disease, but they were silenced by the Chinese government. It was this attempt at maintaining stability that caused the world to miss the possibility to move first. Had it been possible to wipe out the virus before it started spreading, Wuhan would never have had to be locked down. If doing so would still have been necessary, it could have been done at an earlier stage and the global pandemic could have been avoided. Where there is authoritarian government, there is special privilege: Senior Chinese Communist Party officials were allowed to leave the city before the lockdown and they carried the disease to the rest of the world. It is precisely because there is

By Chen Jun-kuang 陳俊光

[ LETTER ]

Thank you Tsai Ing-wen Dear Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Thank you for taking care of us. It seems that you have presided over a nonpolitical, cohesive and effective healthcare strategy that saw Taiwan effectively beat back the first wave of Wuhan pneumonia [COVID-19] by the middle of last month. Taiwan is also not doing all that badly with the second wave of infections, which is almost more amazing considering what is currently going on throughout the rest of the world. Of course, every effective captain needs a good crew, and the government workers, doctors, nurses, police, administrators, security guards, and the local and foreign community have all stepped up and played a role in our ongoing battle against Wuhan pneumonia. Then when the rest of the world saw how effective Team Taiwan had been, they adopted similar approaches, and as a global community, a brotherhood and sisterhood of nations, we collectively did something never before achieved in human history, and beat back a deadly pandemic with only a small number of casualties. Well that is what could have happened. Unfortunately, while Team Taiwan has been receiving some positive press throughout the world and rightly so, much of the rest of the world has been dancing to the beat of a different set of drums played by our noisy neighbors and their partners in crime the WHO. Do you remember when the WHO was praising China’s transparency and holding up its approaches as a model that other countries could adopt in the global battle against Wuhan pneumonia? How could it utter such a statement when clear evidence to the contrary shows that this is certainly not the case? Surely the leaders of the free world, and even the not-so-free world, have the critical thinking abilities to assess the validity of a range of approaches that would best protect their citizens from

EDITORIAL CARTOON

EDITORIAL CARTOON

Coronavirus upends food-supply chains around the world

In the fertile Satara District in western India, farmers are putting their cattle on an unorthodox diet: Some are feeding iceberg lettuce to buffalo, while others are feeding strawberries to cows. It is not a treat. They can let their crops spoil or feed them to animals. Other farmers are letting their crops spoil, dumping off truckloads of fresh grapes to rot on compost heaps. The farmers cannot get their produce to consumers because of lockdowns that aim to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In India, as in many parts of the world, restrictions on population movement are wreaking havoc on farming and food-supply chains, and raising concern of more widespread shortages and price spikes to come. Across the globe, millions of laborers cannot get to the fields for harvesting and planting. There are too few truckers to keep goods moving. Air freight capacity for fresh produce has plummeted as airplanes are grounded. There is also a shortage of food containers for shipping, because of a drop in voyages from China. In Florida, a lack of Mexican migrant laborers means that watermelon and blueberry growers face the prospect of rotting crops. Similar shortages of workers in Europe mean that vegetable farms are missing the window to plant. Such sprawling food production and distribution shocks illustrate the pandemic’s seemingly boundless capacity to suffocate economies worldwide and upend even the most essential business and consumer markets. There has been limited disruption so far to supplies of staple grains such as rice and wheat, although problems with planting and logistics are mounting. In Satara District, Indian farmer Anil Salunkhe is feeding his strawberries to cows because the local tourists that usually eat them are gone, as are the fruit vendors that once worked the streets of nearby Mumbai. “Nobody was willing to buy strawberries due to the lockdown,” he said. Salunkhe said

By Rajendra Jadhav, Naveen Thukral and Nigel Hunt