Today, the baby boomer generation is in its twilight years, but during the 1950s, they and their parents had to cope with austerity and deal with many infectious diseases, such as polio, typhoid and cholera.
Over the past seven decades, Taiwanese have become accustomed to a flourishing economy and publicly funded healthcare, as well as other improvements to the nation’s social security system.
Many baby boomers, healthy in body and mind, and having traveled the world, were preparing to live out their advanced years in safety and comfort. They never imagined that a year ago, a new, highly infectious coronavirus would emerge in China and spread around the globe.
At present, the country with the highest death rate from COVID-19 is Belgium. According to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the country’s death rate is 140.75 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants.
Examining Taiwan’s “national illness” — liver disease — is a good way to put this figure into perspective.
Data from the Liver Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Foundation show that the normalized fatality rate for patients with chronic liver disease and cirrhosis in Taiwan is 15.6 per 100,000 people.
Belgium’s COVID-19 fatality rate is nearly 10 times that of liver disease and cirrhosis.
As a consequence, the fight against COVID-19 is consuming a significant amount of medical resources worldwide.
After a long year of waiting, the COVID-19 pandemic has not improved, but instead gotten worse.
Due to Taiwan’s geographical proximity to the epidemic’s epicenter, the government early on implemented disease prevention measures at the nation’s borders, having learned important lessons from the SARS epidemic.
By contrast, the US and European governments initially dismissed personal precautions such as frequent hand washing and mask wearing. This combination of factors is the reason Taiwan’s infection rate is the lowest of any country in the world.
Countries in Europe and the Americas have still not implemented comprehensive border measures to prevent further spread of the disease, and travelers from all over the world are free to come and go.
Global epidemic prevention experts have said that administering vaccines is the only solution and, as a result, the world is on tenterhooks waiting for the vaccines’ arrival.
Domestic and international media have reported that several major pharmaceutical companies have developed vaccines that they are in the process of making ready for commercial distribution, but the reports are almost all press releases from the companies, regurgitated by media outlets.
These claims have not been rigorously examined in a convincing way by professional medical journals. The companies have also not yet published information about the safety and effectiveness of their vaccines, or how the vaccines affect the spread of COVID-19.
Many questions remain unanswered, such as the coverage rate for people who have taken the vaccines and how long the vaccines take to stop the infection.
As COVID-19 is a global problem, it is inevitable that diplomacy and politics would enter the equation as governments try to bring the virus under control. Governments might begin to require that travelers present proof of vaccination before entering or leaving their country.
Nations with strong economies are likely to distribute the vaccines to their citizens for free, but how will vaccination programs be paid for in poorer countries?
Faced with such issues, can the Taiwanese government keep its borders closed until the pandemic is over? If a viable vaccine is developed, what will happen then? Will Taiwanese be able to travel abroad?
Chen Chiao-chicy is a psychiatrist at Mackay Memorial Hospital and Mackay Medical College.
Translated by Edward Jones
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