Taipei, Taiwan

THE TAIWANESE are relatively healthy these days, even though the heavily urban island nation is only 81 miles from mainland China.

“Millions of people travel back and forth between China and the island each year. Last year, there were more than 5,700 flights per month, on average, between Taiwan and the mainland, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Nearly 11 million passenger journeys were made across the narrow Taiwan Strait by plane,” according to NPR.

And yet, in a population of 23 million, as of last Friday, there had been only been 50 confirmed cases of coronavirus and one death. And it appears that the outbreak there has passed. How do we explain Taiwan’s amazing immunity to these microscopic organisms? The Taiwanese kept them at bay without mass closure of stores, restaurants, courts and other businesses. Taiwan did not order its police to stop arresting criminals as the City of Philadelphia has done.

Foreign Policy, and the entire mainstream media, says the Taiwanese are just good at tracking down microbes. Actually, the Taiwanese government did react early on to restrict travel and track down people with the respiratory illness. It distributed millions of face masks. (According to the U.S. surgeon general, they are not effective at preventing contagion.) It extended school winter break for ten days; after that students who were sick were told to stay home. Interestingly, it heavily fined those spreading coronavirus rumors and fined those who were sick and did not observe quarantines. But it did not shut down all businesses. Ordinary life did not come to a standstill in Taiwan. The burden was on those who were sick to control their movements rather than requiring almost everyone who was healthy to go into lockdown.

The situation in Taiwan is proof this thing is not just an illness, it’s major political propaganda in the West. For the measures taken by the island nation were effective but not as extreme as in the West. Boris Johnson tried to implement similar moderate measures in Britain, telling Britons that they should quarantine themselves if they were sick and that it was not necessary to shut down businesses, but he has been brought to heel. Tellingly, Taiwan is not a member of the World Health Organization. It seems it’s healthier not to belong to this globalist giant.

We should be following the Taiwanese in their amazing corona war. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association:

In addition to daily press briefings by the minister of health and welfare the CECC, the vice president of Taiwan, a prominent epidemiologist, gave regular public service announcements broadcast from the office of the president and made available via the internet. These announcements included when and where to wear a mask, the importance of handwashing, and the danger of hoarding masks to prevent them from becoming unavailable to frontline health workers. The CECC also made plans to assist schools, businesses, and furloughed workers (eTable in the Supplement).

The Taiwanese deserve special credit for trying to stem, not just the virus, but panic. The government announced on January 31 that the spread of fake news about the virus could be fined up to NT$3 million (USD $100,000). And, the Criminal Investigation Bureau aggressively pursued those who were spreading rumors and panic. Would Anthony Fauci, who has said it’s too dangerous for healthy Americans to go to restaurants, have been fined if he lived in Taiwan? Would President Trump be arrested for stating that the country would be facing serious effects until July or August?

Despite measured and effective controls, many people went wild over face masks in Taiwan, leading the government to send out this bulletin:

[This post has been updated]

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