ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Well done to Taiwan for its response so far to the coronavirus outbreak — so too Hong Kong and Singapore. Taiwan has even managed to cope despite not being a member of the World Health Organization (WHO).

It was refused entry as China does not want it to be recognized as an independent nation. The WHO even refused Taiwan access to its resources during this present health crisis, with the Chinese administration once again citing it might use this pandemic as a pretext to gain independence.

However, its isolation meant its government was free to deploy the policies it deemed necessary.

During the 2003 SARS epidemic, Taiwan had the highest number of fatalities outside of China and Hong Kong, so it has learned the hard way. This time around it has been able to minimize COVID-19’s effect to only one death and 77 infections, as of March 17.

The WHO strongly advises against travel restrictions, but with cases in China now in decline and Europe designated as the new epicenter for COVID-19, did its open travel policy help facilitate the spread of the disease?

Italy is a very good example. How did this European country become the second-largest center of the virus in the world, given that it is about 10 times further from Wuhan than Taiwan? Italy imposed a Chinese flight ban before America did, but was it already too late?

Even the WHO’s stated aversion to travel bans seems inconsistent as it also praised China’s decision to lock millions of its citizens into their disease-ridden cities.

Its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, tweeted that “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.” Opposing travel bans while advocating lock-downs is difficult to reconcile.

China was able to place those strict restrictions because it is an authoritarian communist country, but the WHO is now encouraging other nations to follow this “new standard.”

In Europe, the EU’s “four pillars” — the free movement of goods, services, capital and labor — have all but collapsed with most member countries having closed their borders. France has even imposed a temporary lock-down to try to protect its citizens from the disease.

Due to the climate of fear that now exists, driven by 24/7 media coverage, there has been widespread acceptance of national emergencies being called and normal freedoms being suspended.

Something that might help to reduce that panic would be for TV stations to put the daily body counts and infection figures for COVID-19 alongside daily cases of seasonal flu and its fatalities. This would put the scale of this disease in context and make it harder for the two figures to be conflated.

Influenza accounts for up to a half-million deaths worldwide and last year’s number of around 34,000 seasonal flu fatalities in America certainly didn’t get this kind of a response. Indeed, there has never been a reaction to a virus quite like this one.

The N1H1, Spanish flu of 1918, killed upwards of 18 million people, but when N1H1 reappeared as Swine flu in 2009, the fatalities were around 200,000. Asian Flu in 1956 killed more than a million people. In 1968, the Hong Kong Flu killed around 2 million, and the SARS coronavirus epidemic in 2003 killed less than 1,000.

Approaches to dealing with pandemics have improved greatly over time. With COVID-13, authorities attempted to go a step further and set a new paradigm in reducing influenza cases by taking drastic measures at the outset, on a global level and — apparently — no matter what the economic cost.

But China had already made success almost impossible by covering up cases during the crucial month of December, and maybe even before that.

Yet from very early on, Taiwan began screening passengers on flights from Wuhan and banned them altogether from Jan. 23. These were just some of the preventative steps it has successfully taken.

Most other countries have since been playing catch-up, with China embarking on its drastic lock-down program and the West, taking WHO advice, now following suit — although to a lesser degree.

What has really panicked governments is that the mortality rates for COVID-19 are reportedly so much higher that seasonal flu.

Except that hasn’t been the case in Taiwan, where daily life seems to go on much as it did before the virus, apart from temperature checks being taken everywhere.

Citizens in the West, meanwhile, are having all manner of restrictions placed upon them, and the worst of the pandemic is yet to come.

They are also having to watch as their economies plummet, and their livelihoods start to disappear. Incredibly, America maybe looking at a recession, despite the huge gains it had been making under President Trump.

The World Health Organization said look to China, but maybe the West should already have been listening to its outcast, Taiwan.

• Andrew Davies is a U.K.-based video producer and scriptwriter.

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