Tell me this, why was the spread in Asia so limited? China’s per capita level is really low. It didn’t spread much beyond the epicenter it seems. South Korea is higher on the per capita level but below Europe, Iran and the U.S. We know they did have a great policy of testing and quarantine.
But also look at Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Singapore. Many below the per capita average of cases by country. No explosion in cases like we saw in Europe and are seeing in New York. And many of these are very densely populated countries. You can’t tell me Chinese people weren’t traveling around Asia as much as they were in Europe and the U.S.
So how did Asia at large escape what’s happening in Europe and New York? Is it possible something similar to this virus has existed in animals in Asia going back to pre-history, occasionally crossed over into humans, and that there may be some natural genetic immunity built into people of Asian descent?
I can speak for Taiwan. We responded incredibly strongly almost immediately. We had schools closed through almost all of Feburary, testing ramped up, quarantining and testing of travellers, extensive contact-tracing.
Taiwan learned a hard lesson from SARS, it’s the lesson the US is learning right now. The lesson is this: don’t waste time. The Trump Administration wasted six weeks. The first cases in the US and in South Korea happened on exactly the same day. Korea acted, Trump did not.
Now, thousands are dead.