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Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

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Re: Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

#51
post #32

It's hard to tell why you might want to listen to this from just the title: "But Taiwan has also been taking a relatively experimental approach to the pandemic with technology. Like working with civic hackers to code its way out of the pandemic. Today on the show, we dive into Taiwan's pandemic policies and ask: Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach?"

> Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach? Would the US ever admit their exceptionalism is perhaps flawed? Would the Europeans ever admit their exceptionalism led to ignoring Taiwan's alarm bells? I highly doubt it. They are not stupid, they know what's going on in China and they are not telling everybody else because they are worried of losing credibility as leaders. Almost all of our current response assumes th…

> Almost all of our current response assumes the Chinese Communist Party is capable of being transparent and honest.

Actually, all of our current response, up to this point assumes that if we half-ass our response to the pandemic, it will go away.

"What China is doing" has largely stopped being relevant to anyone outside China in early/mid-February.

As of today, China could have zero people testing positive, or a billion people testing positive, and it wouldn't matter one bit to our domestic planners - they'd just keep doing what they've been doing.

Re: Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

#52
post #48
post #42

This is a 24 minute Planet Money podcast named Fork the Government but the HN title has been changed to match the title in the HTML header. The show interviews two civic hackers [1] Howard Wu and Audrey Tang (Taiwan's Digital Minister) about the technical aspects of Taiwan's coronavirus response. Taiwan has had a total of 815 cases and 7 deaths [2] in a population of 23 million. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civi…

> Taiwan has had a total of 815 cases and 7 deaths [2] in a population of 23 million. They also closed their borders to China in January , and in March to the rest of the world. The US, by comparison, has had 7.2M international arrivals in 2020 -- and that's just non-citizens: https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data Point being: it's easy to overstate the importance of measures like these. If you had…

They also carefully managed the quarantine of the first set of returning travellers. They were sent home with a kit that included a thermometer and a set of surgical masks to use and public health officials contacted them daily via SMS and/or voice.

Re: Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

#53
post #32

It's hard to tell why you might want to listen to this from just the title: "But Taiwan has also been taking a relatively experimental approach to the pandemic with technology. Like working with civic hackers to code its way out of the pandemic. Today on the show, we dive into Taiwan's pandemic policies and ask: Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach?"

> Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach? Would the US ever admit their exceptionalism is perhaps flawed? Would the Europeans ever admit their exceptionalism led to ignoring Taiwan's alarm bells? I highly doubt it. They are not stupid, they know what's going on in China and they are not telling everybody else because they are worried of losing credibility as leaders. Almost all of our current response assumes th…

[deleted]

Re: Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

#54
post #15

I don't fully get the title from the content, but perhaps NPR is saying that we should have a different control structure for health related maters... Like for example in Star Trek the only people that can override the captain is the doctor. For medical emergencies they can basically force some course of action. It seems in most countries the top brass is making decisions even though they are not technically qualifie…

That different control structure is why Sweden didn't lockdown. The health authorities were in charge, and pre-covid, lockdowns, masks, etc. were not recommended by mainstream health authorities as tools to deal with pandemics.

Re: Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

#56
post #51
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would the U.S. ever take a similar approach? Would the US ever admit their exceptionalism is perhaps flawed? Would the Europeans ever admit their exceptionalism led to ignoring Taiwan's alarm bells? I highly doubt it. They are not stupid, they know what's going on in China and they are not telling everybody else because they are worried of losing credibility as leaders. Almost all of our current response assumes th…

> Almost all of our current response assumes the Chinese Communist Party is capable of being transparent and honest. Actually, all of our current response, up to this point assumes that if we half-ass our response to the pandemic, it will go away. "What China is doing" has largely stopped being relevant to anyone outside China in early/mid-February. As of today, China could have zero people testing positive, or a bil…

A simple litmus test here is: "Do you genuinely believe at face value China's statement that this virus originated from outside China"

If the answer is yes, then you also believe the statement "China has zero cases since it stopped reporting them".

Our responses are based on the numbers reported by the CCP, if you realize that there is now tens of millions of suddenly deactivated phone plans in a country where the smartphone is integrated into everyday life, on top of the millions of urns, one can connect the dots at the true nature, and its imminent danger.

Example: As our Canadian Health minister quickly shot down criticisms of China's low case numbers as "conspiracy" and "racism", it absolutely is relevant to the decision makers who seem oblivious that they are quite possibly being lied to. Again. ( For a country that allowed the CCP to steal from their biggest telecom company and fund the rise of Huawei, it is absolutely puzzling as to why the US should trust Canada )

Re: Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

#57
post #52
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwan has had a total of 815 cases and 7 deaths [2] in a population of 23 million. They also closed their borders to China in January , and in March to the rest of the world. The US, by comparison, has had 7.2M international arrivals in 2020 -- and that's just non-citizens: https://www.trade.gov/visitor-arrivals-program-i-94-data Point being: it's easy to overstate the importance of measures like these. If you had…

They also carefully managed the quarantine of the first set of returning travellers. They were sent home with a kit that included a thermometer and a set of surgical masks to use and public health officials contacted them daily via SMS and/or voice.

Yes, they are strict about their quarantine. It's much easier to do that when you don't have to quarantine millions of people.

Consider that we know that the virus was spreading in the US in January (via Europe), and there's phylogenetic and blood-screening evidence that it was here as early as late 2019. Even the strictest quarantine wouldn't have helped much at that point.

Re: Bringing civic tech to Taiwan's coronavirus pandemic response [audio]

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the current Taiwanese government is truly one of the world's finest, and the US governance one of the worst. One of the reason I enjoy reading https://pedestrianobservations.com/ and other in depth discussions of public transit is that it's really quite the barometer for overall civic function. The rate of new public transit is also a fine derivative, and as such even more "low latency".

Something I really enjoy at Taiwan is the bike sharing system they've put all around the country. Liking it at a point where I've wrote an essaye about it[1]. It's cheap, everywhere, and built on a really high standard [1] https://erickhun.com/posts/taiwan-youbike-bike-sharing/

However, in most cities the trafic is just so bad that riding a bike on the road is risking your own life.
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