Comment by haltingproblem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by haltingproblem | Hacker News Reader

I am neither Taiwanese or Chinese and have no dog in that fight except as it pertains to avoiding pandemics.

Taiwanese friends tell me that during the SARS outbreak, China refused to share data with them which it shared with every other country. Taiwan was hit very hard because they were flying blind. This led them to establish independent monitoring and early warning systems since they have extensive trade and cultural links with China and large numbers of travelers.

The current VP of Taiwan is an epidemiologist who was the health minister during the SARs outbreak and their current response has been one of the most effective (108 cases, 1 death).

Every country would want to work with Taiwan on this issue not ostracize them like the WHO. They are like a monitoring and early-warning system for these kinds of pathogens coming out of China.

Since China didn't share that information with Taiwan, i'd believe it's not the same country and they proved it by behaving like this.

And all sources that put Taiwan as a province of China should change it.

( Won't happen though)

Probably relevant, about how others should treat Taiwan, especially how WHO is treating Taiwan:

A journalist asked World Health Organization’s assistant director-general Bruce Aylward whether the UN body would reconsider Taiwan’s membership, got “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear your question… let’s move to another one then…”; and when the journalist asked to comment on Taiwan’s effort, got “we’ve already talked about China.”

[1]: https://twitter.com/emilyrauhala/status/1243905923048976384

(Which is supporting your “Won't happen though”.)

After that interview, Bruce Aylward has now been removed from the WHO website https://twitter.com/anangbhai/status/1243947028582993921

Shows how much they kowtow to China that even being asked about Taiwan and not answering gets him delisted.

> [...] their current response has been one of the most effective (108 cases, 1 death).

While I generally agree with your overall point, this statistics is severely out of date. As of this post, the current numbers are 283 cases and 2 deaths[0][1].

[0] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En

[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html; numbers can lag by a day or two.

Thank you for the correction. The source I found was current as of early last week, perhaps it referred to community spread and not imported cases.

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