Shocking. Taiwan has had but 563 cases of COVID-19 and only 7 deaths. In all this time since Covid burst upon us, that's all. Compare that to Florida, which is of about the same population, but which has had but about 16,000 deaths.
Seven against 16,000. Scramble, America. Scramble to learn what they have done differently.
To begin with, they are mask-oriented. Their culture is not against wearing them. They don't have rave parties where thousands of youth show up in defiance of the authorities who are saying, please wear masks.
But, that is only part of it. They are technologically savvy. They are record-keepers. When someone goes to a doctor, their medical records pop up, with a complete history that includes their respiratory problems. They proactively seek out patients with severe respiratory symptoms and test them and treat them.
Yes, they are record-keepers. And, they integrate the records of those who have traveled abroad with the medical records. And, they test those who have traveled. In America, no such luck. In America, they would scream at you for sharing your travel records with the medical community. Americans share their every move on Facebook, but they will not share all the information vital to stopping Covid-19. Bless them, it is their freedom. Bless them. But, it would surely help if they realized it would do no harm to share such information. It would only help. It would not lead to the end of our freedom nor to the demise of our nation.
Taiwan can isolate itself from the world. No one can enter who will not be tested. I think back on the early days of Covid in Utah, and of how there was an effort to monitor the borders. Seven highways into the state were identified. It was voluntary, and no one was going to toss you into jail if you didn't, but you were to register. Same with airline passengers who were not just passing through on airport layovers. If they were staying, they were to voluntarily register.
One wonders if it would have been so bad to make it a mandate. And, not just register them, but test them. A major inconvenience, that. But think of the inconveniences we have had, and consider that we have lived though them. Sometimes, safety is an inconvenience. Tests don't come back in a day. Testing everyone at the state line would have perhaps meant a few tent cities, and, in the border cities where hotels exist, it would have meant the overflow of those hotels.
In retrospect, and looking at Taiwan, I say we should have done it. It does not go unnoticed on me that if we had, then students would have accounted for a large share of those entering the state.
Nor does it go unnoticed that the same people who decry the loss of freedom over masks and social distancing were also opposed to the registration at the borders. I wonder if it would have been an incursion on their freedom. My judgement, at this point, is that it would not. My thought is that the government does have the right to secure its borders from the disease.
Measures work. Covid can be stopped. Taiwan shows us as much. Utah could have given itself a better chance to sidestep the virus. It could, perhaps, have been the one state to escape the pandemic.
So, let us take it from here. Up the record-keeping -- keeping and sharing all information necessary -- though letting people opt out if they choose (as the Constitution does guarantee them the right to be secure in their personal effects). Be quicker to test the risk groups. Take greater measures to isolate and quarantine those who contact the disease. Encourage more isolating, period. When family members step away from their homes, they run the risk of contacting the virus and spreading it to others in the family. So, let them isolate and mask as much as they can. Step up the calls for mask-wearing and social distancing. Let every student be called in by their school, sat down, and given a cordial plea to help by masking. Should church leaders wish, let them continue their efforts to encourage people to follow the counsel. Let everyone from government leaders to neighbors calmly encourage compliance, making their pleas not with anger, but with love.
And, consider a mandate. If it is not an infringement of Constitutional rights -- and my thought at the moment is that it is not -- then perhaps do it. You wear a mask, or you pay a fine or go to jail
Testing at the border? I even consider that -- yet. Yes, the damage is done once you have so many cases within your state. We still are fighting to stop the virus. Stopping more Covid from entering our state would lessen the flow of the virus. It would have some effect.
These are dire times, and dire measures are not wrong.
In closing, what of the argument that Covid is no more a problem than the common cold? What of the argument that deaths are counted as Covid when they really belong to other things? What of the argument that this is all hysteria?
Look back to Florida, with its 16,000 deaths compared to only seven in Taiwan. How many of those 16,000 might be up for debate is one matter, but it seems surely that thousands and thousands of those deaths were from Covid. And, if they are testing so much in Taiwan, do we suppose that they are not counting the deaths as from Covid? Do we suppose they are classing them differently than we are? Seven deaths, is all. Are we suggesting there really have been thousands more, but they've counted them as deaths from the common flu, and from things we call underlying conditions?
If you can save lives, do it. Utah can do better, and should.
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