Or even Taiwan! They really don’t get the recognition they deserve. The Taiwanese government made a QUICK and proactive response that didn’t result in putting the country on total lockdown. This explains why there aren’t as many cases (as of today: 50 confirmed cases, 1 death) here compared to nearby countries.
Being so close to China and the fact that it was Chinese New Year (Where much of China, Taiwan and the diaspora travel for weeks) when the news broke out, I was a bit nervous and curious to see how the government would respond. I was thinking about the amount of air traffic between both places and thought it was going to blow up here. After a few days of learning about the virus and seeing how President Tsai responded, I felt pretty relieved. When I visited the US last month, and it made me realize that Taiwan is doing a great job and that things could get ugly in America (and it literally did right after I flew back to Taiwan). I thought that the rest of the world would start preparing like Taiwan, especially nations with a good/decent medical infrastructure. They had more time to prepare.
One of the main reasons for Taiwan’s proactive approach was because they already dealt with SARS in 2003 and took the time to evaluate how they handled it and what they could improve.
Once this calms down, countries like the US, Italy, and South Korea will learn a great lesson from this situation.
