World Health Organization (WHO) experts in Taiwan have again raised concerns about the community spread of SARS and the infection-control measures in hospitals. At the same time, the news media report daily on the people who willfully disregard quarantine orders and others who are resorting to do-it-yourself masks because of a reported severe shortage of medical masks.
Taken together, these stories suggest that the biggest problem in the government's handling of the SARS epidemic thus far has been the lack of effective and coordinated enforcement and implementation mechanisms.
It is true that -- with ever-changing developments in the spread of the disease -- ?this is not the time to point fingers and cast blame. Cooperation and unity among all levels of the government are imperative to get the job done.
However, that does not mean that scrutiny and examination of what has gone wrong can wait until later. After all, only by first recognizing and identifying mistakes can one learn to improve. If these errors are not pointed out, the government will only repeat the mistakes over and over again, and all hope of a victory in the battle against SARS will be lost.
Many agree that the Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital was where the first major defeat in the fight against SARS was suffered and from where things went rapidly downhill. Because the hospital did not adopt strict measures to prevent infection, members of the medical staff were infected by SARS patients. For the same reason, infected personnel further spread the disease within the hospital. This reveals a major shortcoming in the disease-control measures of the hospital.
Worse yet, the hospital allegedly had failed to issue proper alerts and notifications to hospitals where suspected SARS patients were transferred to. As a result, other hospitals did not have the opportunity to adopt extra precautions in treating these patients, thereby exposing their medical staff to the risk of infection.
For example, the National Taiwan University Hospital's zero-death record was spoiled by the death of a SARS-infected man who had previously sought medical treatment at the Hoping Hospital. Yet, the univeristy hospital was clueless about the man's contact with Hoping -- which would have alerted them about potential SARS infection -- until they checked his National Health Insurance card. This reveals major loopholes in the mechanism for tracing and reporting SARS infections.
The enforcement of quarantine is another major problem. For example, in the case of the Hoping Hospital, people sealed off in the hospital were allegedly at serious risk of cross-infection among themselves as a result of a shortage of protective gear and a lack of internal segregation based on the level of their exposure and potential exposure to the SARS virus.
In addition, many people who were place under home quarantine defied their quarantine orders and simply went about their usual business.
Minister of Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (
Premier Yu Shyi-kun spoke the truth yesterday when he said that people need to stop asking "Who is to blame for this?" and start asking "What can be done to close the loophooles?"
The other question is, "Can this country learn from its mistakes?"
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not