The COVID-19 pandemic

[tomh009]

And on the flip side, Taiwan never did a lockdown. They reacted early -- which helped -- but still reached 400 cases by mid-April. Since then? Only about 100 more. 26 total cases in September!

There absolutely is, the issue becomes what is an invasion of privacy and rights. I lived for a good while in Hong Kong and am well connected with people in the region. Frankly it is a myth that Taiwan never went into lockdown. They never went wuhan style, but masks were mandatory, sporting events shut down, bars and restaurants closed or if not strictly enforcing social distancing measures. Schools also closed, and they closed their border sometime in February or March. 

Additionally being an island no doubt helps, and I'd imagine being a sovereign state that isnt a recognized country also helps some, because official interactions and exchanges with the island are lower than other developed states and countries due to a lack of official ties with Taiwan. 

Lastly, Taiwan has put an incredible effort towards contact tracing. Many of their policies around forced quarantine for positive cases, intense personal monitoring and tracing and so on, would probably be met with outcry here. 

So yes there are other ways to beat the virus, but who knows if they would actually work here.

One last thing, while completely anecdotal, is that I personally see a correlation between countries that handled covid well without ultra strict lockdowns and other measures, and countries where mask wearing was already common and done willingly before any government instituted orders.

The recent discussion was about a hard lockdown/curfew where people basically are not allowed to leave their houses or apartments. The restrictions on movement and gatherings that Taiwan applied were more similar to what we did here. Where they did better was a combination of mask use (early on, we are now catching up), monitoring of positive/exposed people and contact tracing.

At least at this point, I believe that people here would more readily accept those than they would the Sri Lanka-style hard lockdown/curfew.

And, yes, I agree, there is a correlation there for sure, with pre-COVID mask use.