{"id":33961,"date":"2021-07-11T18:45:42","date_gmt":"2021-07-11T09:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2021\/jul\/11\/my-year-in-taiwan-shows-the-virus-will-exploit-any-hint-of-complacency"},"modified":"2021-07-11T18:45:42","modified_gmt":"2021-07-11T09:45:42","slug":"my-time-in-taiwan-shows-the-virus-will-exploit-any-hint-of-complacency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=33961","title":{"rendered":"My time in Taiwan shows the virus will exploit any hint of complacency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve had an almost pandemic-free existence reporting from Taiwan, but it hasn\u2019t all been a smooth ride<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/series\/coronavirus-live\/latest\">Coronavirus \u2013 latest updates<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/coronavirus-outbreak\">See all our coronavirus coverage<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For much of this year, I\u2019ve lived a mostly Covid-free life. Taiwan wasn\u2019t just lucky. It had been traumatised by Sars, which it didn\u2019t handle well, and established comprehensive epidemic plans for the next time. There was no talk of herd immunity or accepting mass deaths as inevitable. As far as Taiwan was concerned, Covid-19 wasn\u2019t getting in, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/mar\/24\/how-taiwan-triumphed-over-covid-as-uk-faltered\" title=\"\">if it tried they were ready<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Taiwan took full advantage of being an island to quarantine itself from the world. It funnelled entrants through a tightly controlled system defined by extreme caution.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2021\/jul\/11\/my-year-in-taiwan-shows-the-virus-will-exploit-any-hint-of-complacency\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve had an almost pandemic-free existence reporting from Taiwan, but it hasn\u2019t all been a smooth rideCoronavirus \u2013 latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageFor much of this year, I\u2019ve lived a mostly Covid-free life. Taiwan wasn\u2019t just lucky. It h&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1066,74,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-coronavirus","category-taiwan","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33971,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33961\/revisions\/33971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}