Archive for category: Uncategorized

This is a love story. Thursday morning at 11 we walked onto the fairgrounds and into the Blues Tent on the first day of Jazz Fest. A guy originally from Seattle we read about in preparing for the festival, Colin Lake, sat alone on the stage, playing a lap-steel guitar. I mean really playing it—he was a great launch into three days of spectacular music. Thursdays are in some ways the best day of the festival. Mostly local musicians play, the crowds are not so large and you can easily wander from stage to stage. Thanks to Sylvester of the Backstreet Museum, we knew the secret to Jazz Fest (and no, we won’t tell you what it is–you’ve got to get it from Sylvester yourself). Over the next few years we saw Lake play on a number of occasions. His entrancing The World Alive was always a favorite. Like many of us, Lake fell in love with New Orleans on his initial visit. At Louis Armstrong International Airport, waiting on a delayed flight back to the Northwest, he pulled out his guitar and played for the other passengers. One of whom was a woman named Dawn Marie. He must have played well because he and Dawn moved to New Orleans, got married and Lake became a musical fixture in the Crescent City. Until 2017, when they sold their house, bought a sailboat and took to the sea as the world moved through choppy waters. But now he’s back, or at least his music is. And he’s released a single perfect for the moment, Extraordinary Times. So as we grapple with our third month in captivity, worrying about the lives lost, the economic carnage, and the negligent homicide of the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, perhaps we should hum Lake’s latest lyrics, “The time has passed for lookin’ out through ordinary eyes.” As we do so, we gaze upon China’s precarious economy, hold our spectacles up to nursing homes and Covid-19 and throw a skeptical eye to worries about dependency on China for drug ingredients. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, providing international data and information in extraordinary times.

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

China’s Precarious Economy

Our upcoming book about China asserts that fast economic growth will not return to China and notes that “it is the highest indebted emerging market economy in the world.” Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic has turned slow growth into negative growth for at least the short term. It also has made China’s debt challenges more risky. The economics editor for Bloomberg points out that “A worst-case stress test last year by Chinese authorities showed that 17 of its 30 biggest banks failed to keep capital at adequate levels with economic growth slowing to 4.15%, a situation that now looks wildly optimistic.” Yeah, China, whatever official GDP numbers they publish this year (our book will be 1017% more accurate than China data), is unlikely to achieve 4.15 percent growth. Perhaps because of their debt issues, China is not responding so far with stimulus as large as they did during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Ravi Vellor in the Singapore Strait Times points out that Chinese household debt to income has risen from 40 to 140 percent the last ten years. Countries around the world are in uncharted territory due to the pandemic with world GDP expected to decrease more than 3 percent this year. But China is perhaps especially at risk with limited options to deal with economic fallout from the pandemic. Of course, China has surprised on the upside economically for 40 years so perhaps its leaders will somehow find a way to thread their economy through the current pandemic pin.

Nursing Homes and Covid-19

It seems like decades ago that Seattle was the epicenter for Covid-19 outbreaks in the U.S. Our hometown’s high death rates early on were due to one nursing home. Since then we are now but a footnote as the virus spreads and death became far more prevalent in New York and elsewhere. But are heterogeneous high death rate data explained by how many nursing homes a region/country/state has? A reader of the Marginal Revolution blog thinks so and points to WHO data to back it up. In the chart below you can see the number of nursing and elderly home beds in a variety of European countries. Interestingly Italy and Spain, which have high death rates, also have a high number of elderly home beds. Sweden, which is often compared to its Nordic neighbors unfavorably in terms of number of deaths, has many more nursing home room beds compared to Finland and Norway. Does that explain the difference in death rates more than their lockdown policies? We don’t know. After all, Germany, which has lots more nursing and elderly home beds than Spain, Italy and Sweden, also has relatively low death rates. The heterogeneity of Covid-19 data continues to challenge. And speaking of which, what explains the difference between Eastern and Western Europe (see third chart below)?

80% of Drug Ingredients Do Not Come From China

No creature craves love more than our cat, Putter, who has interrupted nearly every Zoom meeting we’ve had during lock-down, demanding to be petted and curl up on our lap. Unfortunately he also needs lots of drugs too, taking four different heart medications—he’s like an old retired man in Florida. Early in the pandemic, when we heard warnings of possible drug shortages because the U.S. sources 80 percent of drug ingredients from China, we proactively ordered more of Putter’s medicine just in case.We experienced no delay in receiving those drugs for that order or since. It turns out that’s partly because the 80 percent figure is made up. According to a well reported piece in Reason, the 80 percent figure is a misquote from a press release by Senator Chuck Grassley that continues to be passed along in a variety of mediums. No one knows the exact figure since the FDA does not track such data, though the most recent stimulus bill passed by Congress mandates they now do so. The FDA does track manufacturing facilities that export to the U.S. That data, as you can see below, shows China’s share of such facilities is only 13 percent. Maybe the small number of Chinese manufacturing facilities accounts for an out sized share of drug ingredients produced for the U.S. Whatever percentage China is responsible for, there have not yet been any drug shortages for Putter or for the rest of us. For that we are thankful, and we will now allow Putter, clamoring to do so as we write, to climb up on our lap.

We arrived well before warm ups and as we sat down there was an electricity surging through the arena. When the Chicago Bulls came onto the court for warmups, every single eye was fixated on Michael Jordan. This was in the early 1990s at a Washington Bullets game. I had never seen or felt anything like it before or since.* Just Jordan’s presence on the court, before the game even started, made it feel like Jesus rising from the sports pulpit. As Larry Bird once said after Jordan scored 63 points, “that was God disguised as Michael Jordan.” I honestly don’t remember much about the game but I’ll never forget the crowd and the effect Jordan had on it. We guess that all the people at that game watched the first two parts of The Last Dance that aired Sunday night, ESPN’s documentary on the last championship of the Bulls, but really about Jordan. It was impossible not to contrast Jordan’s authentic desire to win at all costs depicted in the film, that the team’s winning was what was important, to today’s players attitudes. Many of today’s contemporary players want to win but it is about their individually winning a championship, not about the team they play for.  It is interesting that today’s generation is much more fond of collectivism and socialism than Jordan’s, but today’s players are much more assertive about their individual rights than they are about the success of the team. We’re not sure this is a contradiction but rather a different level of knowledge about how the world works, both for the player and the owner. While we ponder what this all means, we set a screen for Italians hating Germany more than China, dribble some more around Sweden and blow a whistle on Jordan in China. It’s this week’s International Need to Know dancing with international data, waltzing with global questions.

*Though our opportunities are limited thanks to Howard Schultz unforgivably selling the Sonics to OKC

The last weekend of April is traditionally the first weekend of Jazz Fest in New Orleans. This year because of the cursed Covid-19 pandemic, Jazz Fest is cancelled (sigh, one of our favorite vacations was attending 2014 Jazz Fest), but WWOZ is replaying past highlights all weekend–we are listening to Kermit Ruffins 2015 performance as we type. 

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

Never Mind China, Italians Hate Germany

Like a couple of high school students hopped up on hormones, China and the United States are in a battle for love in the time of coronavirus. As we noted a few weeks ago, both countries could come out of the pandemic less popular. But a recent poll of Italians shows China achieving some PR success there. In a poll conducted March 20 – April 12, 52 percent of Italians listed China as a friendly country compared to only 17 percent listing the U.S. as a friendly one. In a sign of perhaps just how difficult Germany has been on EU economic relations dating back to the financial crisis in 2008, 45 percent of Italians think of Germany as an enemy country. China has tried to leverage its aid to Italy for good PR, even though much of it turned out to be damaged goods. But how the media covers these issues is also important. According to the Atlantic Council, “The news of the cargo flight from China has had more than triple the visibility compared to the announcement by US President Donald J. Trump to send $100 million of assistance to Rome.” The current U.S. Administration has severely damaged America’s credibility around the world, which is a boon to authoritarians. But even so, news organizations need to cover the facts on the ground, not just a distaste for an incompetent, failed U.S. Administration.

We Still Need to Talk About Sweden

Two weeks ago, we noted we must grapple with Sweden’s only partial lockdown policies. Even as we wrote that the world needs to keep an open mind about Sweden’s approach, we wrote, “Perhaps a week from now Sweden will be a catastrophe.” Two weeks later, Sweden is not a catastrophe. Maybe it will be in the future but not yet. As you see in the first graph below, Sweden’s death rate may have peaked. It is true that Sweden has thus far done worse than its Scandinavian neighbors (see second chart) but it is still doing better than many other European countries. There could be many reasons for this—as we wrote last week, data surrounding this virus is remarkably heterogenous.** And, it is way too early to make conclusions one way or another about Sweden. As noted, Finland and Norway have much better infection and death rates, but what about 6 months from now? 12 months from now? 18 months from now? (will there is an effective treatment or vaccine developed and distributed before then?). Sweden is, of course, different than the U.S, Italy and other countries, as our favorite named person of April Dirk Schwenk points out. We would not have adopted Sweden’s approach but two weeks after we first wrote about it, we still can’t make definitive conclusions.

**For example, what are we to make of Bali, which has incredibly low rates of infection and death despite hundreds of thousands of Chinese, including from Wuhan, visiting there in January? There is so much we don’t yet understand about the pandemic. 

Taking the Air Out of China

As we noted above, on Sunday ESPN aired the first two parts of a new documentary on his Airness, Michael Jordan, bringing much needed content and salve to sports fans all over the world. The NBA is huge in China despite the government’s authoritarian rebuke to the Houston Rockets’ Daryl Morey calling for freedom in Hong Kong.*** Michael Jordan is also big in China and has been fighting for years to protect his trademarks. He won a partial victory there last week when China’s Supreme Peoples Court (note that whenever an authoritarian government uses the word “people” in an organization’s title, it has nothing to do with people like you and me) ruled that “Qiaodan Sports, a company based in China’s southern Fujian province, had illegally used Jordan’s name in Chinese characters.” But at the same time, the Court ruled the company can continue to use a silhouette of Jordan that is the Qiaodan’s logo. The ruling on his name overrules two lower courts judgements. How this all works in practice in China will be telling. China continues to have a very closed economy and as we’ll likely talk about next week, there is increasing pushback from the world. Jordan’s competitiveness is on full display in the documentary, but can he dunk on China?

***China arrested 14 human rights activists in Hong Kong earlier this week. Maybe Italians mistook them for Germans?

While talking with a journalist last week, we wondered whether the dog will bite. We had written an email to the reporter, a respectful but firm one, because we felt their story did not include a key piece of information. We were surprised to receive an email back requesting to interview us for a follow-up podcast. Later that day the reporter called determined to get us to say something we didn’t assert in the email or believe. We kept answering by providing data and information beyond what they wanted us to say. The reporter became frustrated and said something along the lines of, “You’re getting into details, I don’t want the details.” But, dear reporter, details is exactly what we want. As we continued talking, and as I started asking the reporter questions, they revealed that earlier in the crisis they had asked Washington state authorities for hospitalization rates but the authorities said no such data existed. The reporter felt this was obviously a lie. Later, hospitalization data was leaked to a different news establishment. Our reporter was upset and their manager called the state authority to complain. The state is trying to manage information, they don’t want to panic people, the reporter told us. “There’s a story!” we told the reporter. That’s much more important than what you reported on, we explained. The reporter told us a number of additional details that made it clear our state government is keeping information private and also showed how the media is interacting with our government. Towards the end of our conversation, in what surely is a first in journalism history, the reporter, who called me for an explicitly on the record interview, noted our conversation was off the record. Putting aside that protocol is to indicate a conversation is off the record BEFORE you start talking, not AFTER, transparency and information are more key in a pandemic than in nearly any other kind of crisis. Washington state leaders deserve immense credit for their response to the Covid-19 crisis, but we dogs must demand continual improvements—and transparency of information and data should be high on the list, and gathering and publishing data should be paramount. The day before we were interviewed by the reporter we went on a bike ride where we came across the sign below. Blind dogs are indeed dangerous and we hope our leaders will take that caution to heart. And so we bark at what is happening during The Reopening, growl at the urge to blame The Other and point a puzzled paw at Sweden. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, your global data and information service animal.

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

The Reopening

As we stay in place/socially distance/physically distance and otherwise avoid breathing on other individuals (while also avoiding blowhards on TV), we look to other countries who have opened or are planning to reopen and what it may portend for the coming weeks and months. China, which was swept by the virus first, is mostly reopening. However, that does not mean the country’s is fully recovering. As we reported a few weeks ago, they are impacted by the new lack of demand in other parts of the globe due to the pandemic. And while business is starting to reopen in China, there are still restrictions on how many people can be in a restaurant, store or business. Austria announced earlier this week it plans to reopen on April 14^th. But Austria was early and stringent in its planning and will continue to insist Austrians wear masks. Denmark is also preparing to reopen though they have not set a date yet. Will there be a second wave of infections in these countries after reopening? What other measures are they taking before opening such as test and trace and isolating elderly and other vulnerable populations? What role will seasonality play? If you are in lockdown in the U.S. or elsewhere, look to other countries reopening for your possible future, and for what mitigation factors they implement and how they work. Demand to know the plan your leaders have for reopening, what data will drive the decision and whether they are prepared to test and trace.* We are still waiting for such information from federal and Washington state leaders, who have thus far been mostly opaque on these questions.

During China Lockdown                                                  After

*Alaska has been testing and tracing for weeks. Massachusetts is developing a test and trace system.

Blaming The Other is Universal

Alas the United States does not have a monopoly on blaming The Other although we have proven ourselves adept at it over the centuries. Incidents against Asian-Americans and Asians in the current crisis show we have not lost our touch. But such behavior is not peculiar to America, it is taking place all over the world during the pandemic. Here is a particularly virulent example in China in the form of a cartoon. According to New York Times reporter Paul Mozur, it “imagines foreigners as trash to be sorted. It invents their crimes against the virus response, mixes it with their malign motives in China, and fantasizes about committing violence against them.” Then we read in Nigeria there is a backlash against Chinese doctors who traveled there to assist the country in its battle with Covid-19. Both the Nigerian Union of Journalists and the Nigerian Medical Association complained about the Chinese medical team coming to their country. One ruling party member expressed concern, “There is always this inferiority complex with white skin people. Nigerian doctors are some of the best in America and Europe. The ones here are doing very well even in this coronavirus pandemic. What magic does the president think Chinese doctors will perform here.” Can’t wait until an American white racist discriminating against Chinese discovers a Nigerian thinks Chinese are white. Both American leaders and Chinese leaders have actively flamed racist sentiments during the pandemic. Fortunately, Americans can partly rectify the situation in November with the presidential election. And Chinese can change their country….wait, how does that work?

We Need to Talk About Sweden

We have been firmly in the shut-down society camp to deal with Covid-19. In fact, we argued for shutting things down far sooner than they were done, including here in Washington state. But, a) there’s no doubt this is hugely disruptive economically; and b) just as last week when we presented evidence that Covid-19 might not have started in Wuhan, in a highly information-sparse crisis like this one, it is important we continue to check our assumptions. And that means grappling with Sweden. There they have not shut down the country as strictly as many others have. They have banned gatherings of 50 or more people and high schools and colleges are closed, but the rest of the economy is mostly open. Sweden’s death rate is about middle of the pack. It’s worse than its neighbors but it’s better than some other countries. Their hospitals are not overrun. They have attempted to isolate the elderly and other vulnerable populations. China was first in the virus crisis and approached it with a strict lockdown. The rest of us mostly followed that model without its authoritarian trappings. We still believe it is the right decision. Recent data shows Sweden may be getting worse. Perhaps a week from now Sweden will be a catastrophe. Still we need to reckon with the Swedish experience as we move forward, continually check our assumptions in this crisis and learn from it. We all need to use “perhaps”, “maybe” and other such words more often during this pandemic.

Last week we were optimistic. This week less so. The U.S. federal government continues to be a disaster abetting a natural one. But Trump has set the bar so low that we are giving state, regional and local officials too much leeway. Not being Trump is not good enough. Most despairing of all, we see no efforts to develop a South Korea or Taiwan-like response–of testing cases, tracing the infected and then quarantining them. This would allow us to start to end shelter in place policies and begin to re-open the economy. Can we get at least one governor or mayor of a major city to take the approach below at their next press conference?

UNKNOWN GOVERNOR OR MAYOR OF MAJOR CITY

Here is our current data. As of this morning, we have x number of people tested and confirmed to have Covid-19. Y number of people have been confirmed to have died as a result of Covid-19. Yesterday we had Z number of new cases of Covid-19. We tested W number of people.

We need to be able to test N number of people per day. Our current capability is H. To get to get to N we are taking the following actions. (list these actions–this is a difficult supply chain challenge but it is doable)

Once we get to N number of tests per day, we can start “testing and tracing” as they have been doing in South Korea. To be able to effectively trace, we are taking the following steps to secure tracers, equipment, create a database, determine how to isolate cases, and ensure they are able to isolate, etc.

Once we are able to test and trace we will be able to start opening up businesses. At current rates of building up testing and tracing capabilities, we will be able to begin opening up businesses on ___ date. By taking the steps described above, we hope to do testing and tracing sooner than that.

We will update you regularly on our progress on this.

Thank you for coming to our press conference.

Taiwan’s success and techniques, which we wrote about on March 12, continue to be ignored. Nearly every chart of the pandemic you see online does not include Taiwan (thanks to Roy Ngerng for the one above that does). This is because WHO bans Taiwan and because countries are scared of China. There’s a mid-term solution to the pandemic and Taiwan offers one of the answers. 

Without further ado (and lately we have much more ado than usual), here’s what you need to know.

Like It Or Not, We’re All In This Together

One of the many reasons why China and the U.S. sniping at each other during this pandemic is dangerous is that we all need each other. This is certainly true health wise—a virus by nature is transnational—but also economically. As China gleefully trumpets that there are many more cases of Covid-19 outside of China than in, and that things are slowly returning to normal there, they forget that to get their economy back on its feet, they need the markets of the world. And those markets have now collapsed because of the pandemic. For China’s economy, it’s nearly as damaging what is happening in New York, Paris and New Delhi as what is happening in Shanghai, Xiamen and Shenzhen. According to Caixin, “Output contracted in March more than February, work weeks shrank further and hiring declined despite labor shortages…return to work has not meant return to growth for China.” In addition there have been reports that local governments are forcing companies to cook the books to make production look better than it is. The truth is they don’t have enough customers for which to produce. After all, 40 percent of China’s economy is still tied to its exports. And gleeful American policymakers back in February who chortled about the problems in Wuhan might have wanted to stop and think what that was doing to our economies both then and when the virus inevitably traveled to our country. We’re all in this together. At some point we need to start acting like it.

A Note About Supply Chains

All the pieces matter noted the great TV show The Wire. That’s even more true for supply chains, which as we noted a while back, are likely to change radically due to the pandemic. Countries will not be putting all their virus vaccine eggs in one basket anymore. But decisions we are making in one area are affecting supply chains in ways people don’t often understand. For example, understandably air travel has been severely restricted and airlines have smartly responded by cancelling routes—in other words restricting supply. There is talk of the United State closing down domestic air travel. Again, there might be good reasons to do this to slow down the spread of the virus. But we also need to think through how to mitigate the impact on the supply chain. When you are flying to Chicago for a business meeting or to Florida for vacation, below you in the belly of the plane is lots of air cargo, not just your checked bag. Someone we know at an air logistics company tells us, “Capacity is already outrageously reduced but is getting worse by the hour with more airlines cancelling lanes, even on freighter services. Prices are skyrocketing to a level we have never seen before! The only thing moving now is food and any medical supplies requiring the quickest transit time so the ocean freight industry will continue suffering as well.” All the pieces matter. Never forget that.

Put Brazilian Gangsters in Charge of White House?

A number of years ago, when interviewing small businesses for a project I was a part of, I heard consistently how hard it is to do business in Brazil. The bureaucracy and corruption made it difficult for these companies to be successful there. That same combination, along with a Trumpian-like president, is bringing Brazil to the brink of Covid-19 disaster. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro who earlier this week called the virus “a little flu” has berated his subordinates for suggesting Brazilians stay at home and businesses close, much less prepare to do test and trace. It’s become so bad that the gangsters of Brazil have taken matters into their own, presumably gun-toting, hands. On Tuesday night, according to Andrew Cesare, Rio’s gangs enforced a lockdown that started at 8 pm that night. The statement the gangs issued read, “If the government won’t do the right thing, organised crime will.” We advocate for better organized crime inside the White House.

When last we left you, we were about to fly to Japan for vacation and work. We cancelled our trip if not at the last minute, than certainly at the last hours. We cancelled not so much because we feared there was a greater chance to contract the conornavirus in Japan, but because just before we left, Japan essentially closed everything down. There would have been nothing for us to do over there but sit in our hotel room. In fact, as we were cancelling, we told the INTN spouse that likely by the end of our vacation it would be more dangerous here than there. Of course, by here we meant the U.S. not the Seattle area specifically which within days of our cancelling our Japan trip became the American epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic. But our home town is one of the most internationally tied in the country so it should not be surprising that SARS-CoV2 has gripped its infectious tentacles here.One of the more amusing, astonishing, depressing behaviors we see from a minority of people is that they are not at risk from the virus so they will continue on in their lives doing what they want when they want. We presume they have parents or grandparents. Maybe they hate them or are expecting a big inheritance they want sooner than later. Or maybe they are just idiots. Whatever the answer, we raise the fog of corona, point to which country we all could learn from and warn about consequences of quarantining. It’s a special coronavirus edition of International Need to Know, coughing ahem at bad pandemic takes wherever we find them.

Since we wrote the above, Seattle has cancelled all events of 250 or more people, the U.S. has banned all flights from Europe,Tom Hanks(!) has been diagnosed with corona, people are using Tinder (!!) to communicate with people in Wuhan about the epidemic, and the NBA postponed a game just before tip-off when moments earlier one of the players tested positive for coronavirus. The world has officially entered the Tyson Zone when events are so insane there’s literally nothing that could happen that would shock or surprise us at this point. On a more serious point, the President of the United States started his speech Wednesday night by insulting Europe, EU countries refused Italy’s desperate pleas for medical equipment and China has threatened to cut off medical supplies to the U.S. if it doesn’t back off against Huawei. The world is quickly reverting to a pre-World War I order–that is, there is no cooperation at all, it’s every country for itself. This ultimately is a bigger concern than the virus. Unless the U.S., EU, China and the rest of the world start working together, using whatever is left of the liberalized post cold war order Trump and Xi are destroying, 50 years of amazing progress in improving human lives will go down the drain. Definitely worry about the Covid-19 virus pandemic and take all necessary precautions, but don’t take your eye off the ball–a rotating orb hurtling through space.

Now without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

The Fog of Corona

Inevitably in an age of instantaneous communications, people are making broad assumptions and assertions about SARS-CoV2 corona (screw it, corona is much easier to type). Regular readers of INTN will remember we were early on the coronavirus beat, bringing it to our readers’ attention on January 9^th. By early February, in both work interactions with logistics and manufacturing companies, and in our reading of a variety of Chinese experts, it became clear to us this is the most impactful economic event since the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, it is likely to change supply chains more than any event since September 11^th with consequences that are difficult to entirely understand. Today that is becoming a common place belief. Meanwhile, people rightly condemning China’s inept actions at the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan, when officials were more concerned about controlling information than the virus, are now praising China as a model for how to deal with the virus. In fact, too many analysts are making the jump to asserting authoritarian governments are a better way of governing. This is childish thinking. During such a crisis, or course there needs to be intrusive state interventions. Even in robust democracies the laws are written to provide powers to governments not granted during ordinary times, thus Washington’s government banning gatherings of 250 or more people. Praise for authoritarianism is making the rounds partly because China’s government is selling the line that the world needs to learn from their successfull taming of the epidemic. As a part of this propaganda campaign, China is promoting the idea that the virus did not start in China, and may have originally started in the U.S. There are many things the world does not understand about the virus itself and the most effective public policy reactions to it. In fact, we are willing to wager that much of what we think we know will turn out to be wrong in the light of longitudinal studies and time. But unless we think we are in a permanent state of pandemic, then we do know the answer to which system is better: authoritarianism or liberal democracy.

PS There has been some heroic work by medical workers in China. They should be lauded, whatever worries we have about the government there

Look to the Other China on how to deal with Corona

There has been much concern expressed about governments responses to the coronavirus. That is true here in Seattle about the U.S. federal government, but it was especially true of the people of Wuhan about their local, provincial and federal government. (check out this video of their citizens shouting “shame, shame” at a CCP official). But some countries have so far been more successful than others in containing the virus. South Korea, of course. But the “other China”, Taiwan, also stands out. So far, despite being only 81 miles off the coast of mainland China, having 850,000 citizens who live in China and another 404,000 who work there, Taiwan currently has only 30 confirmed cases of Covid-19. Back in 2003, Taiwan was hit hard by SARS—but they learned from it. They set up a National Health Command Center in 2004 “that focuses on large-outbreak response and acts as the operational command point for direct communications among central, regional, and local authorities.” With Covid-19 they have established a checklist of 124 actions, including “border control from the air and sea, case identification (using new data and technology), quarantine of suspicious cases, proactive case finding, resource allocation (assessing and managing capacity), reassurance and education of the public while fighting misinformation, negotiation with other countries and regions, formulation of policies toward schools and childcare, and relief to businesses.” Other countries have much to learn from Taiwan. Here’s an excellent primer on how they have reacted to this pandemic.

Surge in Domestic Violence in China Due to Corona

As American officials consider whether to strengthen social distancing policies, it would be wise to at the same time strengthen domestic violence infrastructure. Because one of the many trade-offs of mandatory quarantining that we’re learning from the China experience is that domestic violence will increase when people are holed up in their homes for weeks at a time. A recent article in the invaluable Sixth Tone notes that “While millions of people are spending time indoors, rights activists say there have been increasing instances of domestic violence — a crime in China since a landmark anti-domestic violence law went into effect in March 2016.” The virus, it turns out, is as damaging on the psyche as the lungs, or at least public policy response to it can be. “Wan Fei, a retired police officer who is now the founder of an anti-domestic violence nonprofit in Jingzhou, a city in the central Hubei province, told Sixth Tone that reports of domestic violence have nearly doubled since cities were put under lock down.” This is not to say a lock down of a city is inappropriate (in fact we think we need to go further than we have–“wash your hands and avoid people” for the time being), but mitigating measures on a whole host of issues—economic, social and criminal—must also happen. Good times 2020.