Hi guys! Welcome back on my channel. I am Charlotte
I am happy that you are joining me again today for a new episode of “Taiwan in the global news”.
The article I want to talk about today was published on the 28th of April in a newspaper called “De Standaard”.
It is a famous newspaper here in Belgium and my family has a subscription to it, so we get it almost every day.
The article… It is a little bit funny…
The title does not sound like it is related to Taiwan.
The title is: “New Zealand defeats the virus”. If you look at the article more closely, Taiwan is mentioned many times.
There is a little box here. I do not know if you can see that. There is a title that says:
“What Belgium failed to learn from Taiwan”.
I am going to be translating a part of the article for you. It is a very long article,
so I will leave out the parts that are not about Taiwan and I’ll focus on the interesting parts.
I hope you enjoy!
What Belgium failed to learn from Taiwan
Okay! Are you ready and comfortable?
Let us go ahead and read this.
“New Zealand defeats the virus. New Zealand learned from Taiwan,
and found the perfect balance between science, strictness and didactic talent to handle the Corona crisis.
According to New Zealand’s epidemiologists, the Coronavirus has a reproduction of less than 0.5 in their country.
One infected person transmits the virus to less than half another person.
This means that the disease is not transferred in the community.
Only one New-Zealander remains under intensive care and there are 270 known infected.
This made the country lower their emergency level from 4 to 3."
Now comes the part where they tell us what New Zealand learned from Taiwan and what Belgium failed to learn.
First of all, in New Zealand, all the returning citizens are being placed in a 14-days long quarantine in a hotel.
I think that in Taiwan they do not put people in hotels, but in a house quarantine.
They have some apps to see if people are really staying at home.
The second point is: "As early as the 21st of March, there was a clear and transparent lockdown plan with 4 different phases."
Here in Belgium we also have a lockdown, but I do not think everything was completely transparent.
I think the government was scared to create panic, so they were very slow to release all of the information.
Many things were unclear. First, they told us: “Don’t use masks because masks are completely useless.”
“Give all your masks to the medical health staff because they really need it.”
I know that when some people who were using a mask when they were going to the hospital or doctor,
The hospital staff were angry: “You should not be using masks; they should only be for medical staff”.
They were telling people that it was completely useless to use the masks.
But later, when we had enough masks (before that we had a shortage),
After the masks started arriving and we had enough, suddenly they changed their words
They were saying: “Everybody should use a mask! It is very useful to stop this pandemic.”
“You should all buy masks and it might become mandatory in some places.”
I think it is unclear. The government is changing their opinion all the time.
I guess they are learning along the way. Sometimes I think they are not transparent. (in my opinion)
The third point is: “Contact tracers with high quality tests are set in place before the end of the lockdown”.
That is something I saw that Taiwan was doing really well… When someone is in a house quarantine,
They are being monitored with an app on their phones. Somebody can always check on them.
Their temperature, they can check if they are at home, … It is very well monitored.
Here in Belgium, the first time the government mentioned an app like that, everybody started freaking out!
“What about my privacy?? You cannot do that! That is sensitive information!”
We definitely did not handle it the same way as Taiwan and New Zealand.
The article also states that New Zealand might have a few advantages that we do not have in Belgium.
The density of their cities is much lower than in Belgium, meaning that we have more people living closer to one another.
They have only 5 million people. In Belgium we are 11 million maybe? Half of those people (in New Zealand) are under the age of 38.
I guess they have a young population.
Another point that I saw somewhere in the article was that New Zealand might have an advantage
Because they are an island. Later in the article they said that maybe this is not true. This is not an advantage
Because we also closed our borders. People are not coming in. New Zealand and Taiwan also have products coming into the country
It should not make a huge difference when it comes to “island” or “not an island” if our country is closing the borders anyway.
I think I mentioned the most important parts of the article. At least the parts related to Taiwan.
Sorry I am looking red today. It is very hot and I do not know why I decided to wear a sweater.
I am also drinking hot tea. That is not helping…
Anyway, when we look at this article, and when we see that New Zealand copied Taiwan’s strategy
We already know that Taiwan had a lot of success with handling the Corona crisis,
Now New Zealand also is successful by copying Taiwan, it really makes you wonder…
What if Taiwan had been able to share their information with the World Health Organization (WHO)?
Wouldn’t it have meant that many deaths could have been prevented if other countries had this successful strategy?
I do not know what to think about it. Of course, politics are very “delicate”
but I think it is CRAZY that such important information was stopped from being brought into the World Health Organization (WHO)
just because of some political games that are being played.
I wonder, what is your opinion on the matter? I am going to read some of your comments on the previous video.
The first comment I see here is: “Thank you for sharing Miss Charlotte. I also hope that the world can resume normal life as soon as possible.”
“I wish you health and happiness.” Thank you so much! I wish the same to you ~
By the way, I have noticed you, commenting on most on my videos! Thank you so much ^^
Calvin Wang writes: “Minister Maggie De Block can learn from Taiwan. Taiwan is a model.”
First of all: are you Belgian?? How do you know our minister of health Maggie De Block? That is impressive!
Maggie De Block is under a lot of pressure right now because of her position as Minister of Health. Things are not going well in our country.
She is the first person in line who is targeted by all the angry people.
I think she probably did the best she could. I think anyone who would have been in her position right now would have been under pressure.
Of course, I wish Belgium could have learned from Taiwan earlier.
Someone writes: “Today is Labour Holiday here, it’s really nice to hear your translation for Taiwan news on Belgian TV. Stay together stronger!”
Terry Roe writes: “I have lived in Taiwan since 2004, I love Taiwan.”
Wow! That’s a long time. That’s a big part of your life that you lived in Taiwan… Wow
I’m jealous. You must be living a happy life there!
That was it for today’s episode of Taiwan in the international news.
I hope you enjoyed and thank you for staying until the end! That’s uncommon, so you are one of my channel’s elites.
Thank you so much and don’t forget to like and subscribe. See you soon in the next video.
Bye ~