Asia’s COVID-19 Lessons for the West: Public Goods, Privacy, and Social Tagging

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Correction StatementThis article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.Notes1 Dana Kim, “Going to Korea in the Pandemic,” CSIS Newsletter, April 24, 2020 https://www.csis.org/analysis/going-korea-pandemic.2 “COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University,” Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center, accessed May 2, 2020, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html3 “COVID-19 Dashboard.”4 “COVID-19 Dashboard.”5 “COVID-19 Dashboard.”6 Dan Shapiro, “Taiwan Shows Its Mettle in Coronavirus while the WHO Is MIA,” Order from Chaos (blog), Brookings, March 19, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/19/taiwan-shows-its-mettle-in-coronavirus-crisis-while-the-who-is-mia/; C. Jason Wang, Chun Y. Ng, and Robert H. Brook, “Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan: Big Data Analytics, New Technology, and Proactive Testing,” JAMA 323, no. 14 (2020): 1341–42, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.3151.7 Wang, Ng, and Brook, “Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan.”8 Mary Hui, “How Taiwan Is Tracking 55,000 People under Home Quarantine in Real Time,” Quartz, April 1, 2020, https://qz.com/1825997/taiwan-phone-tracking-system-monitors-55000-under-coronavirus-quarantine/.9 World Health Organization (@WHO), “Watch Live Technical briefing on #2019nCoV with @DrTedros,” Twitter, February 4, 2020, 11:35 a.m., https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1224733275408752641; Proclamation No. 9984: Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons Who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus, Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. (January 31, 2020), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/DCPD-202000053/.10 Victor Cha and Dana Kim, “A Timeline of South Korea’s Response to COVID-19,” CSIS Newsletter, March 27, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/timeline-south-koreas-response-covid-19.11 Audrey Wilson, “The Countries That Are Succeeding at Flattening the Curve,” Foreign Policy, April 2, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/countries-succeeding-flattening-curve-coronavirus-testing-quarantine/.12 “Most Recent Data,” The Covid Tracking Project (website), accessed May 2, 2020, https://covidtracking.com/data; Alyin Woodward and Shayanne Gal, “One Chart Shows How Many Coronavirus Tests per Capita Have Been Completed in Six Countries,” Business Insider, April 20, 2020 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-per-capita-us-italy-south-korea-2020-4.13 E. Tammy Kim, “How South Korea Solved Its Face Mask Shortage,” New York Times, April 1, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/covid-face-mask-shortage.html.14 Wang, Ng, and Brook, “Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan.”15 Katharine Q. Seelye et al., “Doctors and Governors Vie for Masks in Cloak-and-Dagger Deals,” New York Times, April 20, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/us/coronavirus-states-masks.html; Jeanne Whalen et al., “Scramble for Medical Equipment Descends into Chaos as U.S. States and Hospitals Compete for Rare Supplies,” Washington Post, March 24, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/24/scramble-medical-equipment-descends-into-chaos-us-states-hospitals-compete-rare-supplies/.16 Shapiro, “Taiwan Shows Its Mettle.”17 “Audrey Tang Praised for Coronavirus Prevention Tactics,” New Lens, March 4, 2020, https://international.thenewslens.com/article/132023.18 Dan Goodin, “Apple and Google Detail Bold and Ambitious Plan to Track COVID-19 at Scale,” ArsTechnica, April 4, 2020 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/apple-and-google-detail-bold-and-ambitious-plan-to-track-covid-19-at-scale/; “Safe Paths,” MIT Media Labs, accessed May 2, 2020, https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/safepaths/overview/.19 Alex Pentland, “Restarting the Economy and Avoiding Big Brother” (unpublished manuscript, 2020), MIT Connection Science, http://connection.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publication-pdfs/Restarting%20the%20Economy_0.pdf; Will Knight, “Phones Could Track the Spread of Covid-19. Is It a Good Idea?” Wired, March 15, 2020 https://www.wired.com/story/phones-track-spread-covid19-good-idea/.20 Yasheng Huang, Meicen Sun, and Yuze Sui, “How Digital Contract Tracing Slowed COVID-19 in Asia,” Harvard Business Review, April 15, 2020 https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-digital-contact-tracing-slowed-covid-19-in-east-asia.21 Knight, “Phones Could Track the Spread of Covid-19.”22 Aaron Rupar (@atrupar), “Here’s Seema Verma suggesting that one reason South Korea has been so effective in responding to the coronavirus is because it isn’t a ‘free’ country like the United States,” Twitter, April 2, 2020, 10:39 a.m., https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1245722608357773314.23 Ian Rowen, “Inside Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement: Twenty-four Days in a Student-Occupied Parliament, and the Future of the Region,” Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 1 (February 2015), 5–21, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911814002174.24 Gi-Wook Shin, et al., “The Korean Democracy Movement: An Empirical Overview,” in South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society, ed. Gi-Wook Shin and Paul Y Chang (New York: Routledge, 2011).25 Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut, “France Weighs Its Love of Liberty in Fight against Coronavirus,” New York Times, April 17, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/world/europe/coronavirus-france-digital-tracking.html.26 Roy Tseng, “The Idea of Freedom in Comparative Perspective: Critical Comparisons between the Discourses of Liberalism and Neo-Confucianism,” Philosophy East and West 66, no. 2 (April 2016), 539–58, https://doi.org/ 10.1353/pew.2016.0030; Ambrose Yeo-chi King, “The Individual and the Group in Confucianism,” in China’s Great Transformation: Selected Essays on Confucianism, Modernization, and Democracy, ed. Ambrose Yeo-chi King (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018); Kishore Mahbubani, Can Asians Think? (Singapore: Times Media, 1998).27 Chenyang Li, “The Confucian Conception of Freedom,” Philosophy East and West 64, no. 4 (October 2014), 902–19, https://doi.org/ 10.1353/pew.2014.0066; Rina Marie Camus, “I Am Not a Sage but an Archer: Confucius on Agency and Freedom, Philosophy East and West 68, no. 4 (October 2018), 1042–61, https://doi.og/10.1353/pew.0.0143.28 Monica Chin, “Israel Is Using Cellphone Data to Track the Coronavirus,” Vox, March 17, 2020, https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21183716/coronavirus-covid-19-israel-natanyahu-cellphone-data-tracking.29 Onishi and Méheut, “France Weighs Its Love of Liberty.”30 A. Odysseus Patrick, “Australians Toss Aside Authorities in Rush to Sign Up for Virus Tracking Phone App,” Washington Post, April 29, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/australians-toss-aside-privacy-concerns-in-rush-to-sign-up-for-virus-tracking-phone-app/2020/04/29/9a67ae88-89dd-11ea-80df-d24b35a568ae_story.html.31 “NHCC,” Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (website), last updated January 31, 2018, https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Category/MPage/gL7-bARtHyNdrDq882pJ9Q; Wang, Ng, and Brook, “Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan.”32 Sun Young Cho et al., “MERS-CoV Outbreak following a Single Patient Exposure in an Emergency Room in South Korea: An Epidemiological Outbreak Study,” Lancet 388, no. 10048 (September 2016), https://doi.org/ 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30623-7; Jae Wook Choi et al., “Current Epidemiological Situation of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Clusters and Implications for Public Health Response in South Korea,” Journal of the Korean Medical Association 58, no. 6 (2015), 487–97, https://doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2015.58.6.487; K.H. 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Lim, “Singapore’s Experience of SARS,” Clinical Medicine 3, no. 5 (September/October 2003), https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.3-5-448; G.M Leung et al., “Epidemiology of SARS in the 2003 Epidemic,” Hong Kong Medical Journal 15, no. 6 (December 2009), https://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/86739/1/content.pdf?accept=1.40 Yasheng Huang, Meicen Sun, and Yuze Sui, “How Digital Contact Tracing Slowed Covid-19 in East Asia,” Harvard Business Review, April 15, 2020 https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-digital-contact-tracing-slowed-covid-19-in-east-asia; Christine Farr, “The COVID-19 Response Must Balance Civil Liberties and Public Health – Experts Explain How,” CNBC, April 18, 2020 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/18/covid-19-response-vs-civil-liberties-striking-the-right-balance.html.41 Onishi and Méheut, “France Weighs Its Love of Liberty.”42 Hong et al., “Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan.”43 Ivan Watson and Sophie Jeong, “Coronavirus Mobile Apps Are Surging in Popularity in South Korea,” CNN Business, February 28, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/28/tech/korea-coronavirus-tracking-apps/index.html; Mark Zastrow, “South Korea Is Reporting Intimate Details of COVID-19 Cases: Has It Helped?” Nature, March 18, 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00740-y.44 Patrick, “Australians Toss Aside Authorities.”45 Quoted in Brett Samuels and Peter Sullivan, “Trump Downplays Need for Widespread Testing before Reopening Economy,” The Hill, April 9, 2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/492129-trump-downplays-need-for-widespread-testing-before-reopening-economy.46 Bill Bostock, “Fauci Said It Will Take 12 to 18 Months to Get a Coronavirus Vaccine in the US,” Business Insider, April 1, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/fauci-said-it-will-take-12-to-18-months-to-get-a-coronavirus-vaccine-in-the-us-experts-say-a-quick-approval-could-be-risky-/articleshow/74940169.cms.47 Ellen Barry, “An Army of Virus Tracers Takes Shape in Massachusetts,” New York Times, April 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/coronavirus-massachusetts-contact-tracing.html.48 Josh Taylor, “Coronavirus Apps: How Australia's Covidsafe Compares to Other Countries' Contact Tracing Technology,” Guardian, May 2, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/03/coronavirus-apps-how-australias-covidsafe-compares-to-other-countries-contact-tracing-technology.