| His Ideas 27 ~ Experience |
April 1, 2021
|
| He got an idea and started to check it out on the internet. On the website of WHO, he checked each country's coronavirus's cases, the number of the patients, and the number of deaths. Then he picked out the countries which have had fewer number of coronavirus cases, patients and deaths. He excluded the smaller populated countries and also some developing countries which have poor statistical systems. These were the 8 remaining countries: China Australia Thailand Singapore New Zealand South Korea Vietnam Taiwan These countries have a population of more than 5 million people and have clearly fewer cases, patients and deaths compared to its population. He could guess that these were the countries because they sometimes appeared in the newspapers or on TV with headlines of having fewer coronavirus cases. Then, he moved to another website that showed statistics about SARS and MERS. SARS happened around 2002, MERS happened around 2012. SARS and MERS were very shocking pandemic viruses. Before them, the latest severe pandemic was the Hong Kong Flu and it was in 1963. So SARS and MERS were the first pandemics in a long time, and the shocking part was that their extremely high death rate ~for SARS 9 ~16%, MERS 30 ~40%. In the case of the Spanish Flu's death rate, it was 2 ~3%. But fortunately, SARS and MERS ceased after a certain time. The countries that were most affected were China, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, and Taiwan for SARS. And in South Korea's  case, they had a severe MERS outbreak in 2015, which was later that the other countries outbreak. So these countries which had hard experiences about these terrible pandemics have been able to prepare for the next disease. It was the reason that they have had fewer cases of the COVID-19. And from this, he could reach another truth and conclusion. If a county hasn't had a hard experience of a pandemic, the country can't act suitably to a pandemic. We can see this easily. The majority of countries that have not been able to study from those counties, at least so far, have been continually having new patients and seem not to "control" the spread of the virus. Maybe Australia and New Zealand are few of the countries which have been willing to study from other countries. For these two countries, they might have been lucky that the outbreak happened in the summer months when the virus had started to spread, and those countries are isolated by the sea. But even so, their measures against the spread of the coronavirus have been suitable. His Idea #27 : Experience But why can't we study from these successful countries? Maybe because of its citizens. In the countries which had SARS or MERS, citizens have a consensus about governments' policies toward pandemics because they experienced its terror. On the other hand, citizens in non-SARS and MERS affected areas can't act together. Another reason is that among countries, they sometimes have a hostile feeling for each other, vanity as an independent country, and various geo-political rivalries, etc., which makes seeking help and assistance not easy. "But..." He thought, "Isn't this the WHO's role?" He knew that WHO's manpower and budget was limited. But even so, stopping the coronavirus should be the first priority. If they ask successful countries to help them by giving them their precise policies and measures against the coronavirus, those countries must be willing to teach them. Maybe only the WHO can evaluate the measures of each country's coronavirus, and can announce them suitably without getting involved with each country's politics and actions, he thought. |
| |
No.427
*exclude: 除外する
*statistical: 統計の
*cease: 終息する
*willing to : 進んで〜する
*hostile: 敵意の
*vanity: 虚栄心
*rivalry: ライバル心
*seek: 求める
*involve: 巻き込む