Wuhan – A Year Later
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/world/asia/wuhan-china-coronavirus.html
Asia's COVID recovery: Vietnam's breakout moment
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Asia-s-COVID-recovery-Vietnam-s-breakout-moment
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/world/asia/wuhan-china-coronavirus.html
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Asia-s-COVID-recovery-Vietnam-s-breakout-moment
How Singapore Has Kept the Coronavirus Off Campus
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/world/asia/singapore-coronavirus-universities.html
Singapore’s three major universities have reported zero cases. Their secret: technology, tough penalties and students willing to comply.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/world/asia/singapore-coronavirus-universities.html
Singapore’s three major universities have reported zero cases. Their secret: technology, tough penalties and students willing to comply.
Taiwan - A Highly Innovative and Well-Managed State
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/23/949764249/fork-the-government
“As countries around the world struggle to handle the coronavirus pandemic, Taiwan stands out as a relative success story... so far. Since April, only one locally transmitted case has been reported. There have been only seven deaths — in the entire country”.
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/23/949764249/fork-the-government
“As countries around the world struggle to handle the coronavirus pandemic, Taiwan stands out as a relative success story... so far. Since April, only one locally transmitted case has been reported. There have been only seven deaths — in the entire country”.
DOES CULTURE MATTER?
Experts say pandemic reactions highlight US-Asia culture gap
“"A society like the U.S. is really not prepared to come together collectively and prioritize the collective good over the rights of the individual," Kanter continued. "We're just not built for this."
Kanter said more collectivist cultures, including Asian ones, appear to be better at handling a pandemic. He cited a 2008 study published by London's Royal Society that suggested dealing with past disease outbreaks may have helped shape collectivist cultures in the first place.”
Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism
Abstract
Pathogenic diseases impose selection pressures on the social behaviour of host populations. In humans (Homo sapiens), many psychological phenomena appear to serve an antipathogen defence function. One broad implication is the existence of cross-cultural differences in human cognition and behaviour contingent upon the relative presence of pathogens in the local ecology. We focus specifically on one fundamental cultural variable: differences in individualistic versus collectivist values. We suggest that specific behavioural manifestations of collectivism (e.g. ethnocentrism, conformity) can inhibit the transmission of pathogens; and so we hypothesize that collectivism (compared with individualism) will more often characterize cultures in regions that have historically had higher prevalence of pathogens. Drawing on epidemiological data and the findings of worldwide cross-national surveys of individualism/collectivism, our results support this hypothesis: the regional prevalence of pathogens has a strong positive correlation with cultural indicators of collectivism and a strong negative correlation with individualism. The correlations remain significant even when controlling for potential confounding variables. These results help to explain the origin of a paradigmatic cross-cultural difference, and reveal previously undocumented consequences of pathogenic diseases on the variable nature of human societies.