The Mystery of Taiwan: We are still left with a mystery. Taiwan did not lock down. It did not widely test. And yet it had the lowest death rate per million of any populous country in the world. It experienced 0.3 deaths per million and ranks 189th in the world.
What, then, is the explanation? As much as public health authorities in the West want to consider policy as a decisive factor in the success or failure of pandemic response, the Taiwanese case might have nothing at all to do with the public policy response.
The real explanation deals with innate immunities from other vaccines or virus exposures. For example, a study found SARS-CoV-1 reactive T cells in patients who were infected with SARS 17 years ago. Even though about 680 people in Taiwan were infected with SARS in 2003, the study shows a possibility that enduring T cells could influence the effect SARS-CoV-2 has on people with certain preexisting immunities. A different study found that there were strong differences in mortalities between Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Western countries, suggesting that genetic factors may also play a role in these disparities.
