Is paranoia the key to pandemic preparedness?

Why were these two countries—both much closer to the source of the pandemic than the United States—so much more successful in coping with it? The proximate answer is that they learned the lessons of two previous coronavirus outbreaks, SARS and MERS. But that explanation understates the creativity of their responses. Taiwan used online platforms to gather and share information about symptoms and exposure, ration facemasks when they were scarce, and enforce quarantines. Schools remained open, albeit with strictly enforced precautions. In South Korea, the government and the private sector collaborated to rapidly ramp up testing; at the same time, the government deployed a mobile-phone-based system of contact tracing. Under legislation passed at the time of MERS, the government had the authority to collect mobile-phone, credit-card, and other information from anyone who tested positive and use it to reconstruct his or her recent whereabouts. Those data, stripped of personal identifiers, were then shared on social media apps, allowing others to determine whether or not they had crossed paths with an infected person. Like Taiwan, South Korea strictly enforced quarantines. Alongside Taiwan and South Korea, Israel gets an honorable mention. True, its record of containing the coronavirus was more mixed. After a strong early response to the pandemic a year ago, Israel weathered two major waves of deaths that peaked in October 2020 and January 2021. Israel’s vaccination procurement and rollout, however, were the best in the world.