Thread by @GlennLuk

1/ As we talk about the importance of developing vaccines to help our bodies produce antibodies ...

... let's also explore the idea of society-wide "antibodies" that can help us ward off future outbreaks.

2/ To illustrate, let's go back in time to 2003 where we can see how SARS crisis created institutional and societal "antibodies" that made it easier for the hardest-hit places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and China to cope with today's #COVID19 crisis.

3/ Taiwan's Minister of Health & Welfare, Dr. Chen Shih-chung, had a front row seat to the SARS outbreak.

So when he heard about a small cluster of "mysterious" pneumonia-like cases in China, his pattern-matching instincts sounded the alarm.

https://twitter.com/GlennLuk/status/1231334689039962122

4/ Taiwan started screening travelers from Wuhan as early as late December, before what is now known as #SARSCoV2 had even been identified as a novel coronavirus.

Hong Kong and Singapore did as well.

scmp.com/news/china/soc…

5/ When the crisis escalated, Dr. Chen tackled the issue directly and decisively.

He took a hands-on approach, pulling all-nighters and even accompanying evacuees from Wuhan to their respective quarantine centers in protective gear.

scmp.com/news/china/soc…

6/ He kept the public informed, often holding multiple press conferences per day.

Here is one of them, where he teared up while announcing Taiwan's 11th case.

7/ Today, despite massive cross-border immigration with China, Taiwan only has 50 cases and has the #COVID19 situation largely under control.

Dr. Chen is widely lauded as a hero by the people, deservedly so.

8/ From a societal perspective:

I was living in Hong Kong during SARS in 2003. Almost overnight, you saw changes in behavior, with mask-wearing being one of the most apparent changes. Everyone was wearing masks.

Even after the crisis died down, people continued to wear masks.

9/ I was in Hong Kong in late January as the #COVID19 crisis unfolded. Once again, society sprung into high alert. People did not need to be cajoled or convinced, they knew what to do.

Social distancing methods were ingrained in societal DNA. People understood the stakes.

10/ Today, Hong Kong has only 132 cases and like Taiwan, the situation is largely under control.

Keep in mind these are two of the most urbanized places on the planet, where you are bumping into hundreds to thousands of people every day on your daily commute.

11/ Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and China knew both (i) the importance of and (ii) methods to actually #FlattenTheCurve well before it became a hashtag.

12/ Here in the U.S. - and to a certain extent Italy and other countries in Europe - we never developed these "antibodies" during SARS.

We are now finding out the hard way.

13/ We will get through this.

But we musn't forget to develop & retain the societal and institutional antibodies so that we are better able to ward off future outbreaks.

This means codifying the processes that we are learning as we fight #COVID19 in the coming weeks.

14/ Who will be our Dr. Chen, the hero that takes decisive action to save lives and prevent further economic and societal damage? And will we listen to them?

15/ How will we improve our processes so we can quickly detect future isolated clusters + stamp them out before they explode into bigger outbreaks?

16/ We will have to deal with some tough challenges in the coming weeks.

Let's remember that we aren't just dealing with the present challenges, but future ones as well.