Why the EU allowed more than 700 thousands killed inhabitants, will spent trillions of Euros and deprive the whole population of civil rights in its fight against COVID-19 and East Asia did much better?

By Henning von Zanthier

In memoriam of my father, who died on February 10, 2021 of COVID-19

Why the EU allowed more than 700 thousands killed inhabitants^[1] , will spent trillions of Euros and deprive the whole population of civil rights in its fight against COVID-19 and East Asia did much better?

1. As many European are again in a lockdown with no leisure’s offers, limited private contacts, often forced home office, we all dream of an island where we have a normal life and economic growth helps our businesses. Taiwan is such an island with around 24 million inhabitants, but only 12 killed by COVID-19 and 1153 people infected (as of April 30, 2021) and an economic growth of 3.1% in 2020. Restaurants, shops, cinemas and concert rooms were always open throughout 2020/21, the virus is visible only by a duty to wear a mask. Taiwan is the role model, but similar figures of only few killed or infected in all of East Asia seem to ring in the East Asian Century.

As President of an Asian-European lawyers´ association, I drafted in March 2020 a questionnaire, to receive from the 20 member law firms a survey, to what extend the pandemic of COVID-19 hit the different jurisdictions in Asia and Europe and what measures were taken against the pandemic.

As a lawyer, I was more interested to get to know the variety of governmental measures, which were taken by the different governments than in the numbers of killed and infected inhabitants of the very countries, so that we all could learn from different approaches and improve measures.

As the pandemic was new then, there were no great differences in the death tolls between the different countries and there was no sign to expect a divide between East Asia and Europe in the success to fight the virus.

2. In early 2021 I was asked as Chair of the Asian-European Subcommittee of the Panasian lawyers´ association, LAWASIA, to present an introduction to the topic: “State measures to save business from pandemic in Asia and Europe”.

I realized a year after the above-mentioned survey that the differences between East Asia and Europe in numbers as of March 22, 2021 of killed and infected inhabitants and money spent by the governments are now paramount to the disadvantage of Europe and the praise of East Asia:

Comparison of major countries in East Asia and EU as of March 22, 2021.

2.1. The highest death toll of the selected countries in East Asia was about 9,000 killed in Japan, which was much lower than the lowest death toll in Europe (13,300 in Sweden as of March 22, 2021) out of several selected major countries in the EU. The highest death toll in Europe was in the UK, part of the legal framework of the EU in 2020, with about 126,000 killed, which was more than 14 times as much as in Japan!

The comparison gets even much worse for Europe when we compare these figures per capita: Japan has the highest death toll per capita with 70 death per 1 million inhabitants, whereas the lowest death rate per capita Germany has with 903 per 1 million inhabitants (what is 13 time as much as in Japan). The highest death rate has Belgium with more than 2,000 per 1 million inhabitants, almost 30 times as many killed as in Japan per capita!

2.2. If you now think that the reason for the much better result in East Asia depend on a higher investments of the East Asian Countries fighting the virus, while Europe spent less, you learn that the opposite is true:

Not all figures are here reliable, e.g. from Vietnam, it was not possible to trace back the total number to different sectors of investments, but the tendencies in the figures are very clear: Out of the selected countries, the highest investment rate (except for China) fighting the COVID-19 virus in East Asia was in Japan with around 2 billion USD.

In Europe COVID-19 investments start with 5 billion USD in Belgium and is often several 100 billion USD, being topped by Germany with 731 billion USD which is more than 365 times as much than investments in Japan, which did the highest investment in East Asia (except China).

Since the population numbers in countries of East Asia are much higher in my schedule than in Europe, the number of invested USD per capita is even worse for Europe: Malaysia is leading the East Asian countries with an investment rate of 274 m. per 1 million inhabitants, whereas Belgium has the lowest rate with 500 m. USD per 1 million inhabitants, which is still double of the amount Malaysia spends.

The top is again Germany with 10 billion USD per 1 million inhabitants, which is more than 30 times money spent than Malaysia, which invests the most per capita in East Asia.

The EU and its member states plan to spent about 2,2 trillion USD^[2]  fighting the pandemic whereas the above mentioned East Asian countries spent in total 513 billion USD according to the schedule above, thus only 1/4.

2.3. If you now think that this much money should at least give the European countries an advantage over time in less numbers of infected as of March 22, 2021 over East Asia, you will be once more disappointed:

The highest rate of total infected in absolute figures in East Asia you will find in Japan with about 457,000 infected, the lowest cumulated number you will find in Taiwan with only about 1,000 infected throughout the 15 month of pandemic, even though Taiwan is very close to China, where the virus was identified for the first time and hundreds of flights are going every week from Taiwan to China and back, where about 1 million Taiwanese work.

In Europe, because Sweden is with its 9 million inhabitants quite small, the lowest number of absolute infected inhabitants is 744,000 inhabitants, thus 50% higher than in Japan, whereas the major European countries have between 2.7 – 4.3 million infected inhabitants, thus at least 5 times higher than Japan, which shows the highest numbers of infected inhabitants out of the selected scheduled of East Asia as of March 22, 2021.

2.4. Again, since the major countries of East Asia are much more populated than the major European countries, the comparison per capita is even worse for Europe: The highest rate of infected by 1 m inhabitants in Malaysia was 284, whereas the lowest rate of infected is now in the UK with about 5,700 per 1 million inhabitants, (which is 20 times as many per capita than in Malaysia) and the worst being France with almost 34,000 infected per 1 million inhabitants as of March 22, 2021, more than 120 times as many infected per capita than in Malaysia.

2.5. Finally there is no economic growth in Europe, but all European economies were shrinking in 2020 between 3-11%. Whereas in East Asia there are 3 countries, Taiwan (3.1%), China (2.3%) and Vietnam (2.9%) where the economics grew in 2020 and for the residue East Asian countries the shrinking percentage of their respective economies was much lower than in Europe (see schedule above).

3. The obvious question is, why exist these differences and what can the EU do to catch up with the much lower numbers of killed an infected in East Asia, possibly spent less money in the future, assign this money more prudently and get its economies run again?

To discuss this question is the more important, since the main media in the EU like to compare our bad figures of Corona deaths with the US, Brasilia, or Russia, which are mostly much worse than a single EU country, but our media avoid to show these differences between East Asia and Europe, which makes us in the EU look too bad.

The question of why there are these differences needs for these 14 countries in the schedule above much deeper research, since every country is different in its means to fight COVID-19, the amount of money spent and the amount of killed and infected. I cannot do this large comparison here.

Since Taiwan (24 million inhabitants) is within the selected group of the 14 countries the star in the schedule, which has the least numbers of killed (10!) and infected 1,006 as of March 22, 2021, which gives it 0,5 infected per 1 million inhabitants, the system is democratic and Taiwan had an economic growth of 3,1 % in2020 with no lockdown, I would like to present Taiwan as a role model and compare it with Germany, which has 83 million inhabitants, is doing per capita in the number of killed (903 killed per million inhabitants) and infected (ca. 11,000 per 1 million inhabitants) not too bad for European standards, but spent the most money in absolute figures and per capita to fight the virus and had a shrinking economic in 2020 by about 5%.

4. Germany

On January 27, 2020, the first case in Germany was confirmed near Munich. By mid-February, the arising cluster of cases had been fully eliminated^[3].

On 25 and 26 February, multiple cases related to the Italian outbreak were detected in Southern Germany. New clusters were introduced in other regions via Heinsberg, Northrhine Westfalia, as well as via people arriving from China, Iran, and Italy, from where also non-Germans could arrive by plane until 17–18 March.^[4]

From March 13, 2020 the 16 x German states mandated school and kindergarten closures, postponed academic semesters, and prohibited visits to nursing homes to protect the elderly. Two days later the borders to Austria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland were closed.^[5] In mid-March 2020, the coronavirus hit Germany particularly hard. As of March 15, 2020 there was 4,838 infected and 12 killed in one day^[6]

The number of deaths rapidly increased, at the end of March there were about 100 killed per day^[7] , and public life had become more and more paralyzed, whereupon the federal and state governments decided for the first time to close shops except for grocery shops and other life relevant shops like pharmacies. The first lockdown finally took effect on March 22, 2020.^[8]

On April 29, 2020, the Federal Government decides to make masks compulsory in the 16 states of Germany for shops and public transport. The first losings of measures were on 4 and 11 May. Presumably because of the warm summer, the pandemic receded, so that the number of infected and killed was not large (e.g. June 15, 2020 164 newly infected and only 6 killed per day^[9]).

Only since October 2020 we have seen an increase in cases. As of November 10, 2020 there were 26,547 infected and 604 killed by COVID-19 per day. ^[10] Since that time, we had another lockdown and strong rules to destroy this second wave. As of December 30, 2020 we saw the peak of 1,129 killed by the virus per day. ^[11]

In the End of February 2021 we had a third wave of the pandemic in Germany. As of April 30, 2021 in Germany there are in total 3,381,597 infected and 82,850 killed by the coronavirus.^[12]

5. Taiwan

The only restriction affecting our daily life is to wear the mask since the beginning of the pandemic, a good Taiwanese friend of mine told me in April 2021, which is the true perception of Taiwanese in their daily life.

There was a whole different concept behind the success of Taiwan, for which the following 8 aspects are different to Germany:

First of all, and most decisive was the different strategy to Germany on the outset: The goal of the Taiwanese government to save as many life as possible by quickly eliminating the virus by putting effectiveness of stamping out the virus over data protection and other civil rights. The right to freely move was however restricted only for these few, who were detected as contacts and thus quarantined, but was never extended to the whole population as in the EU. ^[13]

The German government never had a plan to effectively eliminate the virus after it did successfully eliminate the first virus cluster in Munich in February 2020.

To eliminate the virus needs a small number of infected, if the number of infected versus the health personal is too big, elimination of the virus is impossible and a Taiwan’s strategy would not work anymore. It is decisive to rigorously fight the virus right in the beginning: In Taiwan were never more than 1.000 infected at the time, and strong and effective measures to detect the few, who had possibly contact with an infected person and a very effective quarantine of the identified contacts persons, helped to decrease the number of infected and stamp them out.

This Taiwanese strategy would have been possible also in Germany in March 2020 and could have been applied in summer of 2020, when the number of infected was very low (e.g. 164 infected on June 15, 2020 per day). But against the advice of epidemiologists, the German government did not believe in the second wave of infection and omitted to stamp the virus out in summer 2020.

Secondly, Taiwan established strong institutions a dedicated Centre for Disease Control (CDC), founded in 1990 to combat the threat of communicable diseases. In addition, Taiwan established a National Health Command Centre (NHCC) in 2004 following the SARS epidemic^[14]. This agency, working in association with the CDC, was dedicated to responding to emerging threats, such as pandemics, and given the power to coordinate work across government departments – which German data protection law would not allow^[15] – and draw on additional personnel in an emergency.

Thirdly, Taiwan’s pandemic response was largely mapped out through extensive planning as a result of the SARS pandemic in 2003, where 73 people had been killed, and was developed in such a way that it could be adapted to new pathogens. Previous experience of the SARS pandemic has developed rapid action mechanisms and coordinated national response in the early stages of the pandemic. The CDC in conjunction with the Central Epidemic Command centre (CECC) has directed a pre-COVID-19 pandemic plan for Taiwan. This plan was based on previous experience. Such a plan in terms of eliminating the virus vigorously did not exist for Germany, at least it was never applied or even only communicated to its inhabitants.

Fourthly, Taiwan understood the importance of face masks from the start. All citizens were able to share information on where masks were missing through an app. To help with the masks’ distribution, Taiwan’s digital minister Audrey Tang (the youngest member of the government and a transgender person) also released data to the public via an open API and invited Taiwan’s civic hackers to create a database with local data on the pandemic situation. ^[16] There are more than 140 apps, including maps showing which pharmacies had supplies, visualizations of how many masks had been distributed and where, and voice assistants for the visually impaired. The German government was initially critical to mask-wearing and only decided on April 29, 2020, 6 weeks after the first measures were imposed, to demand face masks for all citizens in shops and public transport.

The ability of officials to track contacts of an infected person, both manually and digitally, and to access travel histories also in cooperation with the private telephone companies, meant that new cases could be identified quickly. So that high-risk areas could be avoided. That the state takes advantage of data from private enterprises is not allowed in Germany without consent of the concerned citizen^[17] or a special legal basis, which does not exist.

This strong data protection in Germany is a very good concept in normal times, e.g. helping to contain the power of the big global It-Companies like GAFAM against the users. The EU Data Protection Regulation, the GDPR, is globally for good reasons recognized as the gold standard for Data protection devices in favour of citizens. In times of mass killing by pandemic, this concept, however, prevents the possibility of stamping out the virus, if it does not allow to make life saving measures prevail over data protection, such as detecting contacts persons via telephone contacts, which the telephone companies provided. Taiwan was not unaware of data protection and legislation decided not to cooperate with credit card firms as South Korea^[18] did, to trace back travel history, since this would have been more intruding to privacy. COVID-19 data were to be deleted in Taiwan after 6 months^[19] in order to comply with data protection rules.

Taiwan’s well-developed pandemic approach, after identifying a confirmed case immediately initiating extensive contact tracing through both manual and digital approaches, access to travel histories and since 2021 CECC publishing these tracks to the general public, so that dangerous areas were well known among citizens, meant that potential cases could be identified and isolated relatively quickly. This ability to track individuals or identify high-risk contacts resulted in fewer locally acquired cases and finally stamping out the virus for several months.

Fifthly, what set Taiwan apart from other countries was that they took action before the virus even developed. Primarily in areas such as early screening, testing, cluster control, effective methods for isolation/quarantine, digital technologies for identifying potential cases and mass mask use.

Surprisingly, a country that is not part of the WHO handled the coronavirus pandemic best. Many factors have played a part in Taiwan’s success, including its ethos of open data and open government, an enthusiastic “open source” movement, and the use of big data analytics in apps and services^[20]. I would call this an agile approach borrowing this term from the IT industry.

The virus was confirmed to have spread to Taiwan on January 21, 2020, with the first case being a 50- year-old woman who had been teaching in Wuhan, China. The Taiwanese government integrated data from the national health care system, immigration, and customs authorities to aid in the identification and response to the virus, which data protection rules would not allow in Germany. Taiwan engaged in 124 discrete action items to prevent the spread of the disease.^[21] It was possible because the existing legislation in the Taiwanese Communicable Disease Control Act 2019 enabled officials to access information that may aid in controlling COVID-19 if necessary.

No seven, Taiwan also leveraged technology to build an effective “digital quarantine” system. Those returning to Taiwan from overseas were sent to a “quarantine hotel” – a hotel that has been repurposed for the pandemic – and not allowed to leave their room for two weeks. There also was an app to monitoring the people in the quarantine.^[22] In addition, citizens were allowed to stay at home in quarantine, but had to keep switched on their cell phone so that citizens in private “digital quarantine” could be traced by the authorities. If the cell phone was switched off or seemed to be distant to the flat of the quarantined person, the police would show up within 15 minutes.^[23]

The most replicable factor in Taiwan’s success is- No eight – besides the country’s high-trust open-source culture, the cooperation between citizens and government. In Taiwan, the coronavirus outbreak has had a unifying effect.^[24] Politicians have largely avoided public bickering in favour of cooperating with government officials to curb the virus’s spread. It was made possible by the social acceptance of the people of Taiwan for regular face mask use in public places as a sign of respect for others. Other populations may also be less inclined than Taiwan’s citizens to accept the imposition of stringent interventions that limit personal rights and liberties.

A subsequent modelling analysis in Taiwan based on empirical data provided further evidence that case-based interventions (contact tracing and quarantine) alone would not be sufficient to contain the COVID-19 epidemic.^[25] This issue may explain why the more aggressive approaches adopted by Taiwan have enabled to initially elimination COVID-19 and avoid the high case numbers now occurring in countries that initially relied on a mitigation approach, such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the countries of the EU. ^[26]

6. Measures in Europe

6.1. There is no alternative to a general lockdown, once the number of infected exceeds a certain number, in Taiwan never more than 1.000 infected at the same time in 2020. When health personal is not able to track the chain of infections and stop further infection, a general lockdown is a “must”.

At the same time, we have to recognize that the national lockdown is not very mild or human as it is sold in Europe, but in comparison to the Taiwanese experience very expensive, forcing the whole population and thus millions of people to limit their right to move and to omit wanted activities without an individual reason, is comparingly ineffective in eliminating new infections, and very destructive to certain branches of the economy and the economy as a whole. It affects all and every citizen and not just the infected inhabitants and the suspected contacts as a stamp out strategy would do. A long lockdown is long-lasting and demotivating because is difficult to see an immediate positive effect, whereas am stamp-out-strategy is motivating, because a common goal is clear, quickly achieved and the reward for the whole population, a free live and very little costs is self- explaining.

6.2. How to avoid lockdown in the very beginning?

My Taiwanese friend says because of the Taiwanese experience of SARS in 2003, people are aware of the emergency of limitations and accept them. What Taiwan learnt from 73 causalities of SARS epidemic in 2003, Europe hopefully learns from the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020/2021 with more than 700.000 killed in the EU and its economic disaster for future epidemics to prevent:

6.3. Question of different values?

The different motivation of the government in Germany in comparison to Taiwan, it seems that there was no experience fighting a killing pandemic and thus no plan was available. The spontaneous reaction to build a plan on was to focus in public attention in Germany on infected persons as the victim of the diseases, and this is true

It seems to me to be European thinking however in our affluent society that we should only help the victim. This is an attitude for which European businesses is known as well; look rather at avoiding costs, not so much at very high profits, because we are already that rich and we do not want to lose the status quo: This thinking has a lot of advantages in times, when humans have gotten god-like power by money and technology and is useful in many respects, predominantly, e.g. the decision to fighting the costs of industrial damages such as fighting CO2 emissions, where the EU has the lead in the global context.

But to look primarily at costs in time of a pandemic is too little as it would be in war times to look primarily at causalities: To regard the infected only as victims is too short-sighted to fight the pandemic. The EU should recognize that an infected person is not only a person, who is ill and possibly a victim, but who also may infect others and who may eventually kill others as innocent as the infected is in not wanting to kill. Thus it is justified to ask an infected person:

-to disclose his contact and if he does not comply to track his data in his/her smartphone.

-for quarantine in a certain room hotel and to impose criminal charges when she/he does not comply with the rules and

-impose criminal charges for those who go to the event if it is not allowed, where spreading the virus is likely.

The strategy in Europe was rather fighting a flu and not a disease much more killing as COVID-19 turned out to be. ^[27]

The least European governments can do is to establish a plan and coordinating precautions for another pandemic to come, in which the much better Taiwanese strategy is followed. There is nothing in the Taiwanese approach, we in Europe cannot adapt to!

Moreover, the European governments should at least now, when the current wrong and very costly strategy is apparent, change the strategy, when the numbers of infected decrease to a number, when eliminating the virus is again possibly via vaccination and put life saving measures on the first priority, so that data protection and the right to move for the few is to be limited, so that we substantially decrease the number of killed and finally eliminated as long as possibly.

7. Vaccination

That we in Europe are in May 2021 on the way of having hope to overcome the pandemic is definitely not owed to our European lockdown, with weak safeguard of contact tracing and quarantine control, which can only mitigate the pandemic with its enormous costs of life, money and freedom, but it is solely due to the – luckily very quick – development of good vaccine in Europe and a fairly well organized vaccination strategy, in order to overcome the pandemic.

Instead of insisting to stamp out the virus and force under the law all citizens to be vaccinated, who are physically able to bear the vaccination, rather all European governments rely on voluntary vaccination and refrain from people to force to be vaccinated: 1 stitch in the arm of almost all people – an act that is done at any alcohol test for drivers in traffic in Germany, who refuses to agree to an alcohol test and from whom by police force will be taken his blood draw – seems to be too harmful rather than to prevent mass killing by the existing pandemic.

Again Europe seems to stress on the vaccinated individual as the “victim” rather than on the prevention of killing, wasting money and limiting liberties of all citizens. This wrong strategy might be excusable in March 2020, when there was no obvious comparison to a better strategy. But now, we in Europe know better and should act accordingly.

Ironically, the success story of the pandemic strategy in East Asia seems to limit the readiness to adapt to the even better strategy of vaccination in spring 2021: Very few people are vaccinated in East Asia, e.g. in Taiwan less than 1 % as my Taiwanese friend tells me in May 2021, and the numbers of infected increase considerably in East Asia. We can only hope that these countries adopt to the vaccination strategy quickly.

8. Lesson to be learnt for other global threats from the pandemic?

It seems that the 21st Century is an age of extremes: On the one hand we are as rich in many respects as no generations was before us: In the OECD-Countries, an employee with average income enjoys with the internet more access to texts, music or news etc. than the richest kings could have hoped in the millenniums before the 20th Century. Extreme poverty has almost been halved within the last 20 years ,life expectancy in the world peaks at 70 years , the number of deaths per year by natural disaster decreased to less than half over the last 100 years, ^[28] as did decrease the number of killed in wars etc.

This progress and thus our standard of living is not for free. The godlike power, we as human race accumulated mainly by scientific solutions^[29] is threatening us in the meantime as human beings as well and we have to find measure to protect us.

It seems that, if threats are to be fought by elites, it is feasible. The containment of a nuclear wars by international treaties or the elimination of ozone depletion in 1990ies^[30] are good examples of a successful fight against such human global threats.

COVID-19 is different to these threats, since it needs not only strong measures by the governments, but also collaboration from the people.

Here is seems that from the outset One-Party-Systems such as China or Vietnam have an advantage to take strong measure, since the execution of these measures are not impeded by legal countermeasures such as court proceedings or long discussions in Parliaments for vigorous life saving measure. It is not by chance that China (3.3 killed per 1 Million inhabitants) and Vietnam (0.4 killed per 1 Million inhabitants) did according to the available facts extremely well and both had economic growth in 2020 unlike most other countries in the world.

As vibrant adherent of a pluralistic democracy, I was happy to show in this article that Taiwan could do as well or even better than an autocratic system, having the right strategy (quick and strong measures to save life) from the outset and executing this strategy in making life prevail over temporary reduction of data protection and other rights.

We are living in another crisis, the global warming, nourished by CO2 emissions. The lesson learnt from COVID-19 for us all could be to take quick and strong measures in order to save life and money and maintain economic growth. According to the German expert council on Environmental question^[31] we have left only a CO2 emission potential until we are to be at almost zero CO2 emissions until 2035 in order to keep the increase of temperature at the 1.5 degree Celsius as agreed in the Paris Convention of 2015.^[32] From the logic of this article (quick and strong measures to save life) the proposed reduction to zero emission in 2050 (New Green deal of the EU)^[33] or 2060 (China)^[34] would rather copy the failed European approach during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the difference that no vaccine will save the planet from the consequences of climate Change. Immediate action is also necessary here.