I suspect that one major difference with Taiwan and other East Asian countries is that they have been able to effectively stop community spread before it became endemic. South Korea I know did enough contact tracing that almost every person exposed has been quarantined. Taiwan only had around 500 cases, so that I presume was the same solution (I haven’t investigated it). Essentially, I’m saying that it’s too late for the US or Europe to be like non-China East Asian countries. As for China, their solutions would not be able to get political support (and are arguably worse than the virus itself).
Remember we need only get R0(eff)< 1. We do not need to get it to zero. That means a bit more than a 50% reduction, maybe 60% from the base rate ~2.5.
Currently R0 ~= 1, so I’d assume that any fewer measures would result in R0 > 1. One important caveat though is that many of the measures are probably minor enough that we might be able to effectively get down to R0 ~= 1 by just doing some of the measures, like wearing masks and avoiding crowded-rooms-with-singing.
I suspect that one major difference with Taiwan and other East Asian countries is that they have been able to effectively stop community spread before it became endemic. South Korea I know did enough contact tracing that almost every person exposed has been quarantined. Taiwan only had around 500 cases, so that I presume was the same solution (I haven’t investigated it). Essentially, I’m saying that it’s too late for the US or Europe to be like non-China East Asian countries. As for China, their solutions would not be able to get political support (and are arguably worse than the virus itself).
Currently R0 ~= 1, so I’d assume that any fewer measures would result in R0 > 1. One important caveat though is that many of the measures are probably minor enough that we might be able to effectively get down to R0 ~= 1 by just doing some of the measures, like wearing masks and avoiding crowded-rooms-with-singing.