Why has Pacific Asia “performed” so well on Covid-19? No country in this region has had an epidemic anything like as damaging as those in Europe, North America or South America — from Japan to South Korea, Australia to Taiwan.
The answer is of more than just epidemiological interest. Respect for the response of governments in this region has become a matter of political folklore — people like Jeremy Hunt talk about it all the time — and is fundamentally changing the reputation of the “Asian model” among the liberal commentariat. Where before there was scepticism and a distrust of the activist, technology-enabled, centralised control state, it is now commonly seen as having been more effective than Western democracies.
