Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Chiseled into rock in Kinmen County’s Jinhu Township (金湖) are the Chinese characters for one of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) favorite memes. Translated they read: “Remember our days at Ju” (毋忘在莒), referencing the Warring States period when the armies of the state of Qi were forced to retreat to the city of Ju. Once there, they regrouped and returned to regain their lost territory.

That meme serves as an important yet also an ironic reference in understanding the “limbo state” of Taiwan and why it needs to break its nebulous past with Kinmen and Matsu.

As the COVID-19 pandemic becomes increasingly severe, there have been several instances of people who tested positive for the disease hiding information from investigators during contact tracing. To ensure that all confirmed cases and their respective contacts tell the truth during contact tracing, people should stop encouraging witch hunts and ridiculing confirmed cases.

As the number of COVID-19 cases in Taiwan has been low, most people have looked at every case as exceptional. Under such circumstances, the public has focused on the movement of confirmed cases and speculated about their private lives as they tried to figure out how they had been infected. That approach does little to help the situation, and it could even punch a hole in the nation’s epidemic prevention armor.