Practice Social Distancing and Sacrificing Freedoms amid Pandemic

Practice Social Distancing and Sacrificing Freedoms amid Pandemic

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

March 24, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

With the city shutdown for two months, Wuhan citizens sacrificed personal freedoms to fend off the COVID-19 epidemic’s outward spread, and proved to the world that the strict city shutdown was indeed effective. The issue of the Wuhan City shutdown, which was earlier on deemed "cruel", "totalitarian", and "inhumane", has now in turn become the subject for deduction by Western countries with serious epidemic situations.

The biggest trial for humanity brought by the new coronavirus pandemic this time is compelling people to keep their distance from others and forcing changes in their "gregarious" habits, including sacrificing personal freedoms. This point is precisely the lesson that public health specialists teach the public that they must practice in a period of epidemic prevention and control-- "social distancing": we should omit, in daily meetings, the etiquette of shaking hands, hugging, kissing, and adopt "Finnish distance" in queuing, keeping at least one meter away from each other. All this is a new rule of social etiquette that people must endlessly practice during the pandemic.

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