Had ROCN Panshih Stuck to the Rules, How Would It Have Caused Today’s Disaster?

Had ROCN Panshih Stuck to the Rules, How Would It Have Caused Today’s Disaster?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

April 22, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

A serious case of officers and men contracting coronavirus pneumonia erupted aboard the naval flotilla on a training and goodwill mission; originally, it should have been a successful "diplomatic foray", but suddenly it became a butt of attacks. In the beginning, President Tsai Ing-wen went to the navy pier to welcome the flotilla, affirming their hard work on this seafaring voyage; now she issued posts on her Facebook page two days in a row, asking the military to "face it with honesty and not conceal anything", apparently having considered the “National Defense shroud” as a factor in the incident.

The public are curious: when and where did the COVID-19 virus penetrate the ROCN Panshih? Was it before sailing on March 5^th, or during its visit at Palau between the 12^th and the 15^th, or even during its mooring at Tsoying between April 9^th and 15^th? All these were possible. What truly led to dissatisfaction of outside circles is not the infections aboard the naval ship, but that the infections were only discovered several days after the officers and men had disembarked from the ship, creating a loophole in the anti-pandemic efforts throughout Taiwan. Going to the bottom of things, the fount of the virus source came from the "low screening" policy that the government had persistently refused to change; this is precisely the principal reason leading to the coverage of the footprints belonging to the infected officers and men across Taiwan, causing discomfort and unease in society.

Just when the whole of Taiwan was intoxicated in the atmospherics over “Palace” efforts for publicity resulting from three days of "zero confirmed cases", this time the news of officers and men contracting the virus was just like a siren of warning, poking a hole in the myth that government had been successful in countering the pandemic. To fight against the vile pneumonia virus, the most dreadful thing is the self-satisfaction and complacency on the part of the decision makers, so much so that they became mired in the inertia of approaches, becoming blunt in their senses. The pandemic has experienced several times of turning spreads all over the world; the government cannot remain all the time with the thinking of distributing facial masks and facial mask diplomacy. We urge the government to actively research and develop medications and vaccines, and expand the volume of screenings, and not to self-deceive while deceiving others!

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