[macspoofing]

>Taiwan had a detailed plan in the event of a pandemic, the UK did not. This allowed them to get started with contact tracing earlier and more effectively.

To be clear - this is you speculating and correlating two things that may or may not be causally related. India is a good example of a country that had a very light initial COVID wave last year, but is now drowning. What's the difference? Government policy? Maybe but India isn't exactly famous for having a well run government bureaucracy. Deadlier COVID variants? Maybe?

What if how hard your population is hit really just comes down to the prevalent variant your population is exposed to. After all, there is evidence that the variants in Europe and North America were much more deadly and virulent than the strains in Asia.

[BlackVanilla]

My observation is that countries with detailed plans for rare, but serious, crises are more likely to be better-placed than a country that does not. I realise this is a fairly obvious one and other factors may change outcomes thereafter.

[mannykannot]

With regard to the more dangerous strains, it is highly plausible that if you can contain the spread, you can reduce the chance of more dangerous strains evolving and getting a foothold. In that case, one might suppose that despite the preparedness in Taiwan, they have been undermined by what's been happening in other parts of the world.

There are important things to be learned from India's experience, but I am not sure what - probably a combination of factors. AFAIK (which is not much) we are some way away from a unified model which explains all the variations in the progression of this epidemic.