Good afternoon, good evening on the east coast,

and good morning in Asia. Welcome to the UCLA

Asia Pacific Center's Taiwan in the World program

launch event, and the Taiwan in the World Lecture

Series Inaugural Forum. My name is Min Zhou,

Professor of Sociology and Asian American studies,

the Walter and Shelley Wang endowed chair

in U.S. China relations and communications,

and director of the Asia Pacific Center at

UCLA. Our center promotes greater knowledge

and understanding of Asia and the pacific

region on campus and in the community.

Through innovative research, teaching

public programs, and local and international

collaborations, we encourage interdisciplinary

work on cross-border and supra-national issues

such as economy and politics, language

and culture, population and environment,

and the sustainability in the ongoing processes of

globalization. Our center currently has a Taiwan

Studies program, the Program on Central Asia,

and the Global Chinese Philanthropy Initiative.

We are also trying to raise funds to establish

a Hong Kong Studies program and other relevant

programs. Our center has recently received a gift

of two million dollars from the Taiwan Ministry of

Foreign Affairs to establish a Taiwan in the

World program and a Taiwan Studies endowed

fund to help permanently

support Taiwan Studies at UCLA.

In today's launch event, I would like to

first invite UCLA vice provost Cindy Fan,

I'm getting the echo again. I would like

to first invite UCLA Vice Provost Cindy Fan

to offer welcome remark. Professor Cindy Fan is

UCLA's Vice Provost for International Studies

and Global Engagement. She is the first

woman and first Asian American to hold

that position. As senior international officer,

she manages UCLA's international partnerships

and agreements, represents UCLA globally, and

oversees the 27 interdisciplinary research

centers and eight degree programs within the

International Institute. Professor Fan received

his PhD from Ohio State University and an honorary

doctor of laws from the University of Bristol

in the UK. She has been Professor of Geography at

UCLA since 1989. Professor Fan's research focuses

on population, migration, regional development,

gender and ethnicity in North America, and

post-Mao China. Professor Fan has published widely

in these areas and has delivered keynotes in

the U.S., Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

She was a recipient of UCLA's distinguished

teaching award, distinguished scholar awards

from the American Association of Geographers,

and many prestigious fellowships and

grants. Professor Fan, please go ahead.

Thank you so much Professor Min Zhou. It is my

distinct honor to welcome you on behalf of UCLA

to this launch event for the new and innovative

Taiwan in the World program. This program will

support a new lecture series on Taiwanese society,

culture, and political economy in a global

context. Also chinese language instruction at UCLA

as well as other academic activities on Taiwan.

And as Professor Zhou mentioned, this program is

funded with a very generous gift of US 2 million

from the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Without the support of the Taipei Economic and

Culture Office Los Angeles or TECO, this gift and

this new program would not have been possible.

So, on behalf of UCLA I

would like to sincerely thank

Director General Louis Huang, and Director David

Lin of TECO for your tremendous support and work.

And it is wonderful to have Professor Frank Chen,

a good friend, and Professor Jason Wong to speak

at this inaugural forum. Now Taiwan in the World

is an extremely timely and forward-looking vision,

and I'm grateful to the Asia Pacific Center

led by Professor Min Zhou for this vision.

UCLA's mission as a public research university,

is the creation, dissemination, preservation, and

application of knowledge for the betterment of the

global society. In other words, global and local

engagement is in UCLA's DNA. And both the vision

of Taiwan in the World, and the long-standing

collaboration between UCLA and TECO are testament

to our commitment to global and local engagement.

To me, TECO is not just an educational partner,

but a friend, one that is full of great ideas,

very warm, and a great pleasure to work with.

And I look forward to celebrating with TECO in

person when we can. The same qualities full of

great ideas, very warm, and a great pleasure

to work with, also describe our fearless

leader Professor Min Zhou. So Min, thank you

very much for your incredible leadership, and big

congratulations on this new program. In addition I

am grateful to Asia Pacific Center staff,

Elizabeth Leicester executive director,

and Aaron Miller assistant director for their

tremendous effort and outstanding work. Finally,

I'd like to thank the numerous faculty including

many academicians at UCLA who are originally from

Taiwan, as well as many alumni supporters and

donors who have ties to their, ties to Taiwan,

for helping to build a momentum toward

UCLA's closer collaboration with Taiwan.

And I look forward to hearing the remarks by

director general Louis Huang, as well as a

dialogue between Professor Frank Chang and

Professor Jason Wong. Thank you very much.

Thank you Vice Provost Fan. Our center's Taiwan

Studies program was launched in 2014, with an

initial three-year Taiwan Studies lectureship,

or TSL grant from the Taiwan Ministry, I'm

sorry, from the Taiwan Ministry of Education

through the Taipei Economic and

Cultural Office in Los Angeles.

The TSL grant has since renewed twice, from

The support from the Taiwan Ministry of Education

has enabled us to grow the Taiwan Studies program.

Now this program thrives with other sources of

support including the UCLA NTNU Taiwan Studies

initiative, directed by Professor Shu-mei

Shih of UCLA Asian Languages and Culture,

Comparative Literature and Asian American studies,

as well as endowment and scholarship funds from

the Jackson Young and Family Foundation. Our

Taiwan Studies program activities include lecture

series, academic workshops and conferences,

faculty exchange, curricular development,

and undergraduate and graduate fellowship

and scholarships, as well as research and

travel grants for students and faculty doing

research on and in Taiwan. These activities

have fostered strong collaborations between UCLA

and Taiwan, and a growing interest in scholarship

about Taiwan at UCLA. We have also provided

emergency assistance for Taiwan students affected

by COVID-19. Last year ,our center worked closely

with the Taipei Economic and Cultural office

in Los Angeles to receive a major gift from the

Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to establish

a Taiwan in the World program and a Taiwan Studies

endowment fund at UCLA. The main purpose of the

Taiwan in the World program is to expand the

production of world-class scholarship on Taiwan

in a global context, and train a new generation

of scholars and professionals to be well-versed

with Taiwanese society history and culture, and to

be bilingually proficient ,including the ability

to read and write traditional chinese characters.

The program includes several key components:

a lecture series, a translation initiative

led by Professor Michael Berry, director

of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies,

curricular development, and trans traditional

Mandarin chinese language instruction,

and an interactive website. It is now my

great honor to introduce Mr. Louis Huang. who

is co-launching with me our Taiwan in the World

program. Mr. Huang has been director general of

the Taipei Economic and Cultural office in

Los Angeles since July 2020. He received his

master's degree in Public Administration

from Idaho State University in 1991.

He joined Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs

since 1990 as a diplomat, serving as deputy

director general in the department of European

Affairs, Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

deputy secretary general of the Coordination

Council for North American affairs,

director of the Taipei Representative office in

the United Kingdom, director general of the Taipei

Economic and Cultural Office in Houston,

director of the Congressional Liaison

Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural

representative office in the United States,

and deputy representative of the Taipei

Economic and Cultural representative office

in the United States. Director general Huang,

please go ahead. Vice Provost Cindy Fan,

Director Min Zhou, Professor Frank Chang,

Dr. Jason Wong, distinguished guests,

ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. It's my

great pleasure to join Vice Provost Fan and

Director Zhou to co-launch the Taiwan in the World

lecture series event and its inaugural forum.

As we know UCLA is a research university

with a worldwide reputation. Over the years

UCLA has cultivated numerous talents for Taiwan,

the United States. and the rest of the world.

UCLA has also received support from governments

and private sectors in many countries,

that precedes extensive cross disciplinary

research projects. My government's donation

to UCLA late last year, was to set up the Taiwan

in the World program and its Asia Pacific Center.

The Taiwan in the World lecture series is one

of the four major projects in this program,

which focuses on enhancing the status of Taiwan

studies in the field of social sciences globally.

We hope this program will become a benchmark

for Taiwan U.S. cooperation in higher education,

and cultivate professional talents with global

visions for Taiwan and the United States.

As the topic of today's forum is Lessons from

the Pandemic: Taiwan's Response to COVID-19 and

the future of global health policy and research.

I would like to elaborate on Taiwan's efforts,

that's why I have Taiwan's bear in

the background with a surgical mask

on. Taiwan is a global leader in containing

COVID-19, thanks to its proactive

government and the public's cooperation with the

government of advisory measures. Unfortunately,

now with new clusters of variants of the virus

recently recorded, Asian governments with

stringent COVID-19 measures, ranging from

Singapore to Vietnam to Japan to Taiwan

are now battling the uptakes in cases. As diseases

know no border, the importance and urgency of a

global health and epidemic alert system stand

out in a crisis. International cooperation

and acting now are the right, smart, and the

only choices we have to end the epidemic.

As a responsible international stakeholder, Taiwan

is making its best efforts to work with the World

Health Organization and global health leaders, to

ensure that all people enjoy living and working

conditions that are conducive to good health.

Regrettably, the public health professionalism

and sense of global responsibility Taiwan

has displayed, underscored the irrationality

of Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO, and its

information channel due to political objection.

We urge the WHO and related parties to recognize

Taiwan's long-standing contributions to public

health disease prevention and the human right

to health in the international community, and

to include Taiwan in the WHO. Taiwan will continue

to work with the rest of the world to ensure that

all enjoy the fundamental human rights to health

as stipulated in the WHO constitution. Thank you.

Thank you very much Director General Huang.

One of the main components of our center's

Taiwan Studies, Taiwan in the World program

is um, is our lecture series. The lecture series

aims to disseminate knowledge about Taiwan

and shed lights on Taiwan's political economy,

international relations, the U.S-Taiwan-China

relations, as well as Taiwan's economy and

society political systems, social structure,

and institutions. In today's inaugural forum,

we will have Professor Frank Chang at UCLA

and Professor Jason Huang at Jason Wang

at Stanford to discuss Taiwan's successful

response to COVID-19 pandemic. I now introduce

Professor Chang, who will then introduce and

interview Dr. Wang and moderate the Q&A session.

Professor Frank Chang is distinguished professor

and the Wintek Chair in Electrical Engineering

at UCLA. His main research interests are in

high-speed semiconductors devices, integrated

circuits for digital analog microwave mm-wave

terahertz systems, and rf wireless interconnects.

Professor Chang received a Bachelor's degree of,

a Bachelor's of Science degree in Physics

from National Taiwan University, a Masters

of Science degree in Materials Science

from the National Xinhua University,

and a PhD in Electronics Engineering from the

National Chiao Tung University. He is a member

of the U.S. National Academy of Engineers, a

fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors,

and Academician of Taiwan Academia Sinica,

and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers, he has received many

major awards throughout his distinguished career.

Some of the recent awards include

the IEEE David Sarnoff Award, the JJ

Thompson Medal and the distinguished Alumnus

Award from the National Taiwan University.

He served as the president of the National Chiao

Tung University in Taiwan from 2015 to 2019.

Professor Chang, the floor

is yours. Please go ahead.

Min Zhou can you guys hear me well? Okay thank

you. Yeah wonderful. Thank you for inviting me

and Professor the Jason Wong who is currently

the faculty on the medicine and the patriotic

and the Director of the Center for Policy, the

Outcomes and the Prevention at the Stanford

University. Let me just briefly introduce Dr.

Wang. Professor Wang. He's a Director of Center

for Policy, Outcome and Prevention and at

the Stanford. Prior to coming to Stanford

in 2011, uh he was a faculty member at the

Boston University School of Medicine and the

Public Health. His other professional experience

include working as a management consultant with

Mckinsey and the Company and serving as a

project manager for Taiwan's National Health

Insurance Reform Task-force. His current interests

included first COVID-19 related policies, second

is developing tools for assessing and improving

the value of healthcare, and facilitating the use

of a mobile technology improving the quality

of care, and the supporting competency-based

medical education curriculum, and engaging in

healthcare delivery and payment reforms. He's

uh he's a perfect you know the uh in terms of his

his understanding of this COVID related issues and

in terms of the public policy that the government

could implement to to help ease the uh,

the pain or the spreading of the COVID. Welcome

Professor, Dr. Wang. Yeah, thank you thank

you for accepting our invitation to speak at

this unique occasion. We do have a couple of

questions to ask you, so without further ado do

you mind and I I started the question one. Well

thank you very much Professor Chang it's a it's

an honor to be invited to this inaugural forum,

and actually I train at UCLA as a fellow in health

services research for five years oh i'm sorry

it's good to be back yes okay thank you thank you

yeah. Our first question uh uh of course uh it has

been almost a one and a half year or 470 some days

uh you know since the first outbreak of the uh

COVID-19 uh virus uh during this unprecedented

time I actually traveled twice back to Taiwan,

uh for a short period during this at this time.

And I knew how much difference that I personally

experienced in Taiwan and in U.S. almost let

me feel is in the different universe you know,

in terms of the the status of the infection. I was

very very amazed about how Taiwan can handle that

to protect its citizens, yeah. So in in this case

uh Dr. Wang you have the of course, the research

on the role on the big data analytics and new

technology and proactive testing in Taiwan's

successes in preventing the the COVID spreading.

As the world begins to emerge from the worst

of the this global pandemic, can you provide that

some insight into what led to Taiwan's success in

the past year, yeah. Well you know Taiwan's early

success in containing the pandemic uh, I think

could could be attributed to early preparedness.

And so since SARS in 2003, uh in 2004,

Taiwan already set up a National Health Command

Center. And that unified four different centers,

the Central Epidemic Command Center, the

Biological Pathogens Disasters Command Center,

the Counterterrorism Command Center, and the

Central Medical Emergency Operating Center. And

so they they practice every year on these drills,

on pandemics, and so I think early uh preparedness

is one is a key factor. The other thing is

early recognition of the crisis. And so uh in

in early January Taiwan has already recognized

that this is going to be a serious outbreak,

and activated the command center which gave

government special powers, including basically

coordinating all the resources for the country,

and the ability to distribute them, and also

supported by a Clinical Disease Control Act that's

been modified and amended in the last 17 years.

Yeah thank you. There's a culture on the

other hand, like uh discipline the people,

who they're willing to take on their face mask

wearing uh seriously, and they're taking you know

the stress from the mainland China the seriously

have anything to do with uh culture wise?

Um I believe so, um I think Taiwan

Taiwan's culture at least part of it

is of self-preservation. And this

is a result of hundreds of years,

for example a history of occupation from the

Dutch, the Chinese, the Japanese, and Taiwan was

actually under martial law from May 1949 to July

basically not speak out too much, and and as a

result there's a culture of self-preservation. Uh

the the direct presidential election happened in

to speaking up and also to do protest, but I think

the culture of self-preservation is still. There

there's also a culture of filial piety which is

the respect and care of the elders, and so wearing

mask and protecting themselves and protecting

their grandparents I think is part of the culture,

particularly if people live in multi-generational

households, and they you know and kids tend to

be more obedient in schools because of the

educational system. And in general I think

in in the metro you could see that people just uh

tend to wear masks to make themselves and others

comfortable, and so I think all of this have

contributed to the fact that at least initially,

uh Taiwan I was able to contain the

the spread of the virus very quickly.

Yeah well during the uh possibility,

in your opinion, for the U.S. or

other countries to adopt and implement similar

type of strategies, for example for instance,

through careful planning and digital

innovation, to combat the spread of the virus,

why or why not? So let me comment on the digital

innovation portion of the pandemic response. So,

very early on Taiwan was able to send the

immigration customs database in batches to the

National Health Insurance Database, so integrated

these two data sets uh, and that allows doctors

and nurses who are seeing patients in a clinic to

identify people who would just travel from abroad

in the last 14 days. And so if people have

symptoms, particularly if they're coming from

high sort of risk areas, they're

able to immediately order tests

to make sure that they don't have COVID. The other

thing they did was sort of digitally with cellular

signals cellular phones that, uh you know I don't

know if people remember the Diamond Princess.

And so the Diamond Princess actually adopt in uh

Keelung which is about an hour from Taipei, and

and about 3,000 people came to the greater Taipei

area for a day, and this was before they left for

Japan, and so during that period they visited

cellular signals to the people who were around

those 50 places during the day that the Diamond

Princess passengers disembarked. And that allowed

them to get tested for the virus, and so they did

use technology. Now in in the UK, you ask about

western societies whether they're able to do that,

in the UK uh they have implemented digital contact

tracing, so actually digital exposure notification

with the Google Apple exposure notification

system. And uh they have gotten 50%

of all the eligible people, 16 and above to

download it, and the data publishing nature

have shown that uh, for every 1% uptake in in

this app, there's a 0.8 decrease in cases. And

so it's extremely effective and so even in western

societies this could be done. Now there's a caveat

to this which is that the the UK app allows

people to decide whether they tested positive to,

whether they want to let the other context know,

so this is based on bluetooth technology. And most

people did, like 70-80% of people uh decided that

they want to share that information anonymously.

So without knowing who they are they share it

with the server and then the server matches.

Yeah, my personal experience though I was

tracked, you know once I the uh I arrived at the

airport you know the, because I already submitted

my cell phone number so from that moment all the

way to the uh quarantine place, and uh every day

after that I will receive the two phone calls.

One is from the Central Government Agency and

the other one is from the local city, you know

the uh the agency you know very interesting one

is the morning and the one in the afternoon,

uh to greet me and even uh send me the gift

and the thermometer and all kinds of foods, and

and also send me the uh TV programs for free.

I can just watching the free tv. So everything is

is organized and coordinated so well that I I have

a free viewing of the TV program for the next uh

you know actually the 15 days uh rather than uh 2

weeks. Yeah the quarantine period. Yeah. And uh

I I personally I feel that that is a totally uh

different from the that I uh I have experienced it

here in the uh Southern California yeah. I I wish

you know that that people could be tracked so

well, so the precisely and uh preventing the uh

the uh the further spread from if there is any

the possibility of that. Yeah yeah. Thank you

for your comment. My second question is as the

Director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes and

the Prevention etc. you have been involved in

policy in terms of improving healthcare system

including developing the Taiwan's National Health

Insurance Program, that's wonderful that you have

helped the Taiwan. What does the sum of the

healthcare policies in Taiwan that aided uh

in its response to COVID-19 prevention. So let me

just clarify I I I helped to reform the system,

I did not help to develop it and so I was

involved in the healthcare reform yeah.

And and so I think part of the the innovations

in the Taiwan health system is this data.

And so uh so it's a National Health Insurance

Program, and everybody's covered, 99%

of the people are covered, and uh and the payment

uh to the insurance is based on uh your ability

to pay. So it's a progressive system where rich

people pay more, uh and if you are poor then you

you don't pay. And then so it's based on your

payroll tax. And recently they have integrated

the electronic records of everybody so that if

you are a doctor seeing a patient in your clinic,

you could look up uh the the basic uh medical

records including sort of the problem list, and

the the medications that the patients take in, uh

from other from other clinics or other hospitals

so that has been synchronized that way. The other

thing that they have done is some of the imaging

could not be shared for big data AI analytics, you

know sort of machine learning analytics, and so

that's also very innovative. The part that helped

Taiwan this time is the ability to use these data,

integrated data to respond quickly to a

crisis. And I think that U.S. could adopt

similar policies. Currently our data in the

U.S. are very fragmented, uh and uh give you

an example I just received a text message from

mass general, telling me to get my COVID shot,

but I left Boston 10 years ago. And so you know in

the U.S. we often don't know who our patients are

because patients could actually change insurance

every year, and then each insurance could actually

contract with different providers every year,

and so uh the data is are very fragmented.

And so going forward, uh there is an

opportunity actually to offer for example

a more uh integrated data through medic through

medicare, so everyone in the U.S. eventually

will be in medicare. So actually one idea is

to offer medicare early, because it's a fertile

program where everybody trusts, and you

could actually offer medicare as a choice,

as an option. You could also pick your current

insurer but I think medicare could be offered as

a choice, and then you could build the integrated

data from there. But there are lots of ideas being

flown around in congress right now and I hope that

we will make movements in in integration of at

least health data so that when there's a public

health crisis, that we could respond quicker.

Yeah thank you for your comment. Actually

after uh 36 years working in U.S. I returned

to Taiwan about five years ago and serving

as a National Chiao Tung's president, the

university's president. During that period of time

of course I went to see my local doctors there,

uh a few times. I was so amazed uh one thing

is I had this eye viewing problem in one side

of the glaucoma issue, yeah and I was amazed at

how little uh the the you know go through the uh

all the examinations and taking medicine and

seeing the doctors with all the fancy equipment,

you know I received the uh the uh finally I

have to pay I find that like 300 Taiwanese yen,

you know. And I I look at I just could not believe

that number you know because I should see a 300 US

dollars, at least, probably if another 3,000. So

so that was really amazing, um so as an expert

of the policy and the national insurance system

programs would you make any recommendation to the

US if you could to adopt similar policies and

what will be the difficulties and challenges

for the US to do so in the national program. I

think every country is a little bit different,

the the fact that Taiwan's uh national

health insurance so far it's it's been

providing all the care but in a very low price,

I think it's both heavily subsidized by industry

and by the government and and so uh personal

out-of-pocket payments are relatively low

if you are, and everyone is insured, and so

there's there's no issue of cherry picking

uh patients or adverse selection from insurers.

And so in a way that's the positive part. The

negative part is that you have one insurer

so there's no competition at the insurance

level, and so you ought to compete at the

provider level for quality of healthcare,

and so you know that's one one way to to compete

because competition is good to bring up standards

to bring up the quality of healthcare. One of the

things that that I think the US could perhaps use

this opportunity with other countries, uh other

governments, is to set up a health passport

system. In that uh right now you know we are in

a crisis but crisis uh in Mandarin also means uh

uh danger and opportunity together right. Danger

and opportunity. And so we have this opportunity

now to at least put some basic data such as

um, we could start with testing data for COVID.

Whether somebody's positive or negative you know

when you travel internationally you need that.

Sometimes when you go to school you need that.

People want to know if you you're testing results.

And we have we could do it electronically, and

then also your vaccine data whether you've been

vaccinated or not, and then you should we could

build a very basic uh health passport and perhaps,

uh if people feel comfortable then we could

add on to it, but you know America is,

Americans are very serious about privacy

issues. Americans do not want uh people to uh

the government particularly to collect all their

data, and so we have to respect people's privacy,

and we have to guard with confidentiality,

and we have to respect people's autonomy.

Absolutely. And so all these things that are

necessary for the program to move forward.

Okay, uh as a researcher and administrator myself

I actually aware of the importance of the research

collaborations uh, as well as the international

academic exchange. Uh what are the some of the

steps that government and NGU's including

universities like ours can take to foster

improvement in the healthcare globally especially

in response to the threats such as the current

COVID-19 pandemic in your view, yeah. You

know I think governments and universities

will play will play different roles. I think

governments ought to be in charge of resource,

gathering resources and distribute them

equitably. Whether someone is rich or poor

you ought to be able to give them masks, you

know you'll be able to offer them vaccination,

and so that's the government's role.

University's role is to advance the science.

And so uh so basically for example in

COVID, we found that particularly in the

UK their universities work very closely with the

governments to sequence the new strains of the

COVID virus, the SARS COV2 virus, so they sequence

it very quickly. In the U.S. that collaboration

with our universities is a little bit slower so

when there's a new strain of the the SARS COV2

coming into the U.S. we are slower in responding

to this new threat. And so I think again

governments should work very closely uh with the

universities, and also with NGO's who you know

offer services to the underserved minority

populations that are often most impacted by

epidemic. Thank you thank you. Dr. Wang another

area of your research has focus on the medical

education to improve the health outcome. Here

in our university our medical school actually

has hosted a translational oncology program the

top with a fellowship for medical students from

Taiwan, to share our best practices uh in training

the next generation of the healthcare uh providers

globally. We're also collaborating with Zhejiang

University and the other major universities in the

uh mainland China, for training graduate students

and health skilled professionals. So in that,

can you comment on the needs and also the

practicalities of developing a public health

or medical training curriculum that can be shared

and delivered across borders. Yes I think you know

we're in a very exciting time in medicine,

uh we have the entire human genome sequenced,

and we're beginning to really understand the

epigenomic impact um gene expression uh on the the

causes of disease. And so uh for example in Taiwan

there's a Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative,

to sequence uh one million people in Taiwan.

And that's quite a bit because Taiwan only has

there's there are opportunities to

uh understand uh sort of the the background the

genetic backgrounds of of uh people in Taiwan,

which uh you know it's a microcosm I think of

of the Chinese ancestry, plus the Polynesian

background in that's common in all the Polynesian

countries from the mothers mitochondrial DNA and

also from other races, there are some also uh

Dutch background people with Dutch backgrounds, so

it's it's going to be very interesting in

in having that database to try to understand

uh the differences in cancer, particularly for

your program the Translational Oncology Program.

You know what sort of backgrounds and genes and

gene expressions will have a differential impact

on the incidence of cancer. We always talk

about sort of in terms of translational science,

from from the bench to the bedside,

and then from evidence to practice.

And so uh this entire spectrum of bench to the

bedside and also from evidence to practice,

there are lots of opportunities

to collaborate across the pacific

in terms of both in terms of talent, you could

have think of it as a talent circulation.

Both in terms of resources and materials

and and and strategies to better understand

uh you know the different contribution

of different racial ethnic backgrounds

uh on disease. And so I believe there are lots of

opportunities there. Yes yeah thank you thank you

for you answer all the questions, but right away

before entering officially entering Q&A session

already got the two questions from the floor. So

uh let's uh start to to look at those. I guess the

first question for Professor Wang will be, please

elaborate more on the Taiwan's National Health

Coverage System yeah. Are overseas Taiwanese and

the foreigners have uh in any way to get access

to care at a similarly low cost to take advantage

of that, yeah. Yeah so overseas Taiwanese uh uh

people if you, if you enter Taiwan and you

know you have uh previously had uh let's

say if you were born in Taiwan you will have

you know previous household registration in

Taiwan. You could activate that but it would

take six months to activate your insurance.

However if you pay for your care entirely in cash

out of pocket, is still very very inexpensive.

It's probably you know less than one tenth of

what you will pay in the United States. And so and

similarly for foreigners if you work in Taiwan you

could join the National Health Insurance Program.

And but if you just travel there for pleasure,

uh then no. Then you're probably going to end

up paying out of pocket which is still very

inexpensive. Yeah probably 30 to 1, yeah you

you pay the amount you know the looks like, in

US dollars it would be tremendous but you can

divide that out 30 by 30 to to get the actual

idea of that cost, yeah. So the second question

um a little bit more sensitive. Okay uh there

has been some rising anti-asian anti-Chinese

sentiment and violence in U.S. since the breakout

that we are all aware of that, yeah. So was there

any uh similar the uh scapegoat, the goating

going in in Taiwan? I don't think so. I don't

think they're they're scapegoating, I think people

are just afraid to be in contact with with people

with COVID but, just because they don't know how

dangerous it is or how to take care of them but

I don't think they are scapegoating. I spent uh

the last six months in Taiwan on my sabbatical,

um so uh definitely uh I don't think there

are any sort of um scapegoating going, yeah.

Okay thank you. Yeah that that is uh very

consistent uh with what I have experienced

yeah. I I never actually heard anything like that

but, uh of course uh people all human being like

like you know that they express their concerns,

that is for sure for everyone yeah. So another

question from the floor is that could

you please explain why very recently

there has been a a more higher the increase in the

in terms of number of the COVID-19 case in Taiwan?

Uh yes um so recently there's been a surge of

domestic outbreak, uh of of COVID in Taiwan,

and that is attributed to uh two things. One

is that uh the the strain that's uh currently

infecting or spreading very quickly is B117 which

is the UK strain. And UK strain has been known

to spread very quickly. And in this particular

case that uh the uh quarantine period for pilots

and crew has been relaxed uh from you

know 14 days to three days. And so

but the you know incubation period for the the

virus and the the latency period, the latency

period is the period where uh between when you

get exposed to the virus until when you become

infectious, you know it's three to five days. And

so uh so when you release people at three days, uh

that's when they gonna be starting to spread and

the incubation period is when you have symptoms.

But in this case a lot of people with COVID has

no symptoms, and so 40% of the people infected

with COVID has no symptoms, so you don't know

if they have COVID or they start spreading

and so in this in this case um it's

quite unfortunate because the pilots uh

they they are constantly under quarantine, so

the crew and so you know they they relax it for

to improve their mental health,

basically. Otherwise they will

constantly be either you know doing their work or

being you know in quarantine but in this case, um

I think that they should have thought more

carefully before they relax that to three days.

Yeah there's another question is on the more

the uh general the directions. Just the uh the

techniques that we learn or policy that we learned

from this COVID prevention, would that be also be

uh useful and instrumental into the future to

prevent of other things, other diseases? You

know like uh SARS or other, well of course this is

a SARS number 2. I mean the previous SARS or other

uh the uh infectious the uh diseases in general.

You know, what what would be the comment for

uh for the things that we learned for human

to learn here uh to prevent the more serious

disease into the future yeah. Well I think

a lot of a lot of things has been learned,

uh in the in the last year and a half.

And so for one, we learn to collaborate.

That's right yeah. Across industries, uh

basically in terms of, in many sectors,

so in education we learn to do education online.

In healthcare we need them to do telehealth.

We learned to produce an effective vaccine very

quickly within months, and that's unprecedented

because previously the shortest period for

producing a vaccine was four years for months,

and it usually takes ten years to produce

a vaccine. In this case it took months,

and that's because that's because of international

collaboration with both the the at the bench and

also during clinical trials across the globe

in multiple countries, where there are disease

outbreaks. And so we need to do that, we

learned to produce respirators very quickly,

and invent new ways of creating respirators

and so there are a lot of positives that

have come out of this crisis. And certainly, we

learned that you know when you don't know what's

going to happen you need to be a little bit more

cautious. So not every infection is just a flu.

So you need to be very cautious, and it's better

to be more conservative than in the beginning.

Thank you, thank you. Because

of the time constraint

that we we just have to close the session soon.

But uh before we do that I would like to pass my

baton to uh to Director Min Zhou, and uh you

probably like to to say something uh to the

to the audience and to every one of us

yeah. Thank you, thank you again, uh Jason,

well for your the uh outstanding the uh talk and

that we really learned and enjoyed the interaction

with you a lot. Thank you very much.

Hope looking forward to seeing you more

on campus. Teah thank you very much. Thank you

very much Professor Wang and thank you very much

Professor Chang for this insightful,

interesting and informative discussion.

Again, i'm deeply grateful for the generous gift

from the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

and the tremendous support we received from TECO

in Los Angeles. We thank Director General Huang,

and his staff at TECO LA, particularly

David Lin, David Chen, and Rebecca Lang.

I also thank Vice Provost Cindy Fan for her

leadership and support for our center. And thank

our center's staff Executive Director Elizabeth

Leicester, Assistant Director Aaron Miller,

and student assistant Lauren Nip. Thank you all

for coming, and please watch our our center's news

and event announcement. And I hope to see

you again in our future event. Thank you,

good evening, and good morning, thank you so much.

Bye-bye. Yeah. Thank you Dr. Wang. Thank you.