Resilience? A comparative study of the policy responding to the COVID-19(Part_1)

Abstract

Since January 2020, the COVID-19 has spread in worldwide. In the first year of the pandemic, Taiwan got praised by its low infected and death cases. However, it then be criticized by its low vaccination rate during the outbreak in May 2021. Besides, the strict policy Taiwanese government adapted these few months is also arguable since its side effect to the economic.

To evaluate the performance of Taiwanese government to the pandemic, one way is to compare with other countries. For example, Wang and Mao (2021) compared 10 countries based on the WHO’s framework, or Luis et al. (2020) analyzed 7 countries by their own framework, and derived suggestion to improve the governance of pandemic control.

However, comparing countries by frameworks might provide evaluation or suggestion based on difference outcome, but it lacks basic concepts to point out the desirable outcome. On the other hand, research like Hynes et al. (2020) evaluated the policy on COVID-19 by standing on the concept of resilience, which illustrate the desirable system the policy tends to approach.

Opening

Figure 1. Big City in Hsinchu city closed due to confirmed COVID-19 case visit
(Source: Lu Kang-chun and Joseph Yeh,2022)

Just in 2 years, Taiwan earned praised due to its early success in low infected and death cases, but also get criticized by the low vaccination rate. And just in this month, an outbreak with the mutant virus Omicron shock North Taiwan.Thus, it seems hard to evaluate Taiwan’s policy responding COVID-19 due to the changing circumstance.

Recap

Last time, we point out 4 questions to study Taiwan’s policy responding COVID-19 as following,

  1. What are Taiwan’s policies on COVID-19?
  2. Based on 1., how about Taiwan’s policies on COVID-19?
  3. Based on 2., are these polices lead Taiwan to more resilience or resistance?
  4. What might be the factors result in 3.?

For the first question, we showed a drafted framework about the fact we used to illustrate Taiwan’s policy responding COVID-19. (Table 1)

Table 1. A drafted framework to scan Taiwan’s policy on COVID-19
(Source: Made by the authors)

Statistic about COVID-19 
 1.1Infection Cases (per capita)
 1.2Death Cases
 1.3Vaccination Coverage
1.3.1 First Dose
1.3.2 Fully Vaccinated
1.3.3 Vaccine Brand
 1.4Vaccination production
Policy about COVID-19 control 
2.1Regulations
2.1.1 Movement Restriction.
2.1.2 Awareness and Campaigning
2.1.3 Period
2.2Mobility
2.2.1 Funding/ Financial
  2.2.2 Workforce
2.2.3 Manufacturing / Exporting Activities
Plan for transition to new normal 
 3.1Economic
 3.2Health
 3.2New Competitive Advantage
 3.4Resilience (Recovery)
 3.5Resistance (Resist to Transform, Resist to Feel upright)

For the second question, we argued that by comparing with other countries, we can evaluate Taiwan’s policy responding COVID-19. Besides, there are two frameworks introduced, one is from Wang and Mao’s work (2021). In their work, a content analysis is used, and based on the framework provided by World Health Organization (WHO). Ten countries’ policy get issued in this framework and compared, but Taiwan is not included.

In this framework, there are five sets as follows,

  1. Movement measures
  2. Physical and social distancing measures
  3. Personal measures
  4. Special protection measures for special populations and vulnerable groups
  5. Strategies on public health resources

The other framework is from Luis et al. (2020). They provided their own framework for health planning. This framework is used for crisis like COVID-19. Based on a discussion process called rapid synthesis and translation process (RSTP), they converged the core elements of this framework from a series of webinars and online discussion. This framework based on seven countries’ case including Taiwan.

In this research, they claimed that concluded by the RSTP, there are five key domains need to be applied as a framework, which are,

  1. Phase/stages of the Pandemic
  2. Health System Indicators
  3. The Healthcare Ecosystem/Glocal Approach
  4. Digital Technologies
  5. International Comparisons and Evolution of the Pandemic

Question

Thus, today’s presentation focus on the third question, which is “Based on 2., are these polices lead Taiwan to more resilience or resistance?”

Firstly, since it is ambiguous to introduce two ideas in one question, we modified the question to “Based on 2., are these polices lead Taiwan to more resilience?” Second, based on the frameworks we searched to respond to question 2, it is doubted that even though comparing countries by frameworks might provide evaluation or suggestion to specific items, it is hard to argue what might be the desirable overall outcome. On the other hand, research like Hynes et al. (2020) evaluated the policy on COVID-19 by standing on the concept of resilience, which illustrate the desirable system the policy tends to approach.

Thus, this presentation will firstly explore what is resilience, then state how this concept be utilized to study policies responding COVID-19, and how introduce this idea to our research.

What is Resilience

Thus, today’s presentation focus on the third question, which is “Based on 2., are these polices lead Taiwan to more resilience or resistance?”

Firstly, since it is ambiguous to introduce two ideas in one question, we modified the question to “Based on 2., are these polices lead Taiwan to more resilience?” Second, based on the frameworks we searched to respond to question 2, it is doubted that even though comparing countries by frameworks might provide evaluation or suggestion to specific items, it is hard to argue what might be the desirable overall outcome. On the other hand, research like Hynes et al. (2020) evaluated the policy on COVID-19 by standing on the concept of resilience, which illustrate the desirable system the policy tends to approach.

Thus, this presentation will firstly explore what is resilience, then state how this concept be utilized to study policies responding COVID-19, and how introduce this idea to our research.

What is Resilience

The Origin of Resilience

Research in 2019 points out that the resilience is an evolving concept, growing in both theory and application. The concept of resilience firstly used in Holling’s work in 1973, which is belong to ecological science. (Gillespie-marthaler et al.: 2019) In Holling’s work, resilience is described as a system’s ability to “absorb changes of state variables, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist” (Holling, 1973)

Different Definition of Resilience

There are many definitions of resilience from different sector. From academy side, The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) provide its own definition (NAS, 2012) of resilience, which is “the ability to plan and prepare for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to adverse events” (figure 2) Based on others literature, the IRGC guidelines published in 2018 (Florin & Nursimulu: 2018) address resilience is “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and re-organise, while keeping essentially the same function, structure, and system feedbacks (Folke et al., 2010; Walker, Holling, Carpenter & Kinzig, 2004).” (p.51) And a resilience social-ecological system “can learn and self-organise in dynamic environments (Folke et al., 2016).” (p.51)

Figure 2. Illustrative Representation of stages of resilience
(Source: Florin & Nursimulu:2018)

Besides, some international organization also provide their own definition. For example, the Organization for Economic Development define resilience as ”the ability of individuals, communities and states and their institutions to absorb and recover from shocks, whilst positively adapting and transforming their structures and means for living in the face of long-term changes and uncertainty,” (OECD, 2014c).

Why Resilience is Needed

While many literatures argue resilience are essential for policymaking, and state the advantage to utilized resilience (Djalante & DeWit: 2020; Florin & Nursimulu: 2018; Gillespie-marthaler et al.: 2019; WERNLI et al.: 2021), it is hard to illustrate why it is essential to introduce resilience to policymaking, or other fields like corporate sector (Florin & Nursimulu: 2018)

One explanation is given by Hynes et al (2020). By questioning how we should conceptualize the shock COVID-19 caused from individual to collective level, and affect different sector like international market, public health, social activity, and governance, they claimed there are two ways to respond. The first approach is to prevent threats happening in the first place, or at least mitigating the result caused by the threats. While this approach is the basis of conventional risk management and appeal the politic since it offers the possibility to mitigate the unacceptable risks before they result in severe problem, this approach is doubted by the authors. They state that in a world with fast feedback loop and getting more and more nested, this approach might be ineffective, or very expansive due to the inevitable cascading failures.

On the other hand, the second approach assumes that the future threats cannot be adequately predicted and measured, and its effects are also hardly understood. Thus, rather only rely on the ability of the system to prevent or absorb all threats, this approach acknowledges the importance of recovery and adaption after the shock, or even take the opportunity following the crises. (p.178)

Thus, based on work of Hynes’s team in 2020, one potential reason of why we need resilience is, resilience as an alternative approach from the view of conventional risk management, is more achievable when facing shocks in a more connected world. (Figure 3)

Figure 3. An illustration view about shocks in a more connect world, IRGC guidelines (Florin&Nursimulu:2018) used two keywords, system thinking and complexity, to conceptualixed resilience: collectively, systems thinking and complexity theory operationalise resilience as an approach where (a) we seek solutions to preserve beneficial systems against shock and bolster their recovery from disruption, or (b) we seek to transition a system in a manner that protects it from systemic risks and moves towards a more ideal or beneficial state (Anderies, Folke, Walker & Ostrom, 2013; Gunderson & Folke, 2011; Helbing, 2010; Renn, 2016, 2017b). (p.54)

How to Utilize the Concept of Resilience

Resilient Framework and its Challenge

While resilience is claimed to radically change “how a nation prepares itself for the potential disruptions of key services” (Florin & Nursimulu: 2018, p. 49), it is hard to utilize this concept in practice. As the IRGC guidelines addressed, introducing strategies to achieve resilience “is complicated by the limited amount of guidance regarding how resilience might be operationalised and formally reviewed.” (Florin & Nursimulu: 2018, p. 49)

Another research (Gillespie-marthaler et al.: 2019) also pointed out similar issue. They claimed the focus of the resilience assessment communities from both researcher and practitioner is “on operationalizing resilience,” which means how communities “conduct resilience assessment in a practical, meaningful, and consistent manner.” And one of the challenges is “lack of consistency in applied resilience assessment.” (p.240) In Linkov and Trumps’ book (2019), they summarized two approaches to assess resilience quantitatively, which are semi-quantitative approach Resilience Matrix (Figure 4) and quantitative approach Network Science approach.  However, the authors also address the limitation of quantitative assessment. They mentioned some US government agencies utilized qualitive and categorical assessment because,

both the lack of formal quantitative methods to justify high-level policymaking under uncertainty and the requirements of resilience thinkers in such applications to consider catastrophic or futuristic risk, where quantitative data may be irrelevant or nonexistent. (p.98)

Thus, in our study, we will keep our original qualitive framework, while using Resilience Matrix as supplement to filter important issues out.

Figure 4. A demonstration of Resilience Matrix
(Source: Linkoy & Trumps,2019)

How to Use Resilience in COVID-19 Study

Since COVID-19 is a complex issue (WERNLI et al.: 2021), there are many literatures use resilience to analyze COVID-19. For example, some research analyzed issues from COVID-19, then provide policy guideline based on the concept of resilience. (Hynes et al.: 2020; WERNLI et al.: 2021) While some select variables representing resilience and generate resilience indexes by countries. (Diop & Nnanna: 2021)

How Do We Introduce Resilience in Our Study?

Respond to the doubt we face when comparing different countries by framework, resilience frameworks will be used to provide an overall evaluation about Taiwan’s policy responding COVID-19. (Issue 1 in Figure 5)

However, as Gillespie-marthaler’s team point out (2019), there is lack of consistency among the resilience frameworks. Thus, we will not only fit the fact we get to a specific resilience framework, but with a few of candidate frameworks. Besides, we will also keep investigating facts from Taiwan’s case (issue 2), and validate if the candidate resilience frameworks we selected can represent the concept of resilience (issue 3), and applicable to the facts we learned.

Figure 5. An Illstration Shows How to Introduce the Concept of Resillience to Our Study
(Source: made by the author)

Reference

English Jorunal Paper

  • Diop, S., Asongu, S. A., &Nnanna, J. (2021). COVID-19 economic vulnerability and resilience indexes: Global evidence. International Social Science Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12276
  • Djalante, R., Shaw, R., &DeWit, A. (2020). Building resilience against biological hazards and pandemics: COVID-19 and its implications for the Sendai Framework. Progress in Disaster Science, 6, 100080. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2020.100080
  • Gillespie-marthaler, L., Abkowitz, M., Nelson, K., &Baroud, H. (2019). Selecting Indicators for Assessing Community Sustainable Resilience. 39(11). https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13344
  • Hynes, W., Trump, B., Love, P., &Linkov, I. (2020). Bouncing forward: a resilience approach to dealing with COVID-19 and future systemic shocks. Environment Systems and Decisions, 40(2), 174–184. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-020-09776-x
  • Linkov, I., & Trump, B. D. (2019). The science and practice of resilience. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
  • Salvador-Carulla, L., Rosenberg, S., Mendoza, J., &Tabatabaei-Jafari, H. (2020). Rapid response to crisis: Health system lessons from the active period of COVID-19. Health Policy and Technology, 9(4), 578–586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hlpt.2020.08.011
  • Wang, D., &Mao, Z. (2021). A comparative study of public health and social measures of COVID-19 advocated in different countries. Health Policy, 125(8), 957–971. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.05.016

English News

Lu Kang-chun and Joseph Yeh. (2022, Jan 16) CORONAVIRUS/Hsinchu shopping mall closes due to confirmed COVID-19 case visit. Focus Taiwan. https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202201160017

Englsih Report

  • Florin, M. V., & Nursimulu, A. (2018). IRGC guidelines for the governance of systemic risks (No. REP_WORK). International Risk Governance Center (IRGC).
  • WERNLI, Didier, et al. & Geneva Science Policy Interface. Governance in the age of comlexity: building resilience to COVID-19 and future pandemics. Geneva : Geneva Science Policy Interface, 2021, 28

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