Taiwan’s pandemic vice-president Chen Chien-jen shares lessons — from lab bench to public office and back
My CV is a strange one for an epidemiologist. Twenty years ago, I was at the National Taiwan University, training field researchers and studying liver disease, a major cause of death. When the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic broke out in 2003, I became the minister of health and led reforms that allowed Taiwan to successfully contain epidemics of H5N1 avian influenza in 2005–08, H1N1 flu in 2009–10 and COVID-19.
Two years on from the World Health Organization’s official declaration of the pandemic, I’ve been thinking about lessons I’ve learnt toggling between science and public service. I think all researchers — from bench scientists to physicists to computational social scientists — might find this exercise useful. Government advisers, too.The first lesson: scientific training teaches us to seek out all the variables that might affect a system.
The second lesson: science is never enough to bring about a thriving society. That takes trust, robust institutions and social cohesion. Solidarity is essential to inspire the public to comply with epidemic-prevention guidelines. Without solidarity, there cannot be effective border control, quarantine, contact tracing and isolation.
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