Niall Ferguson, Columnist

How a Brainiac and a Villain Became Covid Heroes

Audrey Tang empowered Taiwan’s citizens. Dominic Cummings lost out to British bureaucracy.

May 23, 2021 at 7:00 AM UTC

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author, most recently, of “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.” He is a columnist for The Free Press.

Audrey Tang, virtual savior.
Photographer: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images

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This is a tale of two very different islands, two very different people, and two very different responses to a single global disaster.

The current predicament of the two islands reminds us that great pandemics do not end, like great wars, with a single, glorious day of victory — or a single, ignominious day of defeat. Pandemics seem to end, only to begin again with sudden outbreaks. They necessitate a prolonged game of Whac-A-Mole against the infectious disease in question.