Welcome to Real Vision. I'm Ed Harrison for Real Vision and I have the distinct pleasure

of speaking to Richard Koo of Namiro Research, the Chief Economist there. Mr. Koo, great

to talk to you. Pleasure, it's mine too. You know, we spoke right near the beginning

of the crisis, this pandemic that we're in right now. And a lot has happened since then.

And so one of the reasons that I'm talking to you, it's late in Japan where you are

and early where I am here in the DC area. But a lot of things have happened and I wanted

to get a sense for you what you're thinking now in terms of this pandemic and the economic

crisis that it's unfolded as a result of it. The thing that I found very interesting because

you and I were spoke yesterday around the same time is when you said you wished that you

were a doctor instead of an economist. Can you explain that comment?

You know, this particular recession or pandemic is really coming from this very external

source called coronavirus. And this is very uncompromising virus. And so we learned over

the last year that those countries that try to kind of balance between the virus and

the economy, virtually all failed. Only those economies that make no compromise actually

succeeded. So we have a cases in Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia where even the smallest

increase in infections, wow, they go really after them to make sure that they don't spread.

Taiwan did that from the very beginning just as when this virus was spreading. And they

did a beautiful job of both mobilizing entire population, plus whatever the government

can do. And so over this entire period, the number of infections in Taiwan, which is

a country of 23 million people, is less than 900, entire period. And they have something

like 250 days without a single domestic infection because they really did a good job at the

beginning. And then New Zealand, Australia also did a very strict lockdowns when it was

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