I’m team dog. I’m for the cute dog, I’ve got to say.

“Fork.” I love this. Everyone can fork.

Audrey, so that I’m clear, it seems like you did not have a role in determining that we should track people’s location to make sure that they’re quarantining. This was something that was put in place after SARS 1.0.

Nothing.

It’s so hard to envision that people in the United States would feel comfortable with something like this. We have a very different relationship with this kind of stuff, even though, yes, our cell phone towers know where we are already. I can’t imagine the United States doing something like ...

Darian knows meters. He’s from New Zealand.

I don’t know what 50 meters is. Is that a house?

What’s the level of detail?

Also, this method, it doesn’t tell you where in the house you are. It would tell you where on the block you?

When you say you’re given the option that if you have your own bathroom you can stay home, the way you…is track the right word? Are you tracking people’s phones? Is that the right way to describe that?

That gets us to the next chunk of the interview, which is about trust in government and digital technology. Before we get into that, very quickly, will you tell me again that the people who were flying back into Taiwan or into Taiwan had two options, whether to stay in ...

55 people?

Do countries call you or message you on Slack like, “Hey, Taiwan. I think maybe you should teach us how to respond to COVID-19”?

Wow. What do you think of that?

Around 600 total confirmed cases of COVID in Taiwan out of 23 million or so people?

What are your numbers right now? How many people have had COVID locally in Taiwan?

“We can’t let you out of the house.” When you said that if you’re one of the few people who contracted it locally, you mean few people, right? [laughs]

Oh, right. The police show up and say, “You are walking danger.”

Why police?

[laughs] You said this applied to people who were returning to Taiwan. What if you just got sick, you got COVID in Taiwan? I imagine it applied to them as well, quarantining?

What do you think of stories like that, like when I tell you that in the US there are people who are like, “Oh, if I walk my dog, is that not me quarantining”? What do you think of that, people walking their dog?

I’m like, “That’s not quarantining. If you’re walking your dog when you’re supposed to self-quarantine, that’s not quarantining.” This is you guys ensuring that people were actually, actually quarantining.

Then people would be like, “Well, I went and walked my dog. I’m still quarantining. I’m not doing anything. I just went and walked my dog,” or like, “Well, I had to go to the grocery store to pick up food.” [laughs]

[laughs] What a nice message. This part is really interesting to me. I had a friend who flew into Puerto Rico from Florida. Then she flew back into the US. There are many examples of people flying around, in and out of the country, in the United States, or within ...

Don’t turn off your phone and keep it charged. Don’t fall asleep with that thing off.

[laughs] Wait. I’m going to do this a little slower. You put people’s phones in a digital quarantine. You said that you’re not allowed or you can’t turn off your phone for 14 days. It’s not something that you do to the phone. You just tell the person, “Don’t turn ...

1,000 times each day? 1,000 times 33?

Wait. You put people’s phones in a digital quarantine?

I’m going to move on to phone tracking. Then Darian’s going to take over for most of it. Sorry I’ve taken over so much already. I just really enjoy talking to you. It was not just the masks that Taiwan did. Taiwan has used technology to do a bunch of ...

Every time I see them, I’m like, “They’re so small and thin. They can’t possibly be doing anything.”

Those masks work?

Now I’m looking at it, it does look like the regular surgical mask. It’s just not blue.

Show me.

Wait. I need to see.

[laughs]

Do we have this mask that you’re using in the United States?

Is it like the baby blue folding mask that you see doctors in movies wear? Is that what it looks like?

You mentioned these are medical-grade masks. Are these N95 medical-grade masks? What kind of masks are we talking about that are being sold in the pharmacies?

Was it your job? You said you were the bridge between the cabinet and the pharmacies. Were you going to pharmacies and saying, “Hey, guys. Can you adapt this real-time data tracking that you have for masks?” What exactly did the pharmacies have to do to tweak their current system?

Wow. Just so we can understand, explain to us how the pharmacies already had existing infrastructure where they could track what leaves their shelves in real-time. Why? Why was that system there?

We learned a term from Howard which is called forking. Is this what Taiwan did? Did Taiwan fork Howard’s map?

Just so that I can make sure I understand what your thinking was, was it like, “Huh. Well, we don’t actually need Google Maps to do this. We have real-time data available from pharmacies. We can do this all in-house”? Is that the thinking?

Wow. Then is it accurate to say that you are the reason why the government moved to selling masks in pharmacies only for a while?

You chatted this in the public chat room or the channel because you had already approached the premier in Taiwan and said, “Hey, we should switch to pharmacies only”?

Wait, tell me again. What did you message him on Slack, more or less?

OK, cool.

You see the Slack message in the group, and you say, “Hey, Howard. Talk to me.”

On day two of…he goes on Slack and he says, “Hey, guys. I got this huge bill from Google. Does anyone know how I can continue this kind of service but without having to pay this bill?”

Mm-hmm.

Howard said that his convenience store app was up for two days, then the pharmacy data was released, and then he changed it. When did you reach out to Howard? Was it on day one or day two of his mask app?