So can someone give me some details on the new rules on 12/1? Does this mean now you have to wear masks outside, not just at certain places?
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I enjoy the liberty to being lazy with the make-up 
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As a cyclist in London, I wear an anti-pollution mask when out cycling anyway. One of the only good things to come out of this pandemic for me is that I now look less weird doing so. I would do the same thing while out and about in Taipei City (not exclusively when cycling) if it weren’t so hot and humid. I can’t imagine Taiwan being an “enjoyable” place to wear these things unless you’re in an air-conditioned environment.
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I enjoy it with or without a mask so… 
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I barely notice it now. I’m just glad to be living in one of the few pandemic free countries on earth largely due to the fact that wearing a face mask for the common good doesn’t trigger childish tantrums in half the population.
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I think Taiwan’s success was mostly down to:
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Inherent distrust of China.
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Being an island with only a few major routes of entry. Easy to lock down.
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Pre-existing epidemic plans from SARS. Hospitals have yearly pandemic drills, so they were well prepared.
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Very generous laws around contact tracing and quarantining people, and the ability to actually pull it off. (Eg look how UK tracing and quarantine system totally failed. They were keeping logs in a cloud Excel spreadsheet…)
If masks helped, it was in the very early days when there was a small bit of spread in the community.
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Once the strips stopped causing zits behind my ears, I don’t mind wearing them at all.
Just put a folded piece of tissue paper in your mask and that pretty much stops the fogging. It’s also how I reuse two masks per week by rotating them and throwing away the tissue paper.
I wear the 3M respirators without any cartridge.
You aren’t trying to protect yourself against organic vapor or harmful dust so without filters it still protects you against people spitting at you. However the mask strap fits over your head, not behind the ear, and the mask is engineered to provide very low breathing resistance so it won’t impede breathing in any way. All you need to do is put it over your head and you don’t necessarily need to use the lower straps. It provides about as much protection as a paper masks but none of the comfort issues.
So wearing masks on Taiwan’s crowded MRT trains in the early days was only a minor factor in stopping the spread of the virus in your view?
It’s still a huge benefit.
If someone skips quarantine and there is a possibility of community spread the current mask usage will prevent full blown panic. Also it is easier to enforce current protocol than try and implement new protocols. Ask Europe and America.
Do you understand how a mask is supposed to work?
When the pandemic first began there wasn’t enough masks to go around. Each person was rationed 3 masks per week, and that’s what was taught to stretch out mask usage.
Even though there are plenty of masks out there now, I have a decent stockpile, and things are pretty quiet in Taiwan, I’m saving masks for the worst case scenario, that is if we see community spread here in Taiwan, and we can’t get masks again.
So I remember reading something that said America was rated highly for pandemic readiness. What exactly are they basing it on? What metrics are they using to measure America’s pandemic readiness? Do hospitals, CDC, NIH, etc. Have hospitals conduct pandemic drills?
Because clearly whatever metric they use to measure this is wrong.
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I have to quit putting my mask in my back pocket.
Seems to be absorbing some inconvenient odors.
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So…very important then.
Remember there were a few different times the virus could have spead into the community e.g.that navy ship.
Remarkably nobody seems to have caught the virus from the crew. Or if they did mask wearing helped to prevent further transmission . R less than one…Sustained…Means virus extinction.
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It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.
Yes, the very early days when there is a seemingly small spread are the important bit. Get them wrong and you is fooked.
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It’s extremely important.
R less than 1, the virus has very little chance to propagate widely. It could die out and we never knew about it.
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Is there any evidence masks helped there?
From what I read, that was more to do with demographics of the young navy guys. There wasn’t even that much spread IN the ship, and they were sleeping and eating in close proximity (without masks).
And when they came ashore, some of them went to karaoke. Some went to love hotels with their girlfriends. I doubt they were practicing masked sex or singing. And from what I remember, even those close contacts tested negative.
The small amount of antibody testing done on the population also doesn’t support the idea that there was undetected spread, even with R <1. I think wearing on crowded MRTs etc makes sense, but most covid spreads in homes, where people are in sustained contact and aren’t wearing masks anyway. So if those early cases had spread, we’d definitely know it by now.
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Yes but how does it jump from home to home ?