There’s no precedent for dealing with a pandemic like this in a modern, globalized society, but I don’t quite agree that there’s no right or wrong response. As we get more data, decision-makers should be checking their policies against the data to ensure that they are reasonable.
And let’s not even talk about the economic devastation that will have long-lasting and wide-ranging impacts on health and quality of life for billions of people.
I’ve consistently opposed total lock down. Other social distancing measures to slow the inevitable spread of the virus would have sufficed. Difficult as it would have been to implement, isolating the vulnerable would have been best. Not 100% correct, though. Countries such as the UK chose not to do it because it was considered too difficult. Also, a lot of Tory voters are over 70.
I totally agree. To have the requirement set at a vaccine is absurd, and the economic cost of having the border closed would be much higher than the cost of dealing with a slight uptick in cases.
Authorities here would be wise to consider opening the doors to people and flights originating from other countries that have a noticeable downtrend in cases. The United States is far down on that list, but HK is a different story.
I guess EVA Air will probably go out of business as a result of this. China Airlines will continue getting state money, but no way EVA survives with Taiwan being closed for 18-24+ months.
South Korea’s situation is still obviously less precarious than that of say the US, but it’s pretty obvious there’s undetected spread at some level. Remember that most infected are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. All it takes is a few asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases to seed future outbreaks elsewhere.
A more reasonable solution, in my opinion, is to let travelers pay for testing and quarantine. If somebody from the US is willing to come to Taiwan and pay the Taiwanese government a reasonable fee for testing and their own quarantine, it offers a fair balance.
You could even require travelers to provide proof of insurance or funds in the case that they become sick and need treatment locally.
An approach like this would immediately eliminate inflow of irresponsible and broke tourists.
Cargo is big part of EVA Air, so I expect it will keep them going (in fact 100% useage of cargo planes that they need run passenger planes with cargo on seats or see link they took out seats and got 4X normal cargo rates). They also got multi NT$billion loan from the gov (Bank of Taiwan) if needed (they have US$billion+ in cash) 不能再虧了！長榮客機拔座椅載貨 華航忍痛賣飛機 There is shortage of cargo planes right now, and both Taiwanese airlines have cargo only planes (United, American, Delta have no cargo only planes as a comparsion)
And that doesn’t take into account the effects of long-term supply chain disruptions. Demand for cargo service will be on shaky ground if supply and demand distortions are allowed to persist.
They should be fine this year. They have access the government loan and NT$51 billion at last fin report. Their parent company is large cargo company too. The low cost airlines are the ones that will have more problems, less cargo and less business travelers. And still some Taiwanese will go out for business and travel since they can so business travel/ meetings can still happen just not non residents coming here (Business visitors maybe can get visas to come, we will see). I agree short term visits and holidays will go away. In New Zealand the links to Aussie will also not open up soon or even till 2021, I expect Taiwan to follow and try build local/ domestic travel like they are in New Zealand.
I just find these lines of thinking i.e. “embrace the wonders of domestic travel!” and “create corona-free corridors!” to be silly at best and total cop-outs at worst.
Yeah, a year or two (or more) in the future, by which time 20-30% of the global population will have been forced into some kind of poverty by these medieval lockdowns/shutdowns.
Right, I laugh at my Taiwanese friends who insist (either arrogantly or ignorantly) that “Taiwan’s economy is doing fine.” The idea that the economy of a small island nation can remain unaffected by the carnage of the larger world in perpetuity is laughable.
You’re ignoring the eventuality that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, whether we like it or not, many if not most countries will have had substantial portions of their populations exposed to this virus.
If the countries that believe they’ve eradicated it completely are going to wait until the rest of the world eradicates it (or there’s a vaccine) to open up, there are plausible scenarios under which they will be waiting a very long time. And they’re not going to be able to do that without destroying their economies.
Oh yeah when will thay happen exactly ?
I’m not ignoring anything and I see a large number countries working on getting the number down to zero. Which country in Asia is going for 'herd immunity '?
Equating tourism and visa-free with the whole economy is too far fetched for me. Health minister is already making provision for business travellers. Most of people that do business with Taiwan or buy taiwanese products have never set a foot in the island.
Some of the antibody data suggests that substantial numbers of people have already been exposed in numerous places. And there’s a decent chance that if and when they start doing large antibody studies in Asia, we’ll find out that infections in countries reporting few infections were actually meaningfully higher.
Even in Taiwan, there’s a hypothesis that the use of the BCG vaccine has protected the population here. So perhaps there was more substantial spread here than detected but much lower risk of severe illness and death because a good percentage of the population was less vulnerable.
So the point still stands: full global eradication of this virus is a multi-year proposition, if it’s even possible at all. Are countries that say they they have few if any cases going to keep themselves hermetically sealed for years? Do they believe they can do this without dooming their economies?
Extreme propositions that don’t seem realistic… No need to wait for “full global eradication of this virus”, no need to “keep [countries] hermetically sealed”. Let’s look at practical solutions. Practical solutions and ability to adapt save businesses and whole economies.