As far as I know, I will have to undergo two covid tests before I can come into contact with the general population in Taiwan when I return. Plus 14 days of quarantine.
So there is testing. In the west testing is an excuse to keep things open.
Once a test shows positive, all the transmission events are a done deal.
No they don t!
In my company, for example are only 3 employees who follow the rules and protect each other, the other 100 or so do not give a shit.
Even saying it straight into my face and refuse to wear a mask when entering, for example, a car.
In most other countries, theyâre wearing masks, washing hands, sanitizing surfaces, etc etc. The Brits (belatedly) have started doing these things.
But it doesnât make any difference.
Do you really not understand the German antipathy towards being ordered around? It seems to me that whatâs lacking here is not a knowledge of epidemiology and math, but human behaviour. The politicians utterly failed to understand the nature of the situation. In the UK, they tried to force people into following a whole bunch of completely stupid rules, and everyone understandably said âbugger that for a game of soldiersâ.
In situations like this, you need to convince people. You need to sell the policy. You need to get people pulling together for a common goal. And most importantly, you need to have a plan thatâs actually likely to do some good, and that people can clearly see is workable.
Treating people like idiots (even if they are idiots) gets people upset. Battering them into submission (especially when theyâre being asked to submit to something thatâs overtly harmful) makes them rebel. They become resentful and wilfully noncompliant. The politicians only have themselves to blame.
They are testing people entering the country now. Hence the number of cases keeps going up.
But they have never done mass testing of the population as they do in some countries like the UK.
Taiwanâs CDC quite early on realized that false positives alone would create an overwhelming burden on the health system, causing it to break down as you see in some European countries and US states.
In a population with very few cases, scattergun testing will throw up a set of positives which are almost entirely false. You know this. If you test people who have no reason to be considered potential positive cases, youâre going to produce a whole lot of meaningless noise.
So far, antiretrovirals do not appear to be useful.
I think you severely overestimate the ability of governments to get their act together
Theyâve been doing their headless-chicken routine for a full 12 months now, and I canât see that changing anytime soon.
IIRC we settled on enough vaccines being made available for 50% of the population of Europe, US, and civilized countries in Asia by midyear. I wonât insist on the worldâs shitholes getting a vaccination programme sorted anytime this century. Does that sound right to you? I canât find the original post.
So a thousand a day dying in the UK right now from itâŚWhat number are you happy with ?
You obviously havenât read the article. The new variant means that the numbers are going to keep going up under all but the most extreme lockdown measures.
You are just making all this stuff up. Itâs in your muddled head.
What do I believe?
I believe that Taiwanâs health authorities were very wise in rejecting mass testing with the dodgy tests, and very wise in rejecting the dodgy antiretroviral cocktails being used in other countries.
I not quoting my opinions, Iâm telling what the CDCs reasoning was in limiting testing.
âMinister Chen said that general screening comes with a high cost. Countries that have implemented general screening have seen a large number of hospitalizations causing âmedical collapse,â causing infected patients to be sent back into the community.â