What chaos?
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Damn it. We donât want them here.
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I know this is probably poetic license, but on the streets here things are just quiet. Iâm sure people are on-edge in hospital crowds and lines, but the day-to-day situation for most people is certainly not chaos.
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Build a wall! And make them pay for it!
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I should make the Chinese pay for it since they started this nightmare to begin with. That or the Lion Club.
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CAL is responsible .
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The government is responsible.
Ultimately, yes. Agreeing to the ridiculous quarantine policy relaxation for pilotsâŚ
Also for not being serious enough about vaccine procurement.
Also not running community and clinic rapid testing to pick up community cases earlier.
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For this outbreak. But if we want to go to the roots, itâs always been a lab in Wuhan that didnât exercise proper safety controls. One lazy or incompetent and anonymous scientist is probably responsible for this global nightmare.
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Isnât CAL state owned anyway?
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Yeah, perhaps, but at some point we have to get over that and focus on the actual current problem. I guess itâs human nature to look for a bad person or thing to blame, and people living in Taiwan nature to complain about China, but not sure how useful it is here.
Viruses etc. have been around as long as we have anyway, co-evolving with us and other animals, so this kind of stuff is pretty inevitable irrespective of which bit of land it came from. (I get the point about the CCPâs lack of openness in the initial spread and all that, and the possible role of researchers in Wuhan.)
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My wife just called because she has to go in this week and was told there should be no issue as long as she has proof that sheâs leaving the country.
(EDIT: Oops, accidentally posted this as a reply. Sorry, not sure how to undo that.)
I was just doing a quick search to see how worried we should be about people still needing to commute on the MRT. Maybe not too worried? The article below is from last August, updated a couple of weeks ago; Iâd be curious to read more about Japanâs and Koreaâs experiences with spread on public transport, because theyâre somewhat close analogues to Taipei.
A few key quotes and, um, maybe a few extra:
there have been no notable superspreader events linked to mass transit
subways, commuter railways and buses may not be a significant source of transmission, as long as riders wear masks and train cars or buses never become as intensely crowded as they did in pre-pandemic rush hours. [Gulp.]
in Tokyo, where public health authorities have aggressively traced virus clusters, none have been linked to the cityâs famously crowded rail lines. [I am very, very curious if this is August 2020 or May 2021 information]
riding the subway is probably riskier than walking outdoors but safer than indoor dining.
In New Yorkâs subway trains, transit officials say, the filtered air that circulates through a car is replaced with fresh air at least 18 times an hour. That is a much higher than the recommended air-exchange rates in restaurants, where recycled air is replaced eight to 12 times per hour, or in offices, where it is replaced six to eight times an hour. [So, anyone have any info about air-exchange rate in Taipeiâs MRT?]
Hong Kong is one city where public transit ridership is still lower than before the pandemic, and it has not âseen a big outbreak associated with public transit,â said David Hui, the director of the Stanley Ho Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
But, he added: âIf not for the work-from-home measure, both buses and the subway would be full of people. In that case, I believe there could have been a serious outbreak.â
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The key reason there are no documented superspreader events on public transport is likely not that there are none, but that it is extremely difficult to prove them given that there is normally no name registration of passengers.
If you have any chance to avoid public transport, then you should definitely do this
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I donât think this has been posted yet. It looks like the social distancing app has been updated to English.
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Hence my particular interest in the Tokyo result and if it still holds; Japan has - or at least had - aggressive tracing.
Yeah, but absence of evidence can be a pretty good reason for people to not feel terrified as they go through their commute - which is certainly whatâs going on for some of the people I talk to (and, er, live with).
Not that Iâm happy about crowds being on public transit; Iâm very glad I can walk to work, and I was idly wondering how long itâll be until Iâm on the MRT again (over-under is at two weeks, I figure). I think work from home and distance learning should be more aggressively promoted. But commuting on non-packed trains, while definitely a risk, doesnât seem a giant source of risk.
Itâs been posted over in the âTaiwan launches social distancing appâ thread:
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Posted, but in the other thread. Iâm guessing this will be buried when todayâsâŚ514 cases are announced.
EDIT: this is my prediction/guess, not an official/reported number.
Maybe point out thatâs a guess? It gets seriously confusing (and sometimes terrifying!) in this thread when people post numbers without much context. Are they guessing? Are they watching breaking news? Do they know something the rest of us donât know? From context right now, itâs clear thatâs a guess, but who knows what things will look like 30 minutes / 200 posts from now.
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My GUESS for today is 426! Yours?
Yeah, good idea. I was actually thinking the same before you commented. Done now!
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