I agree fully with your two or three digs at Taiwan. At the same time, the outgoing AIT director’s coldness related to the situation here in Taiwan was lame and so I can understand Ko’s frustration. The two or three negative things you mentioned about Taiwan doesn’t change that.
The outgoing Director was just telling the Truth, the US has hundreds of allies and they all need vaccines, all of the other allies need them more than Taiwan because they have larger outbreaks and many are much poorer than Taiwan.
I was at AIT for a town hall a few months ago and the Director was gushing about how great Taiwan is. He wasn’t digging at Taiwan at all, he was just laying out the facts.
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Taiwan is an island, and not connected to any landmass, not even a shoebox. That made it easy to block COVID from entering the community. 
Their current deal with China is for “Greater China.” Does that mean they cannot sell directly to Taiwan? Or will Taiwan not accept it under those terms?
It has nothing to do with German politics or favors. Businesses will always favor China if it profits them, and they’ll ignore Taiwan if they are asked to. How many democracy loving executive board members are there? Corporations are the perfect form of authoritarianism, to paraphrase Chompsky. Unless they are in Taiwan, they aren’t going to care about Taiwan. They only care about profit. That’s just the world Taiwan exists in, and it’s a fantasy to expect it to be different or to blame a democratic country for not mandating what its local businesses do. Shaking one’s fist at either is a waste of effort. China plays the “we’re so badly treated” card with their people. It’s poor form for Taiwan to do the same. Taiwan should have planned better and this wouldn’t have been an issue. That’s how deal with the real world it is in.
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A little compassion at least goes a long way.
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I don’t think that’s excessive, especially on MRT. When I go out now, I wear goggles as well as a mask (the huge kind that some NBA players wear).
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What do they call the Corona beer in Chinese?
Just remember how once upon time people were bashing the US about how poorly COVID was being managed…
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What’s the point of wearing plastic gloves? Unless you remove them and put them on each time you touch something, the gloves just become another means of spreading the disease. If someone sneezes on their hand, holds a handle, then you hold the handle with gloves and later wipe your nose, it’s the same as if all that happened without gloves.
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CDC report on cases and deaths (this report has more detailed info with age and locations). Not much good news today.
Basically the sequence of events was like this
- Taiwanese Company Dongyang was in talks with Biontech for the Taiwan distribution, in Nov 22
- The boss decided was too expensive, the risk was too high and there were doubts about the vaccine. He said that he isnt a risk-taking type and his duty is to his shareholders. There was a chance that they paid a lot of money and got nothing.
- It was known that FOSUN were also looking to pay big money for the greater China rights in including Taiwan, but they still decided the risk was too much
- FOSUN got the distribution rights
- Taiwan CDC tried to deal with head office to buy directly doses from Germany
- FOSUN blocked them for doing so as they had distribution rights
- FOSUN has the rights for Taiwan but havent registered the vaccine here
- We dont have the Biontech vaccine and if we do want it we have to buy from FOSUN
And that is. There is definitely an element of Chinese malevolence there, but thats not the whole situation
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In China, Ka-lou-na if memory serves. Here, I’m not sure.
Can you show me the evidence of that? Having a bit of a hard time ascertaining what the backlog is
Yeah, I can get that. Personally I think it’s overkill but everyone’s risk calculus is different.
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Wearing goggles might be too much and not the top priority. Wash your hands, wear masks in populated areas, keep good ventilation, etc.
Let’s start wearing masks until we’re all drenched in sweat so that the mask becomes useless and becomes more of a liability.
That’s three days of tests.
Hi guys. I been away for a while. Did I miss anything?
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Wear two?
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I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.
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