You see, this is where you haven’t learned the most important political lesson from the past year.
Every country believes their particular situation is entirely unique and that it will be ‘different’ ‘here’.
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Sadly, you’re right. But if this outbreak in TW hasn’t shattered TW’s belief that it’s somehow different from the rest of the world, buckle up. It’s going to be ugly for a while. Because TW is older, more vulnerable and more dense than a lot of other countries.
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It is different here though. Taiwan is the first country where the virus got out of control after vaccines were manufactured at mass scale.
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I don’t know, man. This level 3 semi-lockdown state may help keep things stable and even produce a decline, but the moment it’s lifted cases will rise again. Very hard to put the genie back in the bottle without 60-70% of population vaccinated, and that will probably take until the end of the year (and China will do their best to see it takes us even longer).
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Yes you are right. My point was the numbers won’t get out of hand. The level 3, or more likely something like level 2.5, will be here for a couple months. But that’s the difference. Other countries had to deal with it for more than a year. For us it will probably be more like 3 months until we get vaccinated to 40 percent-ish.
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Sure. That’s why I think it will get under control…let’s say, by the end of the year.
However, that should mean that our response is different as well. Last year, in the rest of the world, people were saying that a vaccine was 3-5 years out and nobody knew…anything about the virus. Now we know who will be impacted, how it spreads, who is more likely to die, what kind of policies work and which are ineffective and, we know, that it’s over when we obtain enough vaccines to get ~60% of the population vaccinated.
Yet, we’re closing hiking trails and arguing about masks.
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Hope you’re right! 
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And also not adhering to basic principles of social distancing. What does it matter if more than 5 unrelated people can’t congregate in one apartment, if you have a dozen or more crowded around the cash register at 7/11?
Also, we know now the primary mode of transmission is aerosols and not surfaces, yet the media and government still seem focused on decontaminating every back alley street in the whole country.
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Can you imagine how much shittier things would be if we had to wait half a decade for a vaccine? That’s truly the darkest timeline.
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This is slightly different (though I agree with you entirely). The social distancing thing is, probably, culture and habit. Places like 7-11 has stickers on the floor to indicate social distancing but I only go to one location that actually enforces it (or has people who realize what they are for). Traditional markets are full contact sports.
Yeah, this is a problem. I was in Immigration yesterday and they were playing PSAs about how to prevent spread - it was entirely ‘mask, mask, mask, wash hands, mask, spray surfaces, mask’. Literally nothing about social distancing or being in enclosed rooms.
I’m really sure Japan would not care.
But AZ might. Remember that Japan needs to renegotiate their contract with them in order to sell or pass along these vaccines to another country.
I can just imagine the gangster like threats being communicated now. 
Guy
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Yeah, I made this point yesterday. East Asians have problems with social distance due to their lessened need for private space and generally poor spatial reasoning, just as Americans have problems with masks due to individuality and seeing it as impeding on their freedom.
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What would you do? I do think that this is the sort of thing that a targeted PSA program could help fix. You have to take your temperature when you enter a building…then crowd into an elevator full of talking people. You have to wear a mask inside…then stand near enough to others that you can smell what they had for breakfast.
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The virus is raging out of control in numerous countries, many that are larger and more politically powerful than TW.
There’s no guarantee that TW will get ample vaccine before lasting damage is done, and there’s also no guarantee that this outbreak will overcome the big vaccine hesitancy that appears to exist. JP is on its 4th wave and still has a crazy low vaccination rate. Talking to some of my friends in TW, 0 have any interest in the local vaccines. Some say they’d reconsider AZ but most only want Moderna.
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No magic bullet to solve it, but the media could push responsible social distancing as its new “hot topic issue” instead of the usual trivial crap they focus on.
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I wish the local media would be a lot more professional when it comes to reporting. There’s now if you don’t work hard, you’ll become a reporter.
I don’t think TW ever had that illusion. Maybe some citizens, but the government certainly hasn’t. The quarantine system was brutal, and they managed to keep things at bay for 15 months. That’s pretty damn impressive.
The only one I can think of is spraying streets. Aside from that, I think they’ve been remarkably science-based. Of course they do have to engage in some politics, because deciding what is allowed or not and what people will tolerate etc is inherently political. I was personally annoyed when they cancelled my self-paid vaccine appointment, but it does make sense that it goes to a doctor or nurse or quarantine hotel worker.
I agree spraying alleys is stupid. But your chance of picking anything up from a short-time visit to 7/11 is very, very low.
Are you saying that silent hypoxia doesn’t exist? Because it absolutely does. I know three people who had it. They started feeling very fatigued. Paramedics came and O2 saturation was less than 80% in all of them. That’s organ damage territory. And fwiw, two of the three died.
Sorry, this is extremely disingenuous. I personally know some of the people involved in the local vaccine efforts. It is being taken extremely seriously, to high standard. They are using very established technology (purified protein), but it takes longer to develop and produce than mRNA or the adenovirus-based vaccines. From what I hear, Stage II testing is looking really good, and the two lead vaccine candidates produce massive amounts of neutralising antibodies.
As for the trials, you have ethical issues to content with. Back when there were NO vaccines, recruiting people, giving half placebo and half vaccine was perfectly reasonable. That is not the situation in mid-2021. When we do have other vaccines available, it’s unethical to give people placebo for a potentially deadly disease. That’s why these local vaccines will be compared against other vaccines. Much like if you test a new cancer drug. You don’t test it against nothing. You test it against the best treatment which doctors currently have available.
For example, Pfizer applied for EUA after 2 months of trials and safety data. The Taiwan vaccines will also have at least that long.
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This is an important point though. Anecdotally, my wife was kind of against AZ before the outbreak, but now she says she’d get it. I can’t blame people for not being totally on board with the total unknown of the Taiwanese vaccine. I would still take it if offered, but it would be my last choice out of the available ones. As for hesitancy… I think there’s a 1-2 month window while the fear of Covid is fresh, before vaccine hesitancy starts rearing its ugly head again.
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I was responding to someone, please don’t take my post out of context and say I am the one being disingenuous
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