Is it okay to breathe a bit of a sigh of relief now, or should we still have butt cheeks furiously clenched for at least another week?
Sorry to be Iconic, but Iâd keep that black hole sun tightly clenched for at least a few months more.
until after CNY migrations (+14 days), at least
Firewall setup here packages in and out deny!
No. After February 5th or so I think we will know how much community spread. We are in the lull now. The first case presented within the 2 to 3 day window. The next cases will be 10 to 14 days. If there is a big spike this weekend we are in for a tough time.
I donât think we will be safe until the end of February.
Heâs already here. Not gonna be rude. Maybe youâd like to start a STFO thread for those entertaining the idea of coming.
I have always been polite. However, Iâm happy being the bad guy.
Oh. Another one. Go be the welcome wagon
I recently got my gold card in London, and am flying from London to Taipei (via Istanbul) this week. I understand that people from the UK will have to quarantine at a government facility for 14 days, and that the costs are covered by the Taiwan government. However, Iâve been getting mixed responses on the question of whether I need to book anything prior to flying? Some posts on here suggest that you donât - they just assign you a facility when you arrive. But then, some posts suggest that the âŠ
I feel sorry for the patient
I donât feel sorry.one bit. Taoyuan has to take in these people as they get detected at the airport .
Edit - I may sound harsh and Iâm not wishing anybody ill health , but âŠThis is where we are now.
Is it okay to breathe a bit of a sigh of relief now, or should we still have butt cheeks furiously clenched for at least another week?
Iâd also give it a couple of weeks (at leastâŠ) to see. Iâm over on the east coast at the moment, a bit surprised by the number of people I see coughing and sneezing (obviously just normal coughing and sneezing, one hopes) and not wearing masks.
I actually saw a guy cough then spit on the floor of a train carriage in Hualien yesterday - havenât seen that since I lived in China.
A little bit of the reality of how impossible it would be to contain a small number of unidentified cases actually hit me a couple of times, like when the crowd of people from Taipei/Hualien were passing through the train station underpass in Taitung.
Iâm over on the east coast at the moment, a bit surprised by the number of people I see coughing and sneezing (obviously just normal coughing and sneezing, one hopes) and not wearing masks.
Tons of coughing and sneezing in and around the Zhongshan MRT and Xinyi Shopping District areas today. N95 time.
Quoting minister Chen: no one wants to get sick.
We had one hospital cluster before, last year, remember case 36? Toll was 10 sick people, I think.
Now we have 15 and are holding our collective breaths.
We lost 37 people to SARS. We have lost 7 to COVID. Yes, we lose more in a fire or a bad traffic accident. But still it scares us, touches us at another level.
A mistake is a mistake. The government should own up to it. Theyâve done many things well but buying vaccines was not one of them.
I feel like they didnât hedge their bets properly and were possibly lobbied by local pharma companies .
Taiwan is a very rich country it should have just thrown money at the problem like Israel. And it would have been cost effective too.
Between the Gold Card recipients who donât even know the quarantine requirements and the Gold Card recipients who donât understand theyâre signing up to pay taxes in Taiwan, I have to wonder whether Taiwan has set the bar high enough with its Gold Card requirements.
Well, Taiwan has little to none word with the WHO, which BTW, just pulled the plug on Mexicoâs vaccination campaign because well, they should not hog the vaccines and leave some for others.
There is just so far money can get you. And the other parties will just donât: you do not have such a pressing need, your situation is not that bad.
I think itâs not the right time to be running that scheme personally. But itâs open for debate.
There is just so far money can get you
Worked for Israel. They paid top dollar to the biotech companies, guaranteed early on. They saw it is a critical security threat I guess.
Interestingly it was an Israeli company which developed the first coronavirus vaccine. For avian coronavirus. Thatâs why I always had confidence that vaccines were coming.
We unfortunately are not on the same level of standing internationally to negotiate such deals.
Yes, we may have the money. But it is still Taiwan, the forgotten, or rather, the cursed. That is why they are now negotiating with chips.
I will wait for MIT non RNA.
Iâm with you.
My opinion is that unless Taiwan is prepared to do rapid response contact tracing and large-scale testing in response to domestic cases, set up government-run quarantine facilities for outbreaks, and keep frontliners treating Covid patients segregated from non-Covid patients and medical staff (and the public for 14 days following each shift), it should keep the border closed tighter than a nunâs you know what.