News in ENG
For once I donât have an issue with them extending Level 2 
Taiwanese donât push back against outdoor mask mandate because many Taiwanese already wear masks for pollutionâŚ
with eight of them listed as breakthrough infections and one woman who had received one dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
So out of the 11, 8 are fully vaccinated, one has had their first shot and two are under five so canât be vaccinated.
I believe when the vaccines first came out they never said they were 100% effective in preventing infection, but that they prevent hospitalization and other nasty effects.
Vast majority of omicron patients have no symptom and doctors are saying to not take them to COVID wards.
For me Taiwan should:
- Putting out a message that that Omicron will be here, sooner or later. get vaccinated and prepare!
- Informing residents how to prepare and how to get through being sick staying home without going to the doctor. Specifically detailed with Omicron.
- Informing local clinics clearly what the best home treatment for omicron is. These clinics are very efficient at getting people through and will be the key when it gets bad to separate the people who really need a hospital.
- Preparing temporary space. An idea would be to turn some of the quarantine facilities into covid âhospitalsâ for patients who need help but are not ICU sick. To get the space move into full home quarantine when cases hit for example 10k a day. Main point here would be to prepare the employees needed, they wonât be qualified ICU nurses but they only really need to treat a single illness with the main though being able to notice when things are too serious and the patient needs a real hospital. Get the equipment and systems in place for a temporary hostpital. The army could probably help here to prepare.
- Decide what to do with testing and communicate it to the society. I would vote for simply not testing people as it seems like a waist of resources but if this is a bad option then the capacity for testing needs to be increased at least 10 fold minimum.
From cases abroad its very clear that this version is not as serious. The hospitals have issues because they have so many people with serious but not life threatening issues in que to get to the hospitals. This is something Taiwan would have the chance to prepare for with the success of the quarantine delaying the virus.
If on the other hand the energy and message to the people is wasted on whether a mask should be used between taking sips of a drink we will be in for a shit show. Unless the island fully shuts flights down the virus will get in, its too easily spreading to stay out. Most likely its already in the community but if not it will be in the coming weeks or at best months.
Good news is that from abroad it also seems to be about a 2-3 month period of hard times. Sad part is that if the system and people are not prepared we will be in for some level 4 lockdowns as the society will just collapse if not prepared.
Just my 2 cents. I hope the system is better prepared than what it looks from the outside.
Not expecting 100% , but a bit more than zero would be nice.
Obviously a small number, but it is still interesting that they are all vaccinated. To me at least.
We are unlikely to go into full lockdown, we didnât last time and we hit 700 cases a day. Right now we have no uncontrolled community spread so nothing is going to happen for a while. Chen deliberately extended Level 2 today so as to stop people speculating.
Life goes on until it doesnât.
At the same time I look forward to a whole load of bullshit announcements to translate in my inbox tomorrow. âEffective immediately the gym is closedâ.
I completely agree with this, the government needs to let people know that we arenât going to be able to stop the spread of omicron, that we need to accept the fact that it will be amongst us sooner or later.
My gym told me you need to keep your mask on when working out again.
And so it begins⌠sigh
What city? I felt like skipping today but seems like I should go now
I cancelled my nasty smelly world gym membership and refuse to sign up for another till they stop this BS. Waste of money.
Does anyone remember how fast it spread last time? Didnât it take a minute till it reached 2 digits? Iâll try to find it but will probably get distracted lol.
Things happened fast, I remember that. New Taipei City swimming pools were closed as part of initial precautions on Wednesday. And then Friday afternoon was the last time in the classroom.
Iâm fairly but not totally confident my classes this Tuesday will happen in the classroom. Iâm not at all confident my classes on Friday will be that way.
If youâre trying to search, Wed. May 12 is when the pools shut down, and Fri. May 14 is when classes were cancelled. You could probably parse many more details out of the forumosa thread from that time, but Iâm guessing there are thousands of posts that week!
Oh my, itâs one thread for Jan-May 2021, over 9,000 posts. Good luck looking through it.
THANK YOU!! I think I figured it out. It took roughly two week and a half weeks for us to hit double digits (I believe) and close everything. We are on the first week and already 11 cases⌠I think youâre right about about Friday. Then again holiday starts soon so I hope they hold offâŚ
Iâm trying to stay calm and not assume things but I know how Taiwan wants zero cases ugh⌠I seriously would leave for awhile and come back next year if it wasnât for the fact I just signed a new apartment lease.
Nobody worries about a PRC invasion though.
Haha yeah people never worry about really important things, but deny their possibility.
Well done for helping out with the abysmal Taiwanese birth rate at least.
I dunno, it depends what you do. I missed restaurants. Needing to provide food for both of us, with my wife working from home, was a pain: way too many UberPanda meals. But cycling and walking - both unaffected - and swimming are the main leisure reasons I leave the apartment, so for me at least it wasnât a huge deal. Main impact was I missed the once-a-week trip to a nicer Taipei City restaurant.
Distance teaching required a lot more work (or a lot more time to get the same work done), but fortunately classes are almost finished for the semester.
If youâve got kids, yeah, it must suck a lot more.
It always cracks me up when I see him post because he has my dadâs name. Is that you dad??? 
I think it is mainly because I am single and no kids (lots of pets) that itâs depressing me out again. Even though last time we still came into work just to work online.
At least my own classes start in about a week. Plus I can start cycling again. 