There was a lot more social distancing in the early days in Taipei at least. Many restaurants and cafes changed their layouts, put up barriers, etc. I recall they were required to do that?
The biggest social distancing came in the form of people not going out. Restaurants, bars, cafes, MRT cars, etc. weren’t packed like they are now. Many places I frequent were easily 50-75% less crowded in the early days of the virus.
Do the masks protect the wearer though? I imagine that someone who’s not taking quarantine seriously, it’s also not going to wear a mask to protect others.
A growing body of studies says that they do.
There is also the 2nd order effect. If somehow Mr. Quarantine Breaker infects me and I’m wearing a mask when I go out, I will reduce my own spread.
Consequently wearing masks might help infection chains “dying down” much faster.
I think in Europe, people for a long time though “Oh, we only have a couple of hundred infections each day - that doesn’t sound like much. So why should we wear masks - the risk of meeting someone infected is really close to zero”. But that allowed the virus spreading into all kinds of parts of the population. And now it’s far more difficult to control because it’s almost impossible now to trace back infections. It’s not just returning travelers who spread the virus - everyone could be a potential host.
If everyone is wearing masks, the virus might still spread inside a household / community, but not so much between different “groups” of people.
I’m all for mask wearing but you guys are reporting that it has dropped down to 50% at most nowadays so that’s why I’m asking. I haven’t read any studies regarding masks yet but I’ll check out the link provided above.
The reduced mask wearing here works right now because there’s no virus in the community. But all it takes is one infected person to introduce it and the lack of mask wearing becomes a big problem.
We should not be the boxer who thinks he’s won the fight, lets his hands down in the late rounds and then gets hit with a clean punch he never expected. The punches you don’t expect and aren’t prepared for are the ones that knock you out.
Yes, this is the point I was trying to make… 
What’s going to happen if you have someone (or more) breaking quarantine? Do you think the level of mask protection is sufficient right now?
One cluster is not a knockout punch though.
No idea. Would hope that there’s still enough mask wearing to be meaningful but feels like a lot of people aren’t paying attention to the virus situation outside of Taiwan and are way too confident. If we didn’t have people coming from overseas everyday of course it would be a different story. We could export all the masks and party like it’s 1999.
I’d prefer 0 clusters. Why risk of 2-4 weeks of spread before anyone figures out that the virus is here? That’s exactly how the outbreaks in Europe and the US started. They say the virus was probably in both places in December.
Is it that big of a deal for people to wear masks in public places where social distancing isn’t possible? What do we have to lose? 1 real cluster here and people will full on panic.
Yeah it’s the panic I fear more than the virus itself. It would be awful here if it kicked off, especially as a big nose.
How do we feel about contact tracing apps? Surely something Taiwan could be good at. New Zealand’s been trying to get it going but compliance is poor. Basically you go into a cafe, restaurant etc. you swipe a QR code with your phone. The digital footprint means the MoH can locate contacts very quickly.
I hope they’re set and ready to go, but I don’t know. I hope the government’s been using these months of relative Covid-quiet to prepare for a day when things may go south.
It’s kinda funny that this is exactly the same narrative spread in Europe by people who don’t take the virus seriously. Next to comments on how the virus is actually not that dangerous, just like the flu and the opinion that COVID will just die down if we just stop panicking about it (“It’s the measures against COVID that make the virus so dangerous, not the virus itself”).
It’s not a narrative. It’s a comment in a thread. This is a discussion.
Just remarking that your comment in that discussion just sounds remarkingly similar to what a certain group of people in Eruope are also thinking.
Sheer coincidence. 
But it is actually how I feel. I guess this is one of the challenges of being 200 days virus free. Perceptions change.
My feeling is I’d rather not see us in that situation. Right now Taiwan is one of the few places in the world where life is pretty much normal. Wearing a mask seems to me to be a small price to pay for that.
Once you’ve got a real cluster and need to start contact tracing, the life we have now goes away. And all bets would be off.
It’s interesting comparing with NZ where masks weren’t used much except in the last lockdown. Now they’re back to zero cases the masks are pretty much gone. I guess a less populous and population dense country has built in social distancing.
Five more imported cases reported today, including two more international students (another from Indonesia, and one from Russia):
Guy
It’s hilarious that you’re implying that any contact tracing apps might actually work for foreigners. 