Possibly, however I personally know of several cases were people living together and maskless at home did not all catch covid. A close friend of mind stayed with their child, as in the video, however did not wear a mask and tested negative throughout. Possible he had covid previously, was somehow immune or something else.
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Yes, what Bane said.
We (1) had time to vaccinate a lot of people that weren’t vaccinated a year ago,
(2) we held out for a milder strain that is a lot less deadly
(3) as much grief as I give Taiwanese capacity for testing, their ability to house hospitalizations and administer life-saving drugs for moderate/severe cases has greatly improved too
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I would say it’s fair to say that letting omicron spread after most people were vaccinated has saved lives compared to if we had let one of the more deadly variants such as delta spread when nobody was vaccinated. However, I have no data to back that up. I guess we will get that data after omicron has been here a while and we can compare the death rate to other countries who had major outbreaks in early 2020.
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However, the faster spread of omicron compared to earlier variants may lead to a more serious stress on medical resources causing more deaths in non Covid patients. We’ve already seen this actually.
I think we can already conclude that for Taiwan on a preliminary basis at least. During the peak of the Alpha outbreak last year when we were getting 300 to 500 cases a day, our daily death toll was around 25 to 30 for a good couple weeks. Now our death toll is 10 to 15 a day, and we are seeing over 50,000 cases a day (and that’s very under tested). Even if you account for the two week lag for infections to play out and cause death, we were still seeing upwards of 10,000 cases a fortnight ago when many of today’s fatalities would’ve been first infected.
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Among its other categories, this website claims to provide the number of deaths per million population by country:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
For Taiwan, the above website says that the current number of deaths per million population is 39.
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Yes, the death rate to 1M population in Taiwan is very low.
Taiwan - 39
NZ - 171
Singapore - 228
Japan - 237
Australia - 292
South Korea - 457
Hong Kong - 1229
UK - 2574
USA - 3064
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Since our true peers on that list include NZ and HK, I would expect—as the omicron wave moves through our communities—that eventually our death rates will fall higher than NZ’s, and hopefully end up a lot lower than HK’s awful rate.
Guy
https://twitter.com/cookiebandit/status/1524270462607388672
If someone sells the rapid tests that they imported for self-test, is there a fine?
- Yes - 30K to 100K NT.
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Well, there are lots of reasons. The two major reasons:
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Some people are seemingly naturally immune. In UK “challenge” studies (i.e. deliberately giving people Covid) some trial participants tested negative even after having virus particles squirted up their nose. There was a case study about one 19-20yo girl who had virus administered 4x and never tested positive.
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The testing, especially rapid testing, is far from perfect. (But then again, if you don’t feel any symptoms then I’m not really convinced it even matters, beyond academic interest)
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Damn strange disease no doubt. Local kid of family friend contacted it at elementary school, one of the first in the current outbreak so they were quarantine in a hospital for about 18 days. Father tested positive a few days after the kid and was sent off to his own quarantine while the mother, who took care of the kid in the hospital never got the ‘rona. There was no separation whatsoever and the kid did have mild to medium symptoms, fever off and on and consistent cough.
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Now that it has been legalised for the next two months, I’m interested in how/where you got them. (I might wait until you get them, though. I ordered vitamins from Luckyvitamin and it took them 2 months to arrive by ‘express’ courier - DHL. They sat for a month in Germany).
The places I see online seem to be around 100NTD excluding shipping, some a lot more expensive, a few marginally less expensive but not in the 36NTD category. I’m thinking I might get a years supply just to make sure I have supply at a good price. You can be the guinea pig though 
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Indeed. My grandmother, before vaccines were available, tested positive but was asymptomatic. She said it was because she stayed slim for most of her life because of a good diet, walking, and three cigarettes a day.
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I wish I could 
this post a dozen times.
I was in class, during a break, when I saw your post. I took action immediately.
- Yesterday (fed up with *multiple" attempts to contact the authorities - every time encountering busy lines), I decided to ask the courier to return the kits.
- Immediately after seeing the news, I contacted The courier by email to ask her to stop the return. I got a message that she was out of the office for a personal day. That may be good luck in the end.
- The reply email, automatically generated, provided a phone number that I could call. I called that number and was able to provide the shipping number. The person on the phone told me that they had also heard the news, but they had not yet received any official documentation (the almighty 公文).
- I simply requested the date cancel my return hold on to the kits until they could receive the documentation. I was told that I would be contacted when they had some news.
- About an hour later I received a phone call. The person on the phone told me that I would have to wait until the official documentation arrived, that they would hold the kits for me until that time.
While this is still no guarantee, it’s looking like it’s a matter of when, and not if, the kits can be delivered. I’m not sure how to prod and expediate the process of the documentation being sent to the courier, but it shouldn’t (in theory) take that long if the announcement was made today.
I owe @slawa a few beers or test kits.
Hoping that things actually work out 
P.S. No way am I trying to get into the kit selling business. I was going to donate many of them, in addition to having enough for personal use for the foreseeable future.
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No problem. Let’s see how this pans out. If you have an internationally recognized credit card, I can definitely give you the details on the company that shipped the kits to me. The shipping charges were a bit high, but the overall cost per kit turned out to be 77 NTD. They also arrived (from Germany) within five days! And via DHL. I kind of got the impression that shipping them to me was a little bit 麻煩 due to having an address in romanized Chinese. However, the company did follow my instructions and eventually get the address figured out.
Fingers crossed!
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Appreciate the details possible and also on the kit brand/manufacturing location. Europe had major issues with some Chinese manufactured kits.
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That’s a good point! I specifically searched for the brand of test kit that I ordered because it had been approved in Europe and Australia. Also, there was information on one of the Taiwanese consular websites stating that this was one of the dozen or so approved brands. It is also on the official list provided by Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare.
After I know more I will definitely get back to you on the specifics of the kit. I would have to look at it in more detail if I can get my hands on it in person. As you fairly pointed out, this is a Chinese made product, so… more caution is advised.
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I’ve sort of lost track of different predictions for where we’re heading, but here’s one expecting our peak in new cases to be around May 21 (earlier than I thought, although I forget what basis I had for thinking that), with deaths peaking in mid June or so.
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Is that is true. That will be amazing.
I wouldn’t get too excited. It will plateau and even when it declines it will still be in the tens of thousands for months if not indefinitely.
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