Thanks for this.
Yes I was asking about the second set of graphs, the most recent ones above. And it’s not Chase that’s plotting these numbers. He’s just reposting them, as I was here.
Guy
1 Like
Fair enough - I just saw his name and link in your post and assumed the graphs were some of his. I haven’t paid much attention to what he posts. Whoever plotted the graphs, then.
1 Like
So how’s our transition out of Zero COVID coming along?
Clarissa Wei writing in the New Yorker discusses some of the bumps we’re experiencing in this process.
The Topsy-Turvy End of Zero COVID in Taiwan
In 2020, I went to crowded restaurants and music festivals. In 2022, I’m in isolation by choice.
By Clarissa Wei
May 23, 2022
Summary
For more than two years, Taiwan was one of the only places on earth that aimed to keep the novel coronavirus outside its borders altogether. The National Health Command Center, a special agency formed in 2004 after the sars outbreak, first stopped travellers from Wuhan in January, 2020—two months before the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. As an island with only twenty-three million inhabitants, Taiwan was able to close its borders to nonresidents in March, 2020. After that, international travellers were subjected to long quarantines that made it almost impossible for the virus to spread. For much of the pandemic, anyone who tested positive was isolated in the hospital, and their close contacts were told to quarantine.
These precautions seemed to pay off. In 2020, when much of the world was under lockdown, Taiwan went eight months without a single domestic transmission of covid, the world’s longest virus-free streak. The so-called Zero covid model—also adopted by China, Australia, and New Zealand—drastically reduced infections and allowed many daily activities to continue. This was what experts meant when they first talked about flattening the curve; Taiwan’s official covid-19 death toll remained in the single digits through the end of 2020.
The United States, where I grew up, is not an island, and many of its more than three hundred and thirty million people opposed the kinds of pandemic restrictions that made Zero covid possible. Contact tracing was difficult to implement; early lockdowns gave way to piecemeal restrictions that aimed to reduce the intensity of surges, not prevent them. While most Taiwanese people supported the Zero covid policy, American protesters challenged mask mandates and sowed doubt about the effectiveness of vaccines. The coronavirus ultimately infected much of the country and killed more than a million people.
When I first moved to Taipei, in the fall of 2020, I was required to quarantine at home for fourteen days; a case officer called me daily to ask for my temperature. I was then warned to stay away from large crowds for seven days or face a fine. After that, the pandemic largely receded from my daily life. There were minor inconveniences—at the entrance of millions of businesses, for example, people had to scan a QR code with their phone, which would send a pre-written text message to a government contact-tracing database. But, compared with the U.S., Taiwan was an alternate reality in which businesses stayed open and crowds continued to gather. I frolicked at music festivals, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, while my friends and family in the States remained enviously sheltered in place.
In May, 2021, when the Delta variant of the coronavirus caused a surge in infections, Taiwan went into its first soft lockdown. Although people could still leave their residences to buy groceries or to pick up takeout, they were prohibited from gathering in groups. At the time, Taiwan had one of the lowest inoculation rates in the industrialized world, in part because of supply issues; some blamed China for blocking access to vaccines. Still, the daily case count peaked at under six hundred cases. By the time that the more contagious Omicron variant started to spread, last month, eighty per cent of Taiwan had received two shots. More than ninety-nine per cent of recent covid cases have been asymptomatic or mild, according to the government’s Central Epidemic Command Center.
Taiwan’s Zero covid strategy was finally upended on April 7th, when, in the face of an Omicron surge, Chen Shih-chung, Taiwan’s health minister, announced that the island was entering a transitional phase that would end in living with the virus. “We will not stop our journey towards opening up,” he told a parliamentary session. “The main goal now is harm mitigation.” When Chen spoke, Taiwan had reported an astonishingly low number of covid cases—just tens of thousands since the pandemic began. (In contrast, the Netherlands, which has a smaller population, was approaching its eight millionth case.) But last Thursday Taiwan reported more than ninety thousand cases in a single day, and officials have estimated that 3.5 million people, or about fifteen per cent of the population, could be infected.
In a society with barely any firsthand experience of the virus—until a couple of months ago, I didn’t know a single person who had got covid in Taiwan—the end of Zero covid has caused a kind of culture shock. Strikingly, an April poll found that nearly half of Taiwanese adults wanted to keep Zero covid restrictions in place; a roughly equal number supported a policy of “coexisting with the coronavirus.” “It feels like covid is getting closer and closer,” a friend told me last week; the next day, her mother tested positive. In what feels like a weird reversal, people in the States have been reading about the surges in Taiwan and messaging me, asking if I’m doing O.K.
Last month, Emily Y. Wu, a podcast producer in Taipei, tested positive for the coronavirus at home. When she shared the news with family and friends, in April, 2022, her phone blew up with messages urging her to get a more reliable PCR test, which was mandatory at the time. covid cases were still a novelty in Taiwan. “People didn’t believe it was actually covid until you’ve had your PCR,” Wu told me recently. She was tired and symptomatic, but to make sure she wouldn’t infect others she put on a mask and rode to the hospital by bicycle. “I wasn’t ready for all the social pressure and stigma,” she said. “I just wanted to sleep.”
Residents are still struggling to shake off the mind-set that made Taiwan so successful at containing the coronavirus. On the last evening of April, Huang Teng-wei noticed that his six-month-old son, who had just come out of the bath, had flushed cheeks and warm skin. He thought that the infant might be overheated from a hike they had taken, but out of an abundance of caution he took his temperature: a hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit. Next, a rapid covid test. Two red lines appeared. Panicked, he and his wife rushed to the hospital with their son swaddled in a pink blanket. He waited in line with about two dozen people, who were hushed with uncertainty and huddled under an awning to escape the rain. By the time a doctor could see them, it was 3 a.m. There wasn’t much to be done; they were sent home.
Huang compared the first days of quarantine to a war. He and his wife watched their son like hawks and researched infant-mortality data from other countries, which indicated that their baby would very likely recover on his own. Eventually, the fever subsided. In the next few days, when the rest of the family tested positive, including Huang’s unvaccinated young daughter, they knew to wait it out, rather than rush to the hospital again. In retrospect, Huang told me on the phone, from quarantine, they could have worried less. Residents of Taiwan are used to going to the doctor if they get a high fever, he said; a trip to the emergency room costs about ten dollars. “Taiwan’s medical care is just too good.”
In Taiwan, upticks in cases are as tangible as shifts in the weather. Loose masks are upgraded immediately with tighter-fitting ones, and the physical spaces between strangers grow. Not long ago, in my gynecologist’s waiting room, women nervously arranged themselves with at least two empty seats between each other. Although the Omicron variant rarely causes serious illness in fully vaccinated people, malls and restaurants that were packed with crowds only a month ago have thinned out. An educator in Taipei told me that parents have been polarized into two groups: those who think it’s no big deal and those who remain deathly afraid of the virus.
“They don’t have to be this scared,” Shawn Chiu, a pediatrician in Douliu, a small city in western Taiwan, told me. In early May, Chiu said, hundreds of people were lining up for rapid-test kits every day, and most had not been exposed to covid or developed symptoms. The vaccination rate is higher than in many Western countries, Chiu pointed out, and even his younger, unvaccinated covid patients tend to have mild symptoms. “People’s impression of the virus is stuck in the Alpha and Delta era,” Chiu said, referring to earlier variants. “Our perspective of the disease is outdated.”
In a society where pandemic mandates are taken very seriously, rapid updates to our public-health guidelines have been confusing at times. “It’s a bit messy,” Chiu said. Some rules, such as the hospital-quarantine mandate, were first created when most of Taiwan was unvaccinated, he said. People are now being told to quarantine at home. One mother told me that she was quarantined at home for twenty days: ten because she was caring for her four-year-old son, whose classmate came down with covid, and another ten after her son ended up testing positive. Now, the recommended time is three days following an exposure or seven days following a positive test if the patient shows mild or no symptoms.
The Zero covid model was never designed to last forever. Australia and New Zealand eased their restrictions last year. Hong Kong loosened its restrictions in March; its covid death rate rose to one of the highest in the world, in part because its over-all high vaccination rates were low among the elderly. China and Taiwan were the last societies to maintain a strict Zero covid policy, and their paths finally diverged in April, as China clamped down and Taiwan began to open up.
The people who spoke with me seemed to appreciate that Taiwan’s approach is different from China’s. “Look at Shanghai and the chaos that has come out of that,” Leslie Liao, a Taipei-based journalist who was in quarantine with covid, told me. Shanghai, which has a larger population than Taiwan, has weathered two months of lockdown, affecting its twenty-five million residents. Food deliveries and access to hospitals have been restricted. Taiwanese news outlets have run headlines like “Shanghai Nightmare Scares Beijingers” and “Fleeing Shanghai! People Cannot Get a Ticket to Leave Even if They Pay Five Times More.” Taiwan’s government called the Chinese lockdowns “cruel.”
I’m still getting used to Taiwan’s version of the new normal: although the contact-tracing QR codes have been ripped off the doors, I still find myself reaching for my phone as I enter buildings. Lately, the government has been encouraging people to download an app that uses Bluetooth to identify covid exposures, with mixed results. Some of my friends have disabled or deleted the app because it stresses them out; one told me she got a notification that she was close to someone with covid for eight minutes at a wet market, which made her anxious for two weeks. (To her relief, she did not end up contracting covid.)
As of May 12th, positive results on at-home tests are treated as confirmed cases. There are simply too many cases out there to send everyone to the hospital, and telemedicine services are available instead. Schools are no longer required to close completely when there are covid cases, and businesses remain open. Quarantine times for travellers are being shortened dramatically, and there’s even talk of easing border restrictions in July. “Some people have said we should just open up all the borders, but that would be shocking,” Wu, the podcast producer, told me. “I feel like we have been living in a bubble,” Kathy Cheng, a writer and consultant in Taipei, said. “We’ve had a lot of freedom in living our daily lives. We haven’t had to worry about a lot of things that we’ve seen in the news overseas. But now the bad side is that we’re realizing the reality of this.”
Isolation, for some, has become a personal choice instead of something the government requires. My husband and I are fully vaccinated and boosted, but we have cancelled all our social engagements so we can travel to Sweden, his home country, for our wedding celebration. (We were legally married in 2019 but have been delaying the festivities since the pandemic began.) We would be devastated to come down with a fever and be denied entry to the airport.
As two healthy, boosted individuals, our choice to isolate might raise eyebrows in the U.S. But, as residents of Taiwan for the past two years, it is still mentally difficult for us to justify the risk, however small it may be. I remember reading about Americans who threw parties after receiving their vaccines, but people here are still social-distancing and wearing masks at all times, even as restrictions loosen by the day. The Taiwanese government has been integral in protecting us from the brute force of the pandemic. But none of its mandates would have worked without a coöperative majority—one that did not underestimate the destructive potential of the virus when it first appeared in 2020, and that continues to tread lightly.
Self-imposed quarantine has been dreary and monotonous—a far cry, oddly enough, from the busy social life that I enjoyed in 2020. For the sake of our mental health, my husband and I allow ourselves the occasional pleasure of long evening strolls by a nearby river. I’m keeping in mind that, at the worst of the pandemic, this was how most of my friends in the U.S. lived. And I’m counting myself lucky that now we’re less worried about the virus than the risk of missing our flight.
Clarissa Wei is an American Taiwanese journalist in Taipei. Her first cookbook, “Made in Taiwan,” will be published by Simon Element, in 2023.
2 Likes
Wrong. QR codes were not a thing until May 2021 during the alpha outbreak
It was an alpha outbreak.
1 Like
Hey! Those are not my words; they are all from Clarissa Wei.
Well, she did say "After that, . . . " I agree however that her timeline could be more precise here.
I thought that too as I read her piece! I’m not sure why she made a big deal of Delta when the scattered times it jumped the fence were followed by successful containment efforts.
Guy
3 Likes
The rapid containment of Delta was outstanding. They nipped it in the bud every time.
4 Likes
Brian Hioe, this time writing at Popula, tries his hand at describing where we are at in Taiwan—in the nebulous space after “COVID zero,” but not quite trying to “let 'er rip.”
Guy
3 Likes
I might as well put this story here.
Spoiler: I don’t have COVID.
Symptoms: woke up the other morning with a fever of almost 39°C, constant diarrhea, aches and pains all over my body, headache and dizziness, coughing, and almost any other symptom you could attribute to COVID.
Analysis: I used my pulse oximeter to take readings and found a blood oxygen level dipping a little bit below 95 on a couple of occasions. Also, my heart rate was increased to 120 BPM, which is above average, compared to my resting heart rate.
Confirmation: Three negative RAT tests later over three days, I am fairly sure that I was not infected. Not to mention the fact that I’d go around wearing n95 masks anytime I’m not either in my home or office. I haven’t been around another human being without a mask in months. I’m pretty sure I lost one of my best friends because I was unwilling to meet up with them.
Retrospection: I recalled having been a tad uneasy when I was ordering some grilled meat from a vendor. The boss and his wife, who usually prepared my order, were not there and this “auntie” was responsible for my order. She seemed a bit rushed. Then, at home, eating the grilled meat, it did taste a little bit different than usual.
Diagnosis: food poisoning. While it seems obvious, the symptoms overlap was significantly! I received a prescription from a doctor and I’ve been on the mend since.
Conclusions:
- fear of COVID will skew your mindset and cause you to overlook the most obvious.
- having a decent supply of test kits, even for an individual, is vital. I used one per day for a few days to make sure.
- obviously, do not eat undercooked food.
7 Likes
And yet, that age group is severely over-represented in the group of post-vax myocarditis cases, at a rate of somewhere around 200 per million, IIRC.
Which suggests that people should stop fretting over such things and focus on more tractable problems that are more likely to cause lasting harm or death to kids and teenagers.
Yet people seem to die from myocarditis caused by covid not vaccination. Interesting… once again your choices are vaccination or infection.
How would you even know that? Vaccination statistics are so horribly mutilated it’s impossible to be sure one way or the other - for example most countries count a death within two weeks of the first shot as “unvaccinated”.
You also don’t know how many years a bout of vaccine-induced myocarditis (or any of the other myriad adverse effects) will shave off the lifespan of a 15-year-old … because, of course, the vaccines haven’t been around long enough for us to find out. If, on average, we find that they end up dying in their 60s instead of a more normal lifespan, then a rate of 200 per million might (crudely speaking) be equivalent to 20 deaths per million.
There are a large number of post-vax deaths recorded worldwide. Whether they are dying specifically of myocarditis is probably not that important if you’re the person who’s dead. In comparison, look at those COVID death numbers for young people. These are vanishingly rare events - as I’ve pointed out many times before, they’re comparable to (actually lower than) extreme outlier tragedies like murder, suicide, and drug overdoses, and those are things which are to a certain extent preventable.
Your choice is not “vaccination or infection”. There is more to life than that.
1 Like
We’ve been over this many times.
Again I would ask you why you assume infection is preferable? Every question you’ve posed you could say the same thing for infection. We haven’t known long enough what are the long term effects of infection.
Current evidence shows that myocarditis from vaccination is much less severe, resolves on its own and does not result in death likes it does with infection.
I would also like to know the answer to this. It seems to be very much the case that the gov’t has handed over a great deal of power to the CECC with no obvious legal justification. The fact that this handover is/was so murky suggests that it may be rather difficult to wind it down.
I’m not assuming anything of the sort. I’m suggesting that if your concern is with enhancing health, wellbeing, and lifespan, then COVID doesn’t even figure on a teenager’s radar. There are 3,000 other things (such as being forced to wear a mask for no apparent reason) which are going to have a lifelong impact, and which require some consideration. You’re quite literally arguing over whether someone is more likely to be struck by lightning or pushed off a cliff by a rabid bear. It’s a nonsensical argument that has no meaningful answer.
You’re ignoring the binary choice that everyone has -vaccination, or infection with no protection. Yet you want to rant on about the miniscule risk of myocarditis from vaccination. In light of that choice, the obvious is to choose the one with less risk. Or you can pretend by abstaining you aren’t already choosing that infection is preferable.
Now you want to change the subject to mask wearing. What does that have to do with infection vs. vaccination? Explaining that will force your bias to rear it’s ugly head. I’d assume you don’t agree with government policies which influences your position on vaccination rather than following logic and choosing the option with less risk as it should be.
2 Likes
The “binary choice” does not exist because the default position is to ignore the whole thing and get on with the important business of living. We do not, generally speaking, waste our life-hours making “choices” about things that are of no practical significance.
The two (very small) risks that you insist on fretting over are not comparable. Firstly, the vaccination risk, which is multifaceted, is essentially unknown. Even if governments were keeping honest records - which they aren’t - it’d still be logically impossible to know what the risks are.
Furthermore the risks associated with getting COVID (if you are healthy teenager) are not mitigated in any meaningful way by getting vaccinated. You’re simply layering an additional risk on top of an existing risk. If you cannot see this from the global statistics, you’re in no position to lecture me about logic.
My “bias” is in favour of allowing people to live their lives in peace, and against filling their heads with medieval ideas about evil spirits and magic potions - which is essentially what this debate is about.
Mask-wearing affects our health. It particularly affects the health of children, in a multitude of negative ways. The whole COVID shitshow - not the virus, but the government response - has harmed every single person on the planet mentally, physically and financially, yet you’re arguing over something that has harmed almost nobody.
2 Likes
1 Like
I dunno about you, but I’m doing great. I haven’t been harmed yet.
Ah yes, the “I’m all right Jack” argument.
Who cares about those billions of people who suffered, because I didn’t.
I didn’t say that. I’m just refuting your claim that everyone is harmed by government intervention.
3 Likes