Was there any point where they got some (any) professional opinion that these dividers would do anything?
You can’t spit in the other’s plate?
I’m curious if they’ve announced anything about that in Taiwan - if there are any studies supporting the barriers. I’ll occasionally do Google searches, and haven’t found anything that says the dividers do much of anything. The dividers seem to be an idea from the earlier months of the pandemic, when fast-falling droplets were thought to be the main source of transmission, rather than longer-floating aerosols. Everyone stopped washing their food and grocery bags; the dividers, however, remain.
My personal suspicion is increasing ventilation - the actually important thing - takes more work and costs more money. Dividers are the fast, simple, and wrong solution.
Below are some links with an initial Google search of “evidence for plastic dividers and covid”, which doesn’t seem too biased a starting place for the search.
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They don’t seem to be following much professional opinion on anything these days.
No other country in the world that I know of has a 100% compulsory outdoor mask mandate at Level 2. Especially while allowing indoor dining. They’re doing their best ostrich impression.
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Mild defense of the policy: I assume they know that it’s idiotic to require us to wear masks when we’re cycling or hiking miles from anyone. BUT they’ve chosen “masks always on” as the policy to ensure that people wear masks in other situations, like crowded outdoor tourist destinations.
I wish a policy of “Come on, don’t be dumb, wear a mask if you’re near lots of other people for an extended period” would work as a legal guideline. However, I suspect it wouldn’t, and that’s probably why they opted for this approach.
Side point: I read somewhere recently that, unlike last year, this year the virus is spreading at outdoor festivals elsewhere (dumb Delta strain). So wearing masks in crowded outdoor situations does make sense.
Of course, all of that is setting aside the question of how much COVID we actually have here now.
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Have they considered spray disinfection of the plastic screen dividers while people eat? Just chucking some ideas out there.
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More ideas.
I think there should be a whisper regulation. Whenever outside, you must whisper only. 3,000 - 50,000 nt fine for infractions, depending on how loud your voice was. All police should carry around decibel meters.
It is known fact that respiratory droplets resulting from talking is a danger.
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Careless talk costs lives!
EDIT: looks like that little creep Whitty thought of @marasan’s suggestion back in January (and the Metro preempted my response):
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This is pretty concerning. We’ll be lucky if we don’t have another outbreak
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Ceiling sprays. Yes! Now we’re talking.
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This is the argument everyone makes to me. I don’t accept it. The Singapore rule is masks off for hard exercise. That’d work fine here. Solo jogging or riding etc.
But my bigger gripe is you can’t have indoor dining if it’s compulsory masks in open outdoor spaces. It doesn’t make sense.
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I didn’t know Singapore was doing that. Yeah, that would definitely be an improvement here.
Why, what’s unusual about it?
Which is necessary when you have indoctrinated most of your population as brainless robots since early age. Cant adjust, won’t think, memorize it is.
Too difficult for them to distinguish when to put mask on/off better just tell them to wear it all the time. We don’t have time to change their codes, so it is what it is, problem solved.
Either they think the population is a bunch of what I just said, incompetent functional adults, or the population really is that.
You may be on to something there. I think Taiwan is in a kind of binary dystopia. Masks on = Good. Masks off = Bad. Hence they even started to suggest wearing masks while at home. I mean I doubt anywhere else in the world has gone so far as to suggest mask wearing at home. Maybe China.
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I was thinking along similar lines - one of those aromatherapy diffusers full of bleach in every room.
This is exactly how the virus gets spread throughout communities. These people were all over
See now you’ve taken it too far. DDT will do the job just fine, plus its odorless and tasteless so your dining experience won’t be spoiled at all.
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not in Taiwan. gravity is stronger and sinks particles to the ground. nothing to worry about.
must be quite a few cases unknown out there, also I wonder how many people have covid symptoms but would rather be quite about it to avoid being the scapegoat.
I just went outside for the first time in several days and was surprised to see even more bars open again.
And by bars, I mean definite bars, with people sitting next to each other on stools drinking beer in front of the floor-to-ceiling window with no masks. Seemed more than a bit ridiculous for me to be wearing a mask outside by myself in a mostly empty street…
I saw as well that Revolver has opened/is about to open for indoor “dining” with precautions. (I’m not sure whether they’ve extended their food menu beyond nachos and passive smoke.)
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