Cathay Century and CTBC have reported to the commission that they intend to conduct capital injections of NT$10 billion (US$336.41 million) to NT$4 billion respectively, Insurance Bureau Director-General Shih Chiung-hwa (施瓊華) told a virtual news conference.
The commission expects several insurers to follow suit this year after they have a better understanding of the losses expected from COVID-19 insurance policy compensations, Shih said.
Fubon Insurance Co (富邦產險) on Wednesday said that it has assigned more staff members to address the sales of COVID-19 insurance policies.
Additionally, during May and last month Fubon compensated 103,000 policyholders with combined payments of NT$4.08 billion, 15 times its NT$260 million payouts from January to April, it said.
Some risk management people for these insurers have not slept well in last 2 months.
That was some major hubris thinking they could make money selling insurance policies for COVID. It suggests people who ought to know better really did buy into “Taiwan is invulnerable” BS that the CECC sold them.
A Taiwanese I know, got paid out N$200,000 or so for his wife who caught it, and he got like NT$100,000 for getting “quarantined” due to her catching it.
All on a lottery ticket, errr insurance premium, of NT$600+ each.
That’s a fuqqing huge ROI.
Yeah, lucky for some. I did consider buying one of those policies. Unfortunately, I have yet to test positive (despite having two days’ worth of something that was probably the dreaded lurgy) so I would have just lost my NT$600
Thank you Andrew, I have never been called hypothetical. I am immunocompromised. So are neighbors recovering from cancer, the diabetic coworker, etc. But I know freedom is important, the sick should be vaccinated and have lost 100 pounds or would not be sick, the economy and all that jazz. We’ve been there before. No need to repeat the argument.
Taiwan has tried to balance restrictions so the weak and sick are not lost in a single blow. But it is a free country. And 3 years are a heavy toll. I understand.
I believe Andrew’s point was that there are far fewer of these people than governments like to make out. “Immunocompromised” is a very vague word that can be used to mean all sorts of different things, and governments have milked it for all it’s worth. Pre-2020, the word was generally used for people who - for example - were taking powerful immunosuppressant drugs, or had had bits of their lymphatic system removed. It doesn’t just mean “people who are more likely than the average to get ill”. There are very few people who are in serious danger from COVID because they are “immunocompromised”. Someone who has cancer is in danger from cancer, not COVID.
And has … done what instead? Decided to lose them more slowly?
Someone who is vulnerable is vulnerable. The idea that you can protect them by doing things to other people is ridiculous on the face of it, and in practice has worked nowhere. As plenty of level-headed doctors have pointed out, if someone is sick in some way that puts them at higher risk of COVID, then the best thing to do is to ensure that there’s some sort of game plan for damage control when they encounter the virus. Pretending that putting blue masks on the other 99.99% of the population will somehow make the virus go away hurts a whole bunch of other people, and leaves the original sick person in exactly the same position he was in before.
I know – you’ve mentioned your health issues before, and you have my sympathy for that.
But I didn’t call you “hypothetical”, not at all. You misunderstood what I wrote there. “Hypothetical” was referring to the actually hypothetical immunocompromised people who keep being wheeled out in support of whatever arbitrary measures we’re discussing, as in this previous post of yours (which is one of the things I was referencing):
Immunocompromised/vulnerable people exist, sure. But like @finley said, I’m skeptical that there are as many of these people about as comments like yours above suggest (maybe someone could find an estimated number?). I would agree that this guy you mentioned probably shouldn’t be visiting such people while he’s sick, and the immunocompromised/vulnerable people themselves probably shouldn’t be accepting visitors.
If I were immunocompromised/vulnerable, it would strike me as in my best interests to minimize my contact with others for the sake of my own health. I probably wouldn’t be expecting everybody else in society to make dramatic and unwanted changes to their lives indefinitely – and be harmed themselves in the process – because it might protect me a bit against one/some of the things I’m vulnerable to.
You might think it’s a selfish attitude from those of us who are tired of these measures with no clear end point, but I don’t see how it’s much more selfish than expecting everyone else to endure the measures indefinitely to “protect” whoever these vulnerable people are. We’re all slowly dying, and I’d personally prefer not to keep being made miserable by this stuff in the time I have left before I get hit by a bus or otherwise die of something that’s probably not going to be COVID.
So far, just s little civility has gotten us less pain and losses than gains here in Taiwan. Again, here in Taiwan the little things like wearing a mask, which are anyways not considered a challenge. Other places ironically have had the losses you mention because they skipped the little things.
The immune the weak are not the excuse. Every one was at risk before vaccines and meds were in the pipeline. Healthy sporty people died in 2020 especially abroad where “excuses” were not made. Again I remind you places abroad had their medical services overrun. That is what measures like quarantine tried to slow down.
Our hospitals are still running. People get cancer treatment or operations for broken bones. They get tested beforehand to avoid hospital contagion. If positive treatment has to be delayed, otherwise both the patient, the hospital workers and fellow patients are in danger. Here in Taiwan we did not have thousands of medical workers and janitors die or get crippled by COVID. Hence, the “excuses”.
It’s not clear to me how a lot of what you wrote relates to anything I wrote.
Losses? What losses? Losses of what? I don’t think I mentioned any losses?
Excuses? For what?
You do presumably realize we’re not in 2020 anymore, right? Vaccines exist, as do medicines, and the virus has evolved too. How long do you expect everyone to keep up with this for? What criteria do you think would need to be fulfilled? If you’re still hoping for zero COVID and zero deaths and zero new variants, I suspect you’re setting yourself up for a very long wait.
You have this scaremongering tendency to focus on the worst outlier cases and act like those are the norm. Fine - a tiny minority of healthy sporty people died in 2020. So what? I’m sure some healthy sporty people died of freak things in 2018 too, and I’m sure that’ll continue to happen in coming years. Sometimes some kids will die too. It’s unfortunate to be sure, but you’ll have to take that up with a higher power, and it isn’t enough to convince me that everything should revolve around trying to prevent the unpreventable year after year.
What drives me absolutely nuts about the “won’t you just accept a little inconvenience [forever] in order to protect others” argument is that it clearly doesn’t work, and can’t possibly work. We know that there are some people who have statistically-elevated risk of COVID. They’re not a homogeneous group, but we know who they are. If world governments (or the CECC) were saying that these people need special protection, and that a raft of measures would be introduced to help them that would unfortunately require everyone to pay another NT$200 a month in taxes to pay for - say - a helpline for these people, access to priority medical treatment, extra equipment and doctors, and free prophylactic drugs for them, I’d be totally on board with that. It’s a minimal cost and it’d have some positive results (I doubt it would “save lives” for the simple reason that even very old and sick people are not at any remarkable risk, as the MOHW death spreadsheet attests). But AFAIK nobody on the planet has done that. Instead, they’ve imposed unbearable costs on the entire population for no benefit whatsoever to the people identified as “vulnerable”.
So what are some of the outcomes as BA.5 numbers spike? Here’s one brief example from Kyodo News in Japan:
Kyushu Railway Co., which serves the southwestern Japan region, said Monday it will temporarily suspend 120 limited express train services due to staff shortages caused by the spread of coronavirus infections among onboard crew.
I’m sure some healthy sporty people died of freak things in 2018 too, and I’m sure that’ll continue to happen in coming years. Sometimes some kids will die too. It’s unfortunate to be sure, but you’ll have to take that up with a higher power, and it isn’t enough to convince me that everything should revolve around trying to prevent the unpreventable year after year.