It could be 100,000 cases a day and it doesn’t matter as long as no one is dying.
He’s not someone I consider reliable, so did Ko actually say that? And is that his decision or the CECC’s?
Do less testing?
Under ten cases a day, with high rates of testing, is unlikely to ever be achievable. Such a target is way too low. This policy thus becomes an excuse to keep the population under control indefinitely. This is precisely what various Australian governments have done - as soon as there are a one, two or three cases they lock everyone up under the pretense of ‘protecting’ people. It’s a hallmark of totalitarian regimes, particularly Victoria in Australia.
Covid is here to stay. It won’t be eradicated anytime soon, if at all. Yet, governments want us to think they have our best interests at heart by restricting our freedoms in the name of ‘protecting our health,’ at whim.
With home testing kits coming in now, how on earth would there ever be less than 10 cases a day?
Politicians like to just keep parroting the same line: “It’s not safe to open anything!” forever and ever. The population are kept in a state of fear (easy peasy in Taiwan) and will go along with it.
Yea it’s much worse. Having a baby means loss of any dreams and aspirations, forcing you to become the vapid people that you detest.
You like science fiction, death rate is low but not that low, if there is 100,000 cases there will be more deaths.
Brian has his own points of view, he’s an adult, he’s allowed to comment on what he sees happening. That’s part of being in a free society.
But I’m sorry the idea that he just makes up statements from Ko is ridiculous. His daily roundup (full of hyperlinks to other sources) posted on New Bloom is heads and shoulders above what most English language media are able to provide.
Guy
Which actuarial tables are you consulting? Royalty gets far better healthcare than the hoi polloi. Plus her mother lived to be 101.
It’s a ballpark figure for the purpose of illustration. Of course the number for the individual is going to be different. If you choose 0.2 then her chance of being dead in the next five years is 2 in 3. If you choose 0.3, then her chance of being dead in the next three years is 2 in 3. Typical life expectancy at 95 is 3-4 years.
In any case, whatever number you pick, the existence of COVID “out there” doesn’t alter it by very much (reason: while the chances of her dying if she contracts severe COVID are high, the probability that she will actually contracting severe COVID is very small). It would be irrational in the extreme for HM to waste a second of her life fretting over “what if”.
I’m simply pointing out that you can’t just take numbers at face value.
The UK is now opening up, sure there are more infections, but not masses of deaths.
The Delta variant is putting a bit of a spanner in the works, but hopefully only a temporary blip.
Maybe covid really is here to stay forever, in which case getting it to zero cases will be impossible, so not a good measure for when it’s time to “open up”.
I didn’t argue with any of that, I, being in a free society, stating an opinion.
His sentence was meandering and contradictory (question, thinking, considering), and the writer, in my free opinion, tends towards hyperbole, making his reporting of the matter unreliable to my standards.
My hope was that someone else had heard the quote and could provide context. It could well be that Ko was the one who was meandering and contradictory, but when you don’t trust the messenger, it’s worth asking.
has a clear narrative, which leads to a further lack of trust, though the writing is generally done well. This was on his twitter feed, and he sometimes tweets what looks like a stream of consciousness, so I couldn’t know if that was an accurate statement or an impressionistic interpretation.
More accurate is “The UK is now delaying fully opening up by a month”. Let’s see in a month…
Hope doesn’t hurt! Let see in one month where is Taiwan and where is the UK.
The gold standard of late on twitter is the awesome WilliamYang120 with his daily twitter posts from the CDC press conference. He’s another guy with a point of view (reporting on Xinjiang, on HK, on LGBTQ+ rights).
When he took at day off over the long weekend, he recommended folks to follow Brian for updates. Good enough for William Yang, good enough for me.
Guy
That’s fine, just come up with the money!
There are 453 more deaths this past May than May 2019, the next highest death counts for May in the past decade.
Eventhough there are about 500 accumulated confirmed COVID deaths (from 2020 till now), all the measures against COVID, such as masks and staying home, should have cut down deaths from other causes. So we might be seeing some excess deaths (death from COVID without having tested positive). Although, the bump is too small to be certain that it’s caused by COVID.
That would be welcome, for sure. However, for my own mental health I need more than money 
He, I will trust, but I didn’t know of him until recently. TBF, I just had a look at Hioe and he has left out the hyperbole and virtue signaling lately, probably trying to be more serious due to the situation.
But that reported speech of Ko’s was hard to parse, and if it means what it seems to, I need to be long-term plans because it won’t get as low as 10 per day for a long time.
It also isn’t clear if 10 was in reference to Taipei or all of Taiwan, but it seems he meant Taipei.
To be fair to all involved, I don’t think any of these guys know exactly what will happen.
I just hope they can get effective (and in the case of Taipei City, frankly better) vaccine sites set up. One would think that this would be their top priority.
Guy
Israel has around 9M population. Has the highest rate of vaccination of any country. Over 10M vaccinations done. On June 15 they had 11 positive Covid cases. For Ko to think that he’ll only open up if they get below 10 then he has basically decided to permanently keep the place locked down indefinitely.
Under 10 cases per day ain’t gonna happen. Not now, not likely ever. For God’s sake, Taiwan has around 500 deaths from pneumonia and influenza EVERY SINGLE WEEK Taiwan National Infectious Disease Statistics System (cdc.gov.tw). And that is WITH all the flu vaccines they roll out year in and year out.
I’m highly suspicious of such statements by politicians like Ko. It seems they use these arbitrary and impossible-to-attain figures to further their own agendas.