Nah…I’m pretty sure he still lives with his mommy and daddy and will get them to pay off the debt.
Lol maybe…but it’s still f***ed.
1 Like
FIFY 
1 Like
Thanks, dad!
1 Like
A Focus Taiwan article reporting on predictions that the case-number peak could now be around early June.
A weird quote:
The fact that the daily number of new infections did not break the CECC’s previous prediction of 100,000 could partly be attributed to people voluntarily adopting social distancing measures, such as avoiding restaurants and public transport.
Am I missing something? I’ve been assuming that the current 80,000 tallies are a significant undercount, since lots of people are probably just getting a positive rapid test and then staying home, doing nothing further. To me, not mentioning that in the article is a pretty big oversight; I’d have thought under-reporting is likely more of a factor in not breaking 100,000 than “voluntarily adopting social distancing measures”. Or do they have other means of getting this count?
9 Likes
Nope, you’re not missing anything. (I’m sure Chen isn’t either, but this narrative is obviously nicer.)
5 Likes
As Andrew said, I’m sure they’re not stupid and they know perfectly well what the (most likely) explanation is. All very Taiwanese, isn’t it?
The timescale estimate is probably correct - not because the case numbers mean anything, but because it’s been the general global experience that an ‘omicron wave’ lasts a few weeks and then settles down to sporadic cases.
3 Likes
OK. I think what’s most annoying is the double level of … omission? The spokesperson should have acknowledged that (I dunno, maybe they did in Chinese); and then whether the spokesperson talked about it or not, the journalists should then have at least raised the possibility.
1 Like
“Read the air!”
Would imagine it’s a very significant undercount! As far as I am aware a home antigen test with online consult will be accepted as evidence without needing a PCR test for everyone from Thursday onwards, not officially confirmed yet but strongly hinted. That will remove the logistics BS in trying to get to and from test centers and also test capacity…to be replaced by not having sufficient online doctor capacity no doubt…
Numbers may increase after that however a large number of people will still not want to voluntarily subject themselves, family, friends and company to quarantine restrictions. There still does not seem to be any reason to subject oneself to that if symptoms are mild, which they are in the vast majority of cases.
7 Likes
Not that I know anyone who has a sore throat this morning, and if I oops, they had plenty of test kits around, they’d probably try the test, but since there are confusing rules about what happens once you’ve got a positive test; and there’s only a limited number of test kits in the apartment; and once you start the process you seem to need to quite a number of kits over the next week; and this person doesn’t technically need to leave the apartment for at least a few days; eh, let’s wait and see.
And I’m guessing there are many many many others on this island in similar circumstances.
Anyway, my main issue with the article above is that they should at least say there’s a high chance the daily counts are a massive undercount, and therefore predicting the peak based on those numbers would surely have big, big error bars.
2 Likes
It really isn’t important at all. The test counting has no purpose except to fill in a few minutes at the press conference. The width of the ‘wave’ has been more-or-less constant across the whole planet, including places like HK where the authorities went loonytunes. There’s no reason to expect that Taiwan is going to be exceptional here, so a peak within the next couple of weeks would be a reasonable guess.
I’m just wondering if Chen has a plan for retaining his 15 minutes of daily fame when it all just goes away. The press conference is going to be black comedy gold in July, I reckon. Anyone want to run a forumosa sweepstake on the date of the pivot to monkeypox?
Covid Stats For 2022-05-25
Local = 89,352
Airport = 30
Quarantine = 7
Deaths = 76
Current Severity of Symptoms Statistics
Local Cases By Districts (Interactive Map)
6 Likes
Jesus.
…died for your sins
4 Likes
Then he respawned so we could sin again…
For a while, the US was getting in excess of 3,000 deaths a day.
I think so. It’s all relative. If testing stays consistent etc., there’s a connection between the official count and the actual number of cases. It does have relevance. The CECC’s prediction there was based on their official count, and that’s what they’re reporting on. I can see arguing that the article would be better if they had mentioned there must be more cases, and that there are variables in the equation.
3 Likes
The US is the bottom of the barrel though. 76 deaths in a day is almost as many as the worst in Australia/New Zealand/Singapore’s record deaths (relative to population) in a day.