šŸ˜· COVID | Traveling during Covid-19

The government issued an orange alert on Monday, they have community transmission clusters and one of the highest risk areas for sure of getting yourself quarantined. Do not go there right now.

Not good advice. Singaporeā€™s own government changed their status to orange alert on Monday. If it gets any higher you will get quarantined coming back to Taiwan. I would book to go to Australia or Indonesia or Malaysia or some European countries at the moment.

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Vietnam did aswell. Thereā€™s also a tonne of confusion about Taiwanā€™s status amongst many officials and people out there . By the way the average Filipino thinks Taiwan is part of China like Hong Kong. You should ask them. They donā€™t understand that Taiwan had its own fully independent state with its own militaryā€¦
The Chinese have been effective in pushing the one China line through different channels to confuse the situation.
Also Taiwan didnā€™t effectively promote its identity beyond that there is a lot of knowledge you donā€™t need a visa to go to Taiwan as a tourist and that Taiwan is a place they can get work.

I think even if I enter Taiwan and a country put restrictions on people who traveled to Taiwanā€¦I can just use my US passport.

You need to write down where you have traveled through.

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I wasnā€™t, entered Italy with my US passport and no one asked.

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Iā€™m sure different countries have different policies.
How many people infected in Italy now?

I think only 3. But all Chinese.

If weā€™re talking about fear of contagion, Iā€™d rather be in Singapore than Malaysia or Indonesia. But in terms of travel quarantines, I get your point. I guess we will know soon enough.

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Looks like Philippines reversed itā€™s decision.

These kinds of things are rife within three 3rd world countries ā€œanything goesā€ but now the world gets to see how sketchy their politics are as they ban travel, strand hundreds and cause flight cancellations for (tens of) thousands more, all to reverse it a few days later?

Clowns

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Iā€™m doing a stopover in Hong Kong in July. I wonder if I should change it. I guess worst case scenario is two weeks quarantine, right?

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Iā€™d say thatā€™s way too far out to bother changing it at the moment - predictions at the moment are pretty much impossible.

(My guess: weā€™ll have all accepted Covid-19 as a flu thatā€™s everywhere and that any of us are liable to get, which means a slightly higher chance of death and otherwise weā€™re living our life as weā€™ve done before, with hopefully more hand-washing; but the worst-case scenario, well, maybe let @Icon chip in with that!)

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Actually, the worst case scenario is you contract the plague.

I donā€™t actually think it would happen. Just sayinā€™

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Nah, I havenā€™t seen a death rate recently, but at worst it seems to be a 2% death rate, and my guess is there are many undiagnosed cases that make it less serious than that (EDIT: still bad, mind you!). Worst case is the whole world shutting down out of fear, the economic system grinding to a halt, and lots more people dying from basically everything because weā€™re not getting medicines (or even food) shipped anywhere. Oh, and hospitals shut down. That kind of stuff.

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Is this what happened with SARS, too?

I think SARS mostly went away? It faded with the seasons and the quarantines. Iā€™m kind of embarrassed Iā€™m not sure about that.

EDIT: OK, yeah, outbreak was halted and microbe disappeared:

Itā€™s still possible that quarantines and travel bans will first halt the outbreak and then eradicate the microbe, and the world will never see 2019-nCoV again, as epidemiologist Dr. Mike Ryan, head of health emergencies at the World Health Organization, told STAT on Saturday [note, back in early February]. Thatā€™s what happened with SARS in 2003. (Source.)

John Nicholls, clinical professor of pathology at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), said the SARS outbreak was brought to an end in July 2003 by good hygiene practices ā€“ such as frequent hand-washing ā€“ and environmental factors such as high temperature and humidity in the summer months. (Source.)

In late July 2003, the World Health Organization concluded the SARS outbreak was over. Since then, nine cases of SARS infections have been reported, but they occurred as a result of laboratory accidents in Singapore and Taiwan [!!!] and from exposure to an animal source. No other cases of SARS have been identified anywhere else in the world. Research published in 2013 in the Journal of Infectious Diseases concluded that, by all accounts, SARS seemed to be gone. (Source.)

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:sick:

SARS was more lethal, but less contagious.

Something like 800 fatalities and 8k infected. So it had a 10% mortality rate.

This current thing has infected (no doubt far more, but the official count is) 80k and almost 2k has died. My bet is thereā€™s probably a couple hundred thousand that have gotten it, but over half werenā€™t hospitalized. This has a 1-2% mortality rate, but with many more infected it means many more have died.

Because the infected rate is so much higher this has a greater chance of sticking around longer. It might even become seasonal like H1N1.

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Speculative at best.

We arenā€™t even absolutely certain how this virus is transmitted as yet. We arenā€™t even certain when an individual is contagious and can pass the virus to others. We arenā€™t certain if a person who is asymptomatic can infect others. Basically, thereā€™s a whole lot of shit that we absolutely do not know at this point, let alone have any type of successful treatment or a vaccine.

Worst case scenario? Who knows what that is or could be? Could be nothingā€¦could be nothing like weā€™ve ever seen before!

I think itā€™s a neato Chinese engineered bio-weapon made 200 meters from the wild animal meat market and it got out through human error.

But, ā€œI guessā€ is probably a very good way to start any sentence when discussing the coronavirus at this point.

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Right, I should have been more clear. I meant, Iā€™m sure I can get sick or whateverā€¦ But in terms of traveling.
I was worried traveling back to Taiwan through Hong Kong that I wonā€™t be allowed back in Taiwan.
I meant the worst thing that will happen is likely a home quarantineā€¦ And likely nothing.

Iā€™ll probably not change my ticket

Agreed

I was just curious if other travelers are changing their plans for the near future because of this virus

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