Coronavirus Vaccine in Taiwan - September/October 2021

Continuing the discussion from Coronavirus Vaccine in Taiwan - July/August 2021

As others have noted, the first shipment of BNT is scheduled to arrive today from Germany—reportedly around 900,000 vaccines.

Guy

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I have to hand it Guo , had very little faith that he would get this done. Also good on TSMC and CiJi and the government for coming to their senses.

I think it’s completely barmy that kids are getting the shots first though !
That doesn’t make any sense. Fortunately the epidemic is under control so they can fool around with the vaccination strategy like this.

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I guess the thinking is two fold:

  1. Pfizer/BNT is the only vaccine authorized for this age group, indicating that the authorities here have looked at outcomes elsewhere and decided yes they want this age group vaccinated too; and
  1. We’re now at a point where just about anyone in Taiwan aged 23 or older is now able to get a first shot (that’s the age range for the next round of AZ starting on September 3).

Guy

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I didn’t know that…Good news.
However it’s a high risk strategy due to Delta. Let’s hope it works Cotton.

I have been following the news in Vietnam and other south east Asian countries Delta is ripping through them bad…Many are averaging 20k new positives a day. Really disastrous and almost all under heavy lockdowns.

What’s the % double jabbed in 60 or 70 plus age group ?

The Tzu Chi donation seems to be also from a collection of corporates. Tzu Chi made the donation and then the companies donated to Tzu Chi. Those companies are Taiwan Glass, Taiwan Cement, Compal and IGS

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Interesting…Some of them are semi state companies. Makes sense.

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Kids in cramped classrooms can serve as vectors for new transmission chains even if they themselves don’t get sick. Also, this is to make the “Karens”… um, I mean concerned parents feel more at ease about sending their little darlings back to school. :wink:

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Its completely nuts. Why are they so worried about the kids and not workers who have to go into offices and factories, support families and actually pay tax?

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My general feeling about this, is that Guo has been so motivated to get this done and travel to Europe to push delivery dates, because he is a retired hyper-achiever who hates relaxing.

He was known his whole career as a micro-managing workaholic authoritarian boss and built his whole business on bringing down lead times and costing down processes. Like a lot of these people, I dont think he is able to just go and play golf and enjoy his money. Running around bossing people around and being the center of attention is probably making him happy.

I think its more of that than political ambitions

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He’s one of those people who would wither away and die within 6 months if he couldn’t work.

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I agree, although it certainly doesn’t hurt him if he does have another run at the presidency in mind.

As for the BNT decision, it’s not entirely true to say everyone over 23 has the choice of another vaccine (except Medigen). AZ is still limited to the people who selected it before 7/19, when many people had no idea vaccine supply would be so limited. So there’s still millions of older people who haven’t had a shot.

Vaccines are mostly useful for stopping serious illness and death, so the logic of wanting to stop transmission in schools with vaccines is very confusing. And why do 20-22 year olds get priority when they are also approved for the 3 other vaccines? Whole decision-making process doesn’t make sense.

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If Taiwanese care about kids so much, they should have more of them

Or they should at least bring in policy that make it more viable for younger people to have kids. Like taxes on empty property.

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Vietnam just bought the Cuban vaccine and paid for a technology transfer from Cuba to manufacture there.

Quite interesting

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Vietnam was a success story up until a few months ago as well IIRC. Very sad, but not surprising.

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Another slow day yesterday it seems.
23,827 doses given yesterday, of which 17,725 were second doses. 920,962 are now fully vaccinated.
https://www.cdc.gov.tw/File/Get/9TCQ4NeRt9DusdRaagKZWQ

Flight with unknown number of BNT on board said to be arriving tomorrow morning according to Apple Daily.

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I actually agree. He has a really huge ego.

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930,000 doses of BNT arrived at Taoyuan Airport this morning.

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Of course, where you think Tzu Chi get their operating money from? It’s a charity.

English article

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