When was COVID-19 first present in Taiwan?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

taste buds all out of wack. Personally I believe shit was circulating taiwan prior to the shit show pandemic. JUST MY OPINION.

A few years ago I lost my sense of smell for a few months.
It thought it was allergies at the time but now I realise it was probably a viral infection. And not only loss of smell but I was smelling things that weren’t there, like electrical cable burning. Very disturbing.

Very gradually my sense of smell and taste came back (the nerve cells grow back I believe ) but I suspect not 100% compared to before.

I lost my sense of taste for a month once due to thrush… basically a giant yeast infection of the tongue. Not exactly the coolest thing to have, especially when you’re single.

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Agreed.

Just before Covid became a thing, I had a horrible flu. Had to go to the hospital. Diagnosed with pneumonia. Saw many people with the same symptoms and knew many who caught something unusually bad. They all recovered though.

Could have been just the flu, but I had a flu shot. I really believe Taiwan was hit by Covid early on and we’ve managed to develop close to herd immunity or proved it’s not that bad.

Without antibody testing, we won’t know.

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I also got insanely sick with some non-flu virus (I came up negative for influenza) in the fall of 2019. Had a very high fever and couldn’t teach for about 3 or 4 days. Who knows? It’s possible COVID circulated here, but then why didn’t our hospitals get slammed like other countries when they got their outbreaks? I’m not opposed to antibody tests though.

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Unfortunately the latter part of this statement has not been demonstrated by anyone to be accurate.

Guy

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But there were large-scale studies—some, like the Changhua study, quite controversial as they involved breaking CECC guidelines. You are aware of these studies, right?

Guy

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It wasn’t. All the studies so far say no such thing.

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The problem is that Corona would have sent many to the hospital, creating spikes in demand and deaths.

It would have been noticeable on the charts.

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proved it’s not that bad

I don’t think you’re far off.

Once again: there were in fact studies done in Taiwan and they didn’t find antibodies in any significant number of people.

Guy

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My friend was denied an antibody test start of the year and he is 100% convinced he has had covid in Taiwan. He may be full of turd, but the symptoms he had back seem a bit suspicious to me now. At the time I thought he was being a bit dramatic, but lots of people are now talking about some mystery illness they had in 19’.

anyway, like I said, it could be totally anecdotal, but coincidental to say the least.

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Are you referring to this?

"What’s the CDC’s position?

CECC experts had cautioned before that the test may not reflect the actual infection rate in Changhua as antibody test kits available on the market are not very accurate.

They said this was one of the reasons why the CECC has decided against countrywide mass testing for COVID-19 so far.

Guy"

So if the tests were not accurate thus, faulty. Would it not mean there weren’t any tests done earlier?

Fri, Aug 28, 2020 Taipei Times, page 1
  • Changhua antibody study highlights success of CECC

    • By Jake Chung / Staff writer, with CNA
Summary

The results of a controversial antibody study in Changhua County, which National Taiwan University (NTU) public health researchers announced yesterday, showed the success of the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) disease prevention efforts, but not the need for universal screening.

The research was mainly conducted by the county government, while NTU’s College of Public Health assisted with data analysis, former college dean Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) told a news conference convened in Taipei to announce the preliminary results.

Chan had been calling for mass testing for COVID-19 to identify asymptomatic patients, but the CECC had not taken his advice.

From left, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang, National Taiwan University College of Public Health former vice dean Tony Chen, former college dean Chan Chang-chuan, Changhua Public Health Bureau Director Yeh Yen-po and college dean Cheng Shou-hsia attend a news conference in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: CNA

Of the 4,841 high-risk people whose blood samples were analyzed, only four were confirmed positive, a rate of 8.3 positive people per 10,000, Changhua Public Health Bureau Director Yeh Yen-po (葉彥伯) said.

Those who were inspected included confirmed COVID-19 patients and those with high risk of becoming patients, including medical personnel, police officers who helped with disease prevention measures and those under home quarantine after returning from the US, Europe and China, he said.

The study demonstrates that the average citizen does not need an antibody test, Yeh said, adding that the test results prove that Changhua is safe.

Taiwan’s first COVID-19 patient, an unlicensed taxi driver who also became the nation’s first death from the pandemic, was in the county, but the rest of the nation does not need to worry now that Changhua is safe, he added.

Since April, the bureau has bumped heads with the CECC for conducting pathology testing not approved by the center.

An Aug. 15 test that discovered the nation’s 485th case — a Taiwanese teen living in the US who arrived on Aug. 5 for a family visit — was touted as proof that the nation needed to implement general screening for COVID-19, increasing tensions between the CECC and the county government.

At the news conference, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the CECC’s spokesman, thanked the research team for announcing the results despite the challenges, saying that the research clarified whether the nation’s disease prevention system has any loopholes.

The results show that the CECC’s policy of using home quarantine and home isolation to prevent transmission of the virus by asymptomatic patients works, Chuang said.

Asked to comment on the results of the mass testing, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said it showed that the collaborative efforts of all parts of society to prevent the spread of the disease paid off.

It also showed that mass testing is unnecessary, he added.

Hopefully, people would learn their lesson and follow the CECC’s instructions, he said, adding that in disease prevention, unity is strength.

Regarding controversy surrounding the funding sources and testing agents for the research, Chan said that the school’s study was academic, as its contract with the county government said that it could provide assistance if public health evaluations were needed.

Their study had been approved by NTU’s Institutional Review Board, he added.

NTU provided the funding to purchase the antibody serum solutions and the research team helped analyze the serum samples, Chan said, adding that it did not collect any of the blood samples.

Additional reporting by Sean Lin, Wu Po-hsuan and Lin Hui-chin

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People get ambiguous viral infections all the time.

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like I said, im not here to say who is right or wrong, but their case is interesting to look at.

It’s extremely unlikely covid broke out here in Taiwan in 2019 and there’s absolutely no reason why it would be contained with no measures in place to do so . There just isn’t any evidence for an early outbreak . Case closed.

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If it was here in 2019, it contradicts what happened in May.

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Exactly. Both commonsesne and a lack of any evidence whatsoever to prove there were covid infections in 2019 , plus there being no reason to deny such an outbreak all say this theory has no legs to stand on.

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I have a theory there’s some kind of deep-seated resistance in these parts compared to most of the world.