Only 500 people live there. It’s never featured in anything.
That would be like one apartment block in Sanchong.
As a student, you would want to enjoy some nightlife, and now is really not the right time to come. Next months will very likely see another lockdown and then your learning will be compromised as well. Wait it out.
If you can simply defer for a few months or a year, you should do that. If you can’t, you’d be crazy to pass up the opportunity to study Chinese there on a scholarship. I’m not in Taiwan now, but based on how I understand it, it’s not an ideal time to go but it’s also not that bad like it was in the UK and the US during the dark days of the first lockdowns.
IMO, eventually Taiwan will be forced to come around to the fact that COVID is here to stay and people need to adopt a little personal responsibility in their own lives…
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Speaking directly to why you are planning to come to Taiwan: as a language teacher, I will say it’s really almost impossible to teach/learn a language with a mask on, which is probably something not going away anytime soon. I have kids who are REALLY honing their listening skills and also failing epically at learning to pronounce a lot of things correctly because they can’t see how I form the words with my face. Even if your Chinese is already pretty good, you’re going to want to be able to see people’s lips so you can learn to pronounce things. So that’s something to consider.
Life in general though is probably safer than most other places. I go about my life as usual (suffocating with a mask on outside right now, though January will be a different story). Even went out to dinner a few times and to a bar once, though that was among the fully vaccinated and before this latest Delta scare, so I was not really concerned. It’s nice to keep in mind my chances of catching Delta from some crazy anti-mask anti-vaxxer is much lower than it is anywhere else in the world, so there’s that. But you might want to be online with a strong connection for Chinese class in the meantime, since you and your teacher can then see each others’ faces.
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I think that’s already apparent to the government, but we need that stable supply of vaccines to ensure that opening the doors isn’t a catastrophe.
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If israel is an indicator of where things are heading then taiwan wont reopen the doors. the most vaccinated country is now breaking records for most infections. they already talking about a 4th booster.
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We came to the U.S. in late March in what was supposed to have been a two month round trip to get vaccinated and take care of some family business. When the wheels came off in Taiwan and quarantine turned into an expensive form of punishment it became clear to us that staying in the U.S. was better even compared to what our life had been like in Taiwan for the first year of the pandemic. That’s despite the fact that Delta is out of control here now among the unvaccinated and the elderly vaccinated in poor health.
It’s easy enough to avoid the Covid clown show though by being vaccinated, wearing masks whenever we’re around others, and just hunkering down at home. There’s just a lot more open space here which makes it easy to avoid others. Plenty of parks, hiking and biking trails, and the ocean isn’t far away for a day at the beach. Houses are big and large backyards are easy to come by and that’s where we spend a lot of time grilling and chilling. I’ve really honed my grilling skills over the summer. Food is inexpensive and high quality. Air quality is better. Winerys with outdoor tasting bars abound. All in all it’s just a better place to hunker down and ride out the pandemic than our apartment in Yonghe.
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Actually that’s not entirely true. They didn’t vaccinate all kids there and also quite a lot of vaccine hesitancy .
That means only 58% of Israel’s total citizenry is fully vaccinated. Experts say that’s not nearly high enough.
Delta is also pretty new there so it seems to be causing a huge spike. Anyway I agree it’s a mixed picture.
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it says 78% are vaccinated in that article. children literally cannot receive the vaccine so they arent counted in that total. children also suffer virtually no risk from covid and its very rare they will die from it. im not trying to turn this thread into a vaccine argument so lets just end it here and talk about wether or not taiwan is a good place to be right now
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You’re right, it says 78% of all eligible.
Some countries are at higher vaccination rates and not seeing such big rises. It’s unpredictable. It could even be related to almost all their vaccines being Pfizer where protection tails off earlier. Who knows.
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The numbers suggest that deaths are lower when I look at previous waves and that the vaccine offers some protection against this delta outbreak, but not enough.
If you’re ok with not going home for 1-2 years or quarantine in a shit hotel for 2 weeks upon coming, then come. The mask mandates are stupid, but a minor inconvenience for most other than children. If you’re not ok with these things, don’t come.
Unless you have a strong need to be able to travel internationally in a rational way, I would say you should come. Living in different cultures allows you to understand your own better, and to better inform and change your views on why you believe what you believe.
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Story of my life!
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Yeah…I’m lucky in that I work from home so can suck up quarantine. When I was younger, not going home for this amount of time would have been a mild annoyance. Now, I feel I must do it and not deprive my kids or me of seeing my parents, particularly my father who could go at any time. The OP needs to weigh the importance of this with the opportunities that Taiwan definitely can provide…there’s a lot to love and learn here even under these conditions.
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Either the shots keep wearing off or ADE is kicking in, one or the other. Since they had high vaccination rates and were the first.
The first situation sucks, if it’s the second it’s going to be a disaster. I suspect Taiwan will keep it’s super strict lockdown.
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So a lot of responses with opinions talking about how bad things are and how restrictive things are… with no basis of comparison for where you’re coming from, level of restrictions there, what you like to do, and your thoughts about the last year or so.
So, Taiwan doesn’t seem particularly restrictive right now, compared to what the U.S. has had at various times throughout the last year, and despite all the negative comments, has generally been a lot more open over the last 1.5 years. And if you’re not looking to hit clubs etc (I mean, are you doing that in the u.s.?), it doesn’t seem like it’s a particularly difficult go at this time.
I’ve been to the US a couple of times in the last year and didn’t get forced to home quarantine, didn’t get forced to quarantine in a shitty hotel on my dime, didn’t have to wear a mask at most places, and ate dinner at restaurants without plastic barriers and silly Xs on seats. You can argue that the Taiwan restrictions work and are better for the country (some are, some aren’t), but you can’t argue that things are more open in Taiwan than the US nationally.
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Here in Oregon there no real restrictions. There’s supposedly an indoor and outdoor mask mandate but it’s not enforced. School is back in session and everyone is required to wear a mask so that’s the only real pandemic measure I’m aware of. Otherwise it’s “back to normal” other than the fact that there are two-to-three-thousand new cases of Covid every day now and dozens of deaths. No big deal though.