pretty much the same experience I had arriving in Hong Kong last year. Zero covid is actually (and only) possible if you actually stop it from coming in at the borders. Near 100% chaperoning from airplane to quarantine hotel by hazmat attired public health workers. Unnerving and impressive, at the same time.
It's essentially the same kind of security kabuki that we know from the TSA. Impressive, a nuisance at best, frightening at worst, and perfectly useless.
And yet, eventually, we will see the bug breaking through, now probably a whole different beast than we saw before, into a completely unprotected population (with - in the PRC - a vaccination we don't consider particularly good). In fact, it already is happening, see how Beijing and Shanghai have outbreaks.
I sincerely hope I am wrong here, but it may well be that the zero covid countries will have saved the few and sacrificed the many, three years on, and provided a new reservoir for new, more deadly variants to evolve in.
I'm in Taiwan and was here for a whole pandemic.
Article is spot on but this response efficiency, visible now, was acquired over last 2 years of improvements.
Taiwan had a luxury of foresight due to earlier experience with SARS, back channel information on virus developments in China thanks to proximity and countless business contacts and a favorable geographical location.
Being an island it was very easy to isolate itself from the rest of the world.
This may not have been possible for other countries.
Zero COVID was a goal when efficiency of vaccines was still believed to be able to prevent transmission.
Omicron appearance put an end to that.
Taiwan's response was competent but there were several hickups:
Taiwan was late to acquire vaccines due to their reliance on border closures.
Delta variant sneaked through border controls due to lax airline stuff quarantine rules and some rule breaches (pilot going AWOL).
There was cross resident infection in quarantine hotels due airborne transmission (red elevator)
There were many overreactions: closed off outdoor parks, beaches and hiking routes despite evidence that outdoor transmission is very unlikely.
Overall, solid B+ performance.
Regarding more deadly variants: we can hope that evolutionary pressure we put on virus by isolating serious cases will not allow it.
I hope Taiwan and rest of the world will learn from this experience so we are ready for a next outbreak (bird flu likely)
For example, USA early vaccination ramp up is second to only United Emirates in the world.
Taiwan was late in this particular aspect and quite panicked when some virus broke through quarantine measures (contained by quite heroic contact tracing efforts)
Yes, but the US allowed the virus to spread like wildfire before vaccines were available.
Taiwan was slow to begin vaccination, but in the end, that had a relatively minor effect on mortality, because the virus was not allowed to spread in the first place.
The populations of zero-CoVID countries aren't unprotected. They're vaccinated.
In mainland China, about 90% of the population has had two doses, and a good faction have been boosted (in total, 2.3 doses/person have been administered). The problem in mainland China (and in Hong Kong) is that many old people refuse to get vaccinated, for whatever reason, though there's now a big campaign to convince them to finally get their shots.
There has been a lot of unjustified bashing of Chinese vaccines in the popular press in the West, but this isn't justified by the data. Chinese vaccines have similar efficacy to AstraZeneca. In the Hong Kong outbreak, 3 doses of Sinovac turned out to be just as protective as 3 doses of BioNTech/Pfizer, which was actually somewhat surprising. The bashing of Chinese vaccines in the media is just nationalist prejudice, I'm afraid.
> the zero covid countries will have saved the few and sacrificed the many
Zero-CoVID countries got through most of the pandemic with fewer restrictions on everyday life than countries that decided to live with the virus. One of most consistently frustrating elements of the media narrative in Europe and the US about zero-CoVID is that they depict it as never-ending lockdown. In reality, life has been closer to normal in mainland China than in the US or Europe for most of the last 2 years. International travel is extremely difficult, but inside mainland China, almost everything has been open since about April 2020. The current lockdown in Shanghai is the first major lockdown the city has had since early 2020.
I am not trying to make this about China in particular, but I'm biting: I would love to see some peer reviewed papers about vaccination efficiency of Chinese vs. European vs. American vs. Russian vs. Cuban vaccines (bonus points if it distinguishes about efficiency against different strains). Just like with infection numbers, which appear suspiciously low in some countries, there does not seem to be much good information on the vaccinations.
> The problem in mainland China (and in Hong Kong) is that many old people refuse to get vaccinated, for whatever reason
Geez, I wonder why especially old people - who lived through the CPC's chaos years with misguided policies at best and open human rights violations at worst - are reluctant to trust medical treatment that is strongly suggested by the CPC.
> In reality, life has been closer to normal in mainland China than in the US or Europe for most of the last 2 years.
And that I didn't contest. I am just saying that when an outbreak eventually will escape controllability, we will see a delayed mass dying.
> The current lockdown in Shanghai is the first major lockdown the city has had since early 2020.
I think you should also take into account that lockdown, China-style is a whole different beast from lockdown as understood by the rest of the world.
> I would love to see some peer reviewed papers about vaccination efficiency of Chinese vs. European vs. American vs. Russian vs. Cuban vaccines
The recent Hong Kong outbreak allowed a direct head-to-head comparison of Sinovac and BioNTech/Pfizer. The results were a bit surprising: 3 doses of Sinovac were just as effective as 3 doses of BioNTech.[0] This study only looked at Omicron (nothing that is circulating in HK), and only these two vaccines. China has other vaccines using different technologies as well (CanSino uses an adenovirus vector,[1] Angui Zhifei Longcom uses protein subunits [2]). There are studies about the various vaccines, generally conducted outside China.
> Just like with infection numbers, which appear suspiciously low in some countries, there does not seem to be much good information on the vaccinations.
Ironically, this perception is due to the information bubble in the West when it comes to China. There's a ton of extremely detailed information about infections in mainland China, but you'll simply never read about it in the popular press in the West. If you read Chinese, you can look up the address of every newly infected person on each day. Many cities will publish detailed contact tracing information about each case, telling you where they've been and when they were there, what trains and planes they've taken (and what seat they sat in), and all sorts of other information. It's kind of difficult to convey just how wrong the narrative that "we don't know what's going on in China" is.
The thing is, once you see the measures that China is taking, such as border quarantine, mass testing, and extremely detailed contact tracing, it's not at all mysterious how the country has managed to contain SARS-CoV-2.
> Geez, I wonder why especially old people - who lived through the CPC's chaos years ...
Those old people tend to actually be the most committed believers in the Communist Party. There are other issues at play, such as belief in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
> I am just saying that when an outbreak eventually will escape controllability, we will see a delayed mass dying.
It will be far lower (per capita) than the death toll in Europe and the US, because China managed to get through the era in which vaccines and antiviral drugs were unavailable without suffering mass infection. If China manages to vaccinate (or even boost) most of its elderly population before the lifting controls, its per-capita death toll will be only a tiny fraction of what the West has experienced.
"Zero Covid" is only possible until, well, it's not possible. Look at China and their incredibly draconian CCP locking people down in Shanghai in their small apartments for a month (and ongoing). Are they going to do this every single time there is a covid outbreak? It's insanity, but the CCP will probably not want to admit they're wrong.
Look at Japan Covid numbers before and after the Olympics. Japan was practically zero. And that was when Japan vaccination rates were below 10%. The vast majority of cases ( at fractions of what an American city has ) was in Tokyo, and Tokyo has 3-4x NYC’s population and atleast 3x the density , despite Cuomo’s constant “density” argument.
Japan never had lockdowns. They just stopped allowing alcohol after 8pm. And also strict enforcement of people into the country. I was one of the last few hundred people into the country before it was entirely closed to non residents in 2021.
Note that Shanghai tried to ditch the zero covid policy and avoided taking action for ten days. So the infection grey large then central govt stepped in.
Other chinese cities had outbreaks, reacted quickly and got rid of the virus.
The Shanghai situation is atrocious but it isn’t representative of China’s policy or typical results.
true indeed, Shanghai tried to do it as close to Western style as possible, as the commentator implies is the way. They screwed up, and now have to lockdown.
it's totally possible, China has indeed proved it over these past two years. Infected people get over Covid in 2-4 weeks, these people have just got to be isolated. There probably is a tipping point where you cannot do it, but as case numbers are currently low, it is worth a shot. Most of China currently is going about it's business, w/ no lockdown
I went to the Netherlands recently and COVID was almost a non-issue. No masks, crowded cities. Their society still seems to be intact, without having to enforce this level of draconian ridiculousness.
It was disillusioning. This late in the pandemic, when everyone that wants a vaccine has received one, I really do think we are overreacting. Let's return to life as normal, keeping the positive developments like work from home around.
It was largely the same situation in Belgium, Germany and the UK while I was there. Masks only seemed to be required while travelling, and even in that case the UK only had requirements for international travel. Vaccines have largely taken the burden off the healthcare systems, particularly ICU, and so the virus can run its course for now.
>I went to the Netherlands recently and COVID was almost a non-issue.
But due to this 'draconian ridiculousness' described in the article, Covid has almost been a non-issue inside Taiwan for the last two years, unlike in the West. No lockdown. Few deaths. Economy has been booming.
But they still have to be super careful, they still have entry restrictions, quarantines, masks everywhere etc.
At least in the Netherlands we're done with it, until a more dangerous variant comes along but then the whole world will have the same issue again too.
Since being able to just walk into a shop or restaurant without having to watch out for distance, not having to wear masks, just being able to go out drinking as long as I want... It's even more clear how much I missed these things. Finally I feel alive again. Yeah it's totally worth a little bit of risk. I don't want to go around afraid or cautious for the rest of my life or even for years to come. Life is probably a little bit more dangerous now with covid but it's time to embrace it again. Perfect health and long life is never guaranteed.
If someone said to you in February 2020, "Your country can start dealing with Covid right now and continue suffering from it for two years, or you can close the border and continue your normal life for two years while we develop vaccines and effective treatments for Covid", which option would you choose? That's what we're talking about.
And people in Asia aren’t telling the West how to live their life, so why is the West dictating how Asian countries should do theirs?
When China didn’t tame the virus initially, they rightfully get blamed. When Taiwan and Japan did well, they get dwarfed by New Zealand, which has much less people, because its predominantly white.
Now that the West has achieved herd immunity to brute force sacrifice, they want Asia to follow suit and remove strict measures. Why? So you can go on a summer vacation?
It's odd that they're still insisting on cleaning surfaces, although it's been long concluded by e.g. the CDC (is it a settled science?) that infections from surfaces are very unlikely. But I guess if they're going for zero covid, then any little chance need to be reduced.
If you're swamped with cases, only the dominant route of transmission matters. When you're going for zero cases, then all routes of transmission matter.
US policy is to tolerate a high level of transmission in the community, so CDC's advice will be very different from advice given by public health authorities in counties that don't tolerate transmission.
Taiwan needs to consider removing the quarantine now that it looks like omicron is going to run its course there just like in Korea and Japan. One reason they are not removing it is because the government does not want to be seen as being "wrong" about covid policy. Even China's much more draconian lockdowns on Shanghai will probably not work to prevent the spread of omicron in the future. In both cases, it's a huge waste of resources and damaging to the economy and peoples' liberties.
> it's a huge waste of resources peoples' liberties
Are you an actual resident in Asia or a Westerner armchair philosophizing what people in Asia actually want.
Here’s a glimpse from actual Asian people, from a democratic country. These people here are being polite and aren’t saying outright, but a sentiment expressed here that’s pretty common is Asian people thinks it’s admirable that Americans have individual liberty, and acknowledge there are pros and cons to that. If you actually understood Asian culture and why these countries have these policies, then you’d know it’s not really a compliment. In Asia, maybe / kind-of means no. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctmxV-yNhg
My partner is Taiwanese, and I am American. We moved Japan to during the pandemic because we don’t agree with the West and Americans’ attitude towards coronavirus. There is a lot of overlap between Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan being more “liberal” in some respects and Japan being conservative, but otherwise people from both countries on average prefer personal inconvenience for the collective good, especially given both of these cultures have a respect for the elderly.
We prefer what you call “draconian” measures. Let people who are residents in Asia deal with their governments. Who said people want liberty above all else? Freedom requires responsibility, and America hasn’t been for a while. Worry about the host of problems in America, because Asia is doing just fine.
People in the tourism industry are incentivized otherwise, but other people in Taiwan / Japan aren’t minding the inconveniences, so why are you? In fact, people are kind of enjoying the domestic venues without tourists, especially given the high propensity of Westerners who refuse to wear mask ( even when they are vaccinated ).
The lockdowns are great for the privileged class that "works" via Zoom meetings and can afford to move to another country if the current one does not sufficiently serve its interests.
So you cherry pick an article about Shanghai, and generalize it to Asia?
The West conveniently omits Taiwan’s and Japan’s continued success with Covid for 2 years while the West sacrificed millions. I’m living my life and commuting as normal. Commute hours are packed full shoulder to shoulder. I feel way safer than in New York. New Zealand is another pacific Island that received outsized acclaim from the West. Guess what’s the difference between New Zealand and those Asian countries?
There’s also Vietnam, which for a country much lower on the economic progression has done exceedingly well.
Ofcourse Westerners and the West will say these Asian countries have skewed data because the don’t have tests. It was nearly impossible to find a covid test within a 2 week time frame in my hometown American city with a population over a million and an NBA team. Even then, I had to use a bot to hog a spot, then pay $200. In Japan, you can receive a test on the day throughout the pandemic and it cost less than $30. 95% of businesses in Japan do temperature checks and require hand sanitizers throughout 2021.
Australia and NZ are usually considered part of "the west". Culturally and ethnically, this is certainly true. You're frustrated people lump everyone in Asia together, as if its all one country. Please don't make the same mistake with "the west". We aren't one country either.
If you want to criticise the USA's handling of covid, do so. Us westerners aren't a homogeneous block either. I'm proud that Australia's covid response was much closer to that of Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam than it was to the USA and Canada.
I wouldn’t object, but I’m not European or North American. Even within Europe there was a variety of responses to covid.
Different places are different. We may all be addicted to the same smartphones, but globally the way different counties responded to covid differed wildly. Even painting the whole of the USA with the same brush feels a bit reductive.
This is just as true in the west as it is in the east.
Taiwan didn't have a lockdown. I was there from the very start of the pandemic until a couple of weeks ago and other than having to wear a mask in public, the impact was comparatively minor. Restaurants had a brief period of enforced distance between seats but never closed. Night clubs closed briefly last summer.
Local businesses in most other places of the world were hit far harder.
Definitely hit harder. However, whiöe there was no official lockdown people in Taiwan voluntarily "lockdowned" last summer when they had an outbreak. It hit many local businesses hard and there was no support from the government unlike many western countries that supported businesses that were affected. The duration wasn't super long so the damage was bearable. This is anec data from my friends car repair shop that was affected(no customers for weeks)
> Okay, so if they get into an accident are they hurting themselves or others by not wearing a helmet? Literally proves the point about Westerners thinking in terms of selfish terms.
Have you checked out vaccination rates for older people yet? Over 75s, in Taiwan the vax rate is 68%, compared to 83% in the US, and 92% in the UK.[0] These are the people most likely to require medical care, and for whom taking a vaccine would have the biggest effect on not overloading the healthcare systems in their countries.
> scooters, which is most likely Taiwan or Vietnam
if you had any idea how ridiculous this comment sounds to anyone who's spent time in the region I don't think you'd have made it
> Tell me you’re not a white guy yearning for Asia to open up so you can travel without intentions of wearing a mask.
Born and raised in Thailand, and spent most of the pandemic there. Probably time you stepped away from the keyboard, eh? These hot-takes from a recent immigrant to Asia about how Asians feel are not a good look.
I guess the problem, and the point of the parent post, is that the full containment of the omicron variant might be very difficult in the long term.
Also since the omicron is milder and vaccines rather effective (as long as you don't refuse taking one), it's worth asking how much collective good is gained by personal inconvenience.
> We moved Japan to during the pandemic because we don’t agree with the West and Americans’ attitude towards coronavirus.
Not everyone in "the West" agrees with america's attitude to covid. All the things this article talks about are very similar to things we did here in Australia. (Though lets be honest - the system probably worked much better in Taipei.)
Here in Melbourne we endured 263 days in lockdown. We were allowed to leave our homes - but only for essential supplies, outdoor exercise, medical care or essential work. Unless you had a good reason, you couldn't travel more than 5km from home. We also had a nightly curfew, and all restaurants were closed (or take away only). And of course, we couldn't visit other people's homes. Wherever you went you needed to do QR code checkins so they could do contact tracing.
The city became a ghost town. After 9pm (or whenever the curfew was) the only people out were the occasional nurse or delivery driver heading home, and a swarm of ubereats / doordash drivers feeding everyone.
Everything has opened up again now that everyone who wants a vaccine has had one. And now we're just letting omicron do its thing.
For the most part, I support our government's response. I was watching the situation play out in the USA with horror. 1 million people dead, and nobody cares? What on earth? And there were apparently protests in NY about the "totalitarian" situation in Australia? Uh, what? We aren't the ones who need saving thankyouverymuch.
I had a friend visit from the USA for a funeral and she got put in hotel quarantine for 14 days in Sydney. She was so upset and angry over it all. I didn't know what to say - I'm glad she was in quarantine. Her right to go to the funeral didn't trump the rights of australians to stay safe from any disease she carried.
Covid made the world a big place again. Everywhere had different policies, and everyone had a different experience.
Yeah, "not a shitshow" seems like it depends on the eventual outcome here. It may be very well organized but if the virus ultimately wins then couldn't it be called a shitshow retroactively?
The virus isn't winning. Everyone who wanted to be is vaccinated. The thing to track now is severe reactions, not positive tests. The government in Taiwan has already acknowledged that they're probably undercounting cases. Meanwhile, they are reducing restrictions, and less rigorous contact tracing, except for arrivals on the small chance they bring in a new variant.
The virus is clearly winning, it just matters less now. But if it matters less now, it mattered less months ago too. Vaccines have been available for a long time. It seems to me that restrictions since then have been and continue to be a waste.
Are you in Taiwan and able to assess the situation in person? Restrictions have been small relative to the rest of the world, with the exception of last summer during a Delta outbreak that was later brought down by effective contact tracing.
Context and time are relevant. Both Delta and an undervaccinated population were issues months ago. I would not say the virus is winning, nor would I call the response here a shit show. The CDC here has been saying since late last year that we will eventually need to live with Covid when it arrives.
I'm specifically taking issue with the linked article's description of their specific experience in the last month as "not a shitshow", when it is pretty clear to me that in the specific timeframe of last month almost everything they went through, however well executed it might be, is pointless and ultimately a waste.
Okay. Being in Taiwan doesn't necessarily mean you've experienced the process of traveling to Taiwan described in the article. Ten days of imprisonment even in a hotel room can't be fairly described as "no big deal", especially if it is unnecessary.
No. I'm saddened that you believe this. There are plenty of people ineligible for the vaccine, and many of them are age 5 and under.
The virus is most certainly winning, at least in it's current form. The direction we're all headed right now is that vaccinated or not you'll get it and we must assume everyone will because we stopped measuring. A more lethal variant would be catastrophic right now, as if the past two years haven't been enough of a catastrophy.
Children have far more success fending off all variants of Covid. It really is more like a flu for them. Nonetheless, some are still worried about them since some vaccines do give children less risk than catching the virus itself.
If you read HN, then I assume you read the science, so there is no reason to peddle fear about kids and Covid.
> Children younger than 6 months old have the highest risk for being hospitalized from flu compared to children of other ages but are too young to get a flu vaccine. Because flu vaccines are not approved for use in children younger than 6 months old, protecting them from flu is especially important. [1]
Parents of newborns must be vigilant, even against the flu. We cannot prevent Covid forever, just like we cannot erradicate the flu.
I'm aware, it's the 6mo-5year group that you're ignoring. They're eligible for the flu shot, but no such covid vaccine had been approved yet. So to say that anyone who wanted a vaccine has got one by now is simply not true.
I'm pretty convinced this is an unproductive conversation given that you state we cannot erradicate the flu when we absolutely could erradicate the flu just like covid. You don't seem to understand how selfish it is to care more about personal freedoms than the accompanying personal impact to the health of others, such as that of toddlers. It makes me sick.
Let's focus on first year of life. That's where greater risk for flu/covid exists. For younger than 6 months, nobody is doing research for that age range. For older than 6 months, research is ongoing.
> I'm pretty convinced this is an unproductive conversation given that you state we cannot erradicate the flu when we absolutely could erradicate the flu just like covid.
Okay. That's a pretty extreme view. I've never seen or heard anyone argue that. Viruses can be endemic. Like weather, they are out of our control. Humans can only manage so much. In some areas, nature exercises its power over us.
> You don't seem to understand how selfish it is to care more about personal freedoms than the accompanying personal impact to the health of others, such as that of toddlers. It makes me sick.
I have toddlers, and I do care about their personal health. I'm not about to advocate we all take the full lockdown being done in areas of China right now [1]. Fire is more likely to kill than covid when you lock people in their homes. And, I can't imagine not letting a toddler go outdoors for weeks on end. Domestic issues will flare up.
The government is currently in the process of shortening it and gradually opening up now that dominant Covid variants are less virulent than they were last year.
The Shanghai lockdown is working as we speak. Daily cases are down from nearly 30k to under 10k. Parts of the city have no cases, and are starting to reopen.
Judging from the experience of Hong Kong, without a lockdown, Shanghai would have quickly reached hundreds of thousands of new cases a day, and half of the city would have been infected within weeks. The death toll would have been several tens of thousands. Instead, the death toll is a few hundred.
Ironically, Shanghai is in the situation it's in right now because the city's leadership refused to go into lockdown early on, and just looked on as cases climbed into the thousands before doing anything. Other cities that took action early (like Shenzhen and Gaunghzhou) were able to get back down to zero cases very quickly, without anywhere near as much societal disruption.
This seems to be the agreed upon uniform story between the various Chinese posters: it's not the strategy, it's the incompetent local Shanghai officials! It's neat, they used the same thing in the UDSSR many times.
But it seems unless you bring the China-style lockdown to every other part of the world outside China, it will just keep happening over and over again.
As Shanghai's case numbers steadily rose and the government did nothing, I was telling friends that the result would be a disaster.
What really worried me was when Shanghai announced that they were so economically important that they couldn't lock down. That convinced me that they had given up on zero-CoVID and were adopting the Western "living with the virus" approach, without fully admitting it to the public.
This is such a short-sighted perspective. Is China going to stay quarantined from the rest of the world in perpetuity? (COVID is now an endemic virus, like the flu.)
It's hard to see China reaching its goal of becoming a world leader if its people must remain cloistered indefinitely.
How is it short-sighted? This strategy has allowed a relatively high degree of normalcy in everyday life, and has kept death rates orders of magnitude lower than rates in the West.
Because most of the rest of the world has decided to allow the virus to spread, China will eventually have to allow it to spread. However, China has bought two years of time to develop and deploy vaccines and antivirals. That's been immensely valuable, both in lives saved (about 4 million Chinese people would have died if China had followed the same strategy as the US) and in economic growth (China has outperformed most of the world economically during the pandemic).
"Zero Covid" was a great strategy during the wild / Alpha / Delta phases of the pandemic, if the population tolerated it.
In this Omicron phase, however, health outcomes from infection have been mild, and most susceptible individuals have had the opportunity to vaccinate. The extreme transmissibility of this evolution has resulted in its general circulation globally.
Therefore, "Zero Covid" is not a sustainable strategy moving forward - its health benefit has decreased, while its societal costs have increased as viral containment has gotten more difficult. There's also no winning condition in sight for this strategy - it'll need to remain in place in perpetuity to be effective.
Taiwan, the best country I've seen handle COVID globally, understood this shift and has gradually loosened restrictions as Omicron has found a foothold on the island. From my perspective, it's a result of medical and public health professionals making decisions, instead of politicians.
> In this Omicron phase, however, health outcomes from infection have been mild
In the US, Omicron has killed about as many people as Delta did. It's slightly less lethal on a per-case basis, but much more infectious, so on a population level, it's just as deadly.
In Hong Kong alone, nearly ten thousand people died from Omicron when the government gave up the zero-CoVID policy.
> There's also no winning condition in sight for this strategy
Chinese public health officials have set out very clear and reasonable conditions for easing controls: a high level of vaccination, availability of antiviral drugs, overall mortality less than flu.
> One reason they are not removing it is because the government does not want to be seen as being "wrong" about covid policy.
I'm in Taiwan and this doesn't track. Taiwan has succeeded because they have continually adjusted according to research. They were always ahead of the game, having been the ones to alert the WHO of the existence of Covid (see the timeline [1]).
There are a lot of politics here, like anywhere. Opponents to the current administration are looking for an edge to break through what's been a phenomenal response from the government. The challengers' chance will come eventually, but I'm not sure it will come as a result of the government's handling of this pandemic. In my opinion, the challengers' attempts to win small battles over which-day-quarantine-should-be-discarded is likely to make them appear more frantic than organized. Rather than organizing, they've been wasting breath over minor quibbles week after week for the entirety of the last two years. It's really kind of unfortunate because instead of competing with better ideas, they keep trying to undermine, yet in doing so they have mostly undermined themselves.
Just seems utterly absurd. No one really cares about this stuff anymore in my country. Even the test center down the road fashioned from temporary buildings is sitting empty. Only about 10% are still wearing masks on the train anymore.
Not to be rude, but how many people died in the process? There is a reason Taiwan had less than 20 deaths in the first year of the pandemic and still have less than 1000 in a country of 20 million while never having a lockdown. It's only absurd if you don't value people's lives over things like convenience.
> Every building and storefront had a QR code posted at the entrance for contact tracing, and people took care to scan it and text the central authority before going inside. Woe unto those who forgot their cell phone!
As sensational and exciting as it might feel to write that, it's misleading. If you don't have your cell phone, you just grab a pen and fill out your phone number and the time on one of the cards they have right inside the door. Every place of business that has a QR code to scan also has the paper and pen option.
I've filled in quite a few over the past couple of years when going to a convenience store after a workout.
Considering it avoided both a mass outbreak and lockdowns, I'd say the system has worked out very well. There was some interesting work on making it maximally privacy-preserving, too!
Have you been following what is going on in Taiwan in terms of covid? There is a mass outbreak building up right now. Oh, and the contact tracing you are talking about -- are they going to start contact tracing the thousands of people who have covid now? How is that going to help?
> Have you been following what is going on in Taiwan in terms of covid?
Yes. It's where I've been from the beginning of the pandemic, all through last year, during the original SARS outbreak in 2002 and most of the years in between. The current wave is more contagious but quite a bit less lethal than the delta outbreak that Taiwan successfully stopped last summer via contact tracing and limited restrictions.
Sounds like you really have an axe to grind all over this thread. I dare venture that you haven't been following the situation here that closely either. I'm in Taipei right now and have lived here for almost the entire pandemic. The "mass outbreak" was 13k new cases today. The cases are ramping up but hospitalizations and deaths are not. Everyone knows that omicron is not serious, and by all indications, the government is cautiously letting it rip this time.
Yesterday they ended the QR code program. They've been continuously reducing quarantine for 'close contacts' of confirmed cases. It's down to 3 days at home quarantine, and then 4 days of self health management, during which you aren't supposed to go to the mall or things like that, but can still go to work. They've also reduced the number of contacts that they trace and which criteria qualify as "close contact."
For two years while most of the rest of the world was in turmoil, life was almost normal here. I still went to the gym, went to restaurants, worked in an office, positive GDP growth. Things just carried on, and without a massive body count. And now, that's it's basically a cold, the population is mostly vaccinated, and there is no hope of ever maintaining "COVID-zero" the government is slowly easing restrictions without overloading the health system. Taiwan's COVID response should be hailed as genius, yet you still have blowhards that feel like they were right all along.
Now this is sensational. I'm in Taiwan and the number of severe cases is very small since the population is vaccinated. The CDC here has been saying Covid is going to come soon since late last year. They hit their vaccine targets and are reducing restrictions.
Contact tracing is trending down. They just announced yesterday you don't need to do the QR code or leave contact info at shops anymore. You're only considered a contact of a case if you live together, and even then there is now home quarantine.
I'm in Taiwan, _and_ currently have COVID (at home quarantining now, feel completely fine). The spike is higher than it's ever been for infections, but hospitalizations and deaths are basically zero. There were two deaths _in the whole country_ today both over 70 years old, vaccinated, with previous complications. Hospital beds are sitting at 30-40% empty. Things are going just fine.
Government called up the businesses I'd been to over the last couple of days and got them to take a test and quarantine at home for a couple of days. I'm at home quarantining for 10 days which I would have done anyway. They even sent me a box of snacks, some garbage bags, and extra tests.
Honestly I can't think of a better, more reasonable policy, and result than what we're doing right now over here.
I found the article more optimistic than sensational,
> For me, this brief quarantine in Taiwan was a glimpse into an alternate reality where pandemic response was not a shitshow. People knew what they were doing, there was a plan and adequate resources to make it work, and everyone seemed to be living in a shared reality when it came to fighting an infectious disease. Even though I was a foreigner and a potential vector for the pandemic they were trying to keep out of their country, at every step I was treated with kindness and respect.
The author can be forgiven for not noticing the clipboards used to record phone numbers. If you scan at the door you can easily overlook them.
Plus, even some reporters here still ask "what if they don't have a cellphone". From a summary of a recent CDC/CECC conference [1]
> Reporter asks about the elimination of QR code scanning nationwide. What if people dont have cellphones for the social distancing app? Chen replies if someone doesn't have one, then they don't have one (lmao).
> Considering it avoided both a mass outbreak and lockdowns, I'd say the system has worked out very well
Sorry for the wall of text.
It is time to change - probably overdue. I won't comment on future policy, but this article I think missed a lot of perspective.
I'm in a vulnerable group. I'd rather have been in Taiwan for the pandemic than anywhere else.
The article mentions masks, but it was common for people to wear surgical masks before the pandemic broke out, for example when visiting doctors. It's been that way for the 15 years I lived here. A cultural norm. It isn't seen as oppressive or some kind of anti-freedom measure or most hysterical as a human rights violation.
Until May last year, there was basically total freedom in Taiwan with no (internal) restrictions. We watched with dread at what was happening worldwide.
After May there were some minor Delta variant outbreaks. Then, Taiwan had scarce access to any vaccines. Effectively blocked from buying Biontech as part of China's vaccine diplomacy and suffering the global vaccine shortage at that time for anyone outside of a relatively small but powerful set of countries. I'm not criticising those places, just saying there was limited access in Taiwan as little as a year ago. Relying e.g. on Japan for vaccine donations which we were incredibly grateful for.
Since then they've developed their own highly effective vaccine Medigen and by mixing donations and the vaccines that could be bought, now most of those who want it have been vaccinated.
A year has made all the difference to reduce suffering in Taiwan.
Below 1000 deaths.
No case explosion straining health services.
No severe lockdowns experienced by so many places, although restrictions were put in place.
I live in Taiwan. The gov response was the best I've experienced and heard about so far, compared to say the UK which was a shitshow.
A year and a half ago now we did something like 10 days in a airbnb quarantine which was a challenge for me as I don't think I've ever stayed that long inside. Deliveries everyday, felt sorry for the staff dropping it at the door all the time but whatever.
General life was good, everyone wears masks. QRs on doors and contact tracing. Only one small outbreak due to a Korean pilot that went drinking with some girls iirc. They had news from the CDC everyday.
Then the vaccines came and most people got it sorted.
Now the gov has opened up more and even dropped the QR code system. Only one annoyance I have is I need a booster shot to train at the gym.
A couple of my partner's friends have caught covid and it will start to pass through.
Pretty happy with the response compared to somewhere like the UK or currently China and Shanghai.
I've traveled the world this last year, and have certainly experienced all sorts of stupidity, ridiculous bureaucracy and corruption in this regard. Like OP I discovered that I enjoy going through these Kafkaesque mazes, and found it pretty fun. Literally never knowing if I'm passing a border post or having to turn back (spoiler: I never turned back).
That said, I didn't go to any of the east Asian countries, because it would have been "too much" (as is clear from this post).
In Latin America and Africa, all the "covid policy" was just a clear corruption opportunity being taken advantage of. More things you could "do wrong" is a big boon for every corrupt official. In Africa, border personnel were happy to take a bribe as your "PCR test" (and the one time I actually did a PCR test, they did not accept it, they only wanted the bribe). Police were happy to enforce the mask rules (on white tourists only, in the middle of the night). Businesses were happy to convert to a "PCR testing clinic" by painting the walls white, sticking something in your nose, and giving you a piece of paper for money (even if you wanted a real PCR test, you couldn't know it's real). You see the picture.
Thing is, I've learned that the overt corruption in these "developing" countries is just less sophisticated version of what's going on in the rest of the world. So, the next time you encounter bullshit like this, just try to ask yourself why are they doing this? Who gains from this? Etc. It's a fun game, and sometimes you come to interesting realizations.
> Thing is, I've learned that the overt corruption in these "developing" countries is just less sophisticated version of what's going on in the rest of the world.
There is plenty of real corruption going on in the rich world. But there's also plenty of examples of good governance and good health advice making it into government policy. Its far too cynical to label all governmental responses to covid as corruption. Maybe thats true in Latin America, but Latin America and Taiwan are very different places.
If all countries had corrupt and ineffective covid policies, all countries would have ended up with similar covid mortality figures. But the data[1] shows a vast gap between the best and worst countries re: covid deaths. Plenty of countries made a good showing - and that speaks well for their ability to turn medical advice into action.
Taiwan has had 36 deaths per million people, compared to 3048 in the USA. You say their quarantine system is "insanity". If it were up to me, I'd pick Taiwan's "insane" covid policies every time.
I really don't wanna argue covid stuff online ever again, but let's have one final comment.
It is insane, because unless you plan to become a hermit kingdom forever, you can never keep something like the omicron strain out as long as the rest of the world exists. It will eventually get in. You will eventually lose control. The death toll will eventually be the same regardless.
All you do is delay the inevitable, while your policies are additionally causing internal societal damage (economical, psychological, political, etc) that rivals any reduced death toll you managed to avoid .
> It will eventually get in. You will eventually lose control
This is has been happening in Australia since January. We've essentially removed all restrictions at this point, and we're letting covid do its thing. I think we've had more covid deaths this year than we had in 2020 and 2021 combined.
The difference that delaying made is that we're only "letting it rip" after 85% or so of our population is fully vaccinated. (Everyone who wants a vaccine has one.) And the vaccines are a really big deal - they have a massive dampening effect on covid's mortality rate.
> The death toll will eventually be the same regardless.
I have been living in Taiwan through the pandemic. The response has been exemplary.
Life has been normal, other than the need to wear masks and scan QR codes when entering shops to enable contact tracing. There has been very little actual risk and fear of infection.
We haven't had a lockdown, and until recently, cases were below 10 per day.
You can go a long way with good quarantine and testing policies.
Now the cat is out of the bag, and Omicron will soon be everywhere, but the health system will be able to handle it.
Tight quarantine gave us the opportunity to get people vaccinated. It was initially difficult due to lack of vaccines and interference from mainland China. The vaccination rate is now above 85%. There are still people who have been resistant due to the global anti-vax movement. This will cause unnecessary deaths, particularly in the elderly.
My main criticism of the government was that they have been unnecessarily strict in issuing resident visas. They also could have been clearer about how long people on temporary visas could extend them.
> My main criticism of the government was that they have been unnecessarily strict in issuing resident visas. They also could have been clearer about how long people on temporary visas could extend them.
They made a booboo :(
There was a change to ARC which affected me. My wife and I married in Taiwan. When we move back to Taiwan (From Singapore) september last year, I had difficulty getting my ARC due to Taiwan requiring a Marriage certificate from New Zealand.
The issue is, in NZ/AU/UK if you marry in another country that is legally recognized you cannot get married again. So it's not possible to fly to NZ, get married, and get a 2nd marriage cert.
After 3 months apparently enough people were affected by this that these countries (and some others) were put on an exemption list.
Then I needed my criminal record, which took a while cos NZ>Auckland went into lockdown and a 2 week process took 2 months. :(
Taiwan has had a great response, but I do want to correct one thing:
> It was initially difficult due to lack of vaccines and interference from mainland China.
This was more a political decision from the Taiwanese government that it would not buy the BioNTech vaccine through the licensed distributor, because that distributor is a mainland Chinese company. Taiwan insisted on bypassing the Chinese distributor and buying directly from BioNTech, which would have been a violation of BioNTech's contract with the Chinese company. The reason the Chinese company had the license was that it invested in the development of the BioNTech vaccine very early on.
The Taiwanese government then blamed the PRC for supposedly blocking Taiwan from buying the BioNTech vaccine. The real issue was that given its politics, the DPP did not want to be seen to be relying on the mainland for vaccines.
China was pressuring the manufacturers, i.e. "Taiwan is part of China, so you should sell to us and we will give them to Taiwan." Then they tried to pressure Taiwan for concessions to get the vaccines to save their lives. Taiwan ordered vaccines, only to have them not show up. They had to trade chips from TSMC for access to vaccines.
This is the same as China using political influence and corruption to keep Taiwan out of the WHO.
Fosun bought the distribution rights in greater China. Pfizer bought the rights in the rest of of the world outside of Europe. BioNTech retained the rights inside Europe.
The Taiwanese government knew exactly who to call up to order the BioNTech vaccine - Fosun. For political reasons, they refused to do so.
Instead, they knowingly tried to get BioNTech to breach its contact with Fosun. When BioNTech predictably decided not to, the Taiwanese government acted outraged and made a big media affair out of it.
> They had to trade chips from TSMC for access to vaccines.
No, that's not what happened. The founder of TSMC stepped in to buy vaccines from Fosun, so that the Taiwanese government could claim it hadn't done business with Fosun, a mainland company. This was a face-saving measure for the Taiwanese government. After declaring that they would never buy vaccines through a mainland company, they couldn't easily climb down, so the TSMC founder acted as an intermediary.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadI sincerely hope I am wrong here, but it may well be that the zero covid countries will have saved the few and sacrificed the many, three years on, and provided a new reservoir for new, more deadly variants to evolve in.
Taiwan had a luxury of foresight due to earlier experience with SARS, back channel information on virus developments in China thanks to proximity and countless business contacts and a favorable geographical location. Being an island it was very easy to isolate itself from the rest of the world. This may not have been possible for other countries.
Zero COVID was a goal when efficiency of vaccines was still believed to be able to prevent transmission. Omicron appearance put an end to that.
Taiwan's response was competent but there were several hickups: Taiwan was late to acquire vaccines due to their reliance on border closures. Delta variant sneaked through border controls due to lax airline stuff quarantine rules and some rule breaches (pilot going AWOL). There was cross resident infection in quarantine hotels due airborne transmission (red elevator) There were many overreactions: closed off outdoor parks, beaches and hiking routes despite evidence that outdoor transmission is very unlikely.
Overall, solid B+ performance.
Regarding more deadly variants: we can hope that evolutionary pressure we put on virus by isolating serious cases will not allow it.
I hope Taiwan and rest of the world will learn from this experience so we are ready for a next outbreak (bird flu likely)
For example, USA early vaccination ramp up is second to only United Emirates in the world. Taiwan was late in this particular aspect and quite panicked when some virus broke through quarantine measures (contained by quite heroic contact tracing efforts)
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
Taiwan was slow to begin vaccination, but in the end, that had a relatively minor effect on mortality, because the virus was not allowed to spread in the first place.
In mainland China, about 90% of the population has had two doses, and a good faction have been boosted (in total, 2.3 doses/person have been administered). The problem in mainland China (and in Hong Kong) is that many old people refuse to get vaccinated, for whatever reason, though there's now a big campaign to convince them to finally get their shots.
There has been a lot of unjustified bashing of Chinese vaccines in the popular press in the West, but this isn't justified by the data. Chinese vaccines have similar efficacy to AstraZeneca. In the Hong Kong outbreak, 3 doses of Sinovac turned out to be just as protective as 3 doses of BioNTech/Pfizer, which was actually somewhat surprising. The bashing of Chinese vaccines in the media is just nationalist prejudice, I'm afraid.
> the zero covid countries will have saved the few and sacrificed the many
Zero-CoVID countries got through most of the pandemic with fewer restrictions on everyday life than countries that decided to live with the virus. One of most consistently frustrating elements of the media narrative in Europe and the US about zero-CoVID is that they depict it as never-ending lockdown. In reality, life has been closer to normal in mainland China than in the US or Europe for most of the last 2 years. International travel is extremely difficult, but inside mainland China, almost everything has been open since about April 2020. The current lockdown in Shanghai is the first major lockdown the city has had since early 2020.
> The problem in mainland China (and in Hong Kong) is that many old people refuse to get vaccinated, for whatever reason
Geez, I wonder why especially old people - who lived through the CPC's chaos years with misguided policies at best and open human rights violations at worst - are reluctant to trust medical treatment that is strongly suggested by the CPC.
> In reality, life has been closer to normal in mainland China than in the US or Europe for most of the last 2 years.
And that I didn't contest. I am just saying that when an outbreak eventually will escape controllability, we will see a delayed mass dying.
> The current lockdown in Shanghai is the first major lockdown the city has had since early 2020.
I think you should also take into account that lockdown, China-style is a whole different beast from lockdown as understood by the rest of the world.
The recent Hong Kong outbreak allowed a direct head-to-head comparison of Sinovac and BioNTech/Pfizer. The results were a bit surprising: 3 doses of Sinovac were just as effective as 3 doses of BioNTech.[0] This study only looked at Omicron (nothing that is circulating in HK), and only these two vaccines. China has other vaccines using different technologies as well (CanSino uses an adenovirus vector,[1] Angui Zhifei Longcom uses protein subunits [2]). There are studies about the various vaccines, generally conducted outside China.
> Just like with infection numbers, which appear suspiciously low in some countries, there does not seem to be much good information on the vaccinations.
Ironically, this perception is due to the information bubble in the West when it comes to China. There's a ton of extremely detailed information about infections in mainland China, but you'll simply never read about it in the popular press in the West. If you read Chinese, you can look up the address of every newly infected person on each day. Many cities will publish detailed contact tracing information about each case, telling you where they've been and when they were there, what trains and planes they've taken (and what seat they sat in), and all sorts of other information. It's kind of difficult to convey just how wrong the narrative that "we don't know what's going on in China" is.
The thing is, once you see the measures that China is taking, such as border quarantine, mass testing, and extremely detailed contact tracing, it's not at all mysterious how the country has managed to contain SARS-CoV-2.
> Geez, I wonder why especially old people - who lived through the CPC's chaos years ...
Those old people tend to actually be the most committed believers in the Communist Party. There are other issues at play, such as belief in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
> I am just saying that when an outbreak eventually will escape controllability, we will see a delayed mass dying.
It will be far lower (per capita) than the death toll in Europe and the US, because China managed to get through the era in which vaccines and antiviral drugs were unavailable without suffering mass infection. If China manages to vaccinate (or even boost) most of its elderly population before the lifting controls, its per-capita death toll will be only a tiny fraction of what the West has experienced.
0. This is still a preprint, but it's from a well respected group: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convidecia
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZF2001
Japan never had lockdowns. They just stopped allowing alcohol after 8pm. And also strict enforcement of people into the country. I was one of the last few hundred people into the country before it was entirely closed to non residents in 2021.
Other chinese cities had outbreaks, reacted quickly and got rid of the virus.
The Shanghai situation is atrocious but it isn’t representative of China’s policy or typical results.
It was disillusioning. This late in the pandemic, when everyone that wants a vaccine has received one, I really do think we are overreacting. Let's return to life as normal, keeping the positive developments like work from home around.
And returning to Germany I had to quarantine for 10 days - sick with covid.
But due to this 'draconian ridiculousness' described in the article, Covid has almost been a non-issue inside Taiwan for the last two years, unlike in the West. No lockdown. Few deaths. Economy has been booming.
At least in the Netherlands we're done with it, until a more dangerous variant comes along but then the whole world will have the same issue again too.
Since being able to just walk into a shop or restaurant without having to watch out for distance, not having to wear masks, just being able to go out drinking as long as I want... It's even more clear how much I missed these things. Finally I feel alive again. Yeah it's totally worth a little bit of risk. I don't want to go around afraid or cautious for the rest of my life or even for years to come. Life is probably a little bit more dangerous now with covid but it's time to embrace it again. Perfect health and long life is never guaranteed.
And people in Asia aren’t telling the West how to live their life, so why is the West dictating how Asian countries should do theirs?
When China didn’t tame the virus initially, they rightfully get blamed. When Taiwan and Japan did well, they get dwarfed by New Zealand, which has much less people, because its predominantly white.
Now that the West has achieved herd immunity to brute force sacrifice, they want Asia to follow suit and remove strict measures. Why? So you can go on a summer vacation?
Unironically, yes.
US policy is to tolerate a high level of transmission in the community, so CDC's advice will be very different from advice given by public health authorities in counties that don't tolerate transmission.
- I would swear I had found it on HN in the first place
- When I went back to HN to read its comments, I couldn't find it
- So I (re?)submitted it
All this was a few days ago iirc, not 1 hour :-)
Are you an actual resident in Asia or a Westerner armchair philosophizing what people in Asia actually want.
Here’s a glimpse from actual Asian people, from a democratic country. These people here are being polite and aren’t saying outright, but a sentiment expressed here that’s pretty common is Asian people thinks it’s admirable that Americans have individual liberty, and acknowledge there are pros and cons to that. If you actually understood Asian culture and why these countries have these policies, then you’d know it’s not really a compliment. In Asia, maybe / kind-of means no. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctmxV-yNhg
My partner is Taiwanese, and I am American. We moved Japan to during the pandemic because we don’t agree with the West and Americans’ attitude towards coronavirus. There is a lot of overlap between Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan being more “liberal” in some respects and Japan being conservative, but otherwise people from both countries on average prefer personal inconvenience for the collective good, especially given both of these cultures have a respect for the elderly.
We prefer what you call “draconian” measures. Let people who are residents in Asia deal with their governments. Who said people want liberty above all else? Freedom requires responsibility, and America hasn’t been for a while. Worry about the host of problems in America, because Asia is doing just fine.
People in the tourism industry are incentivized otherwise, but other people in Taiwan / Japan aren’t minding the inconveniences, so why are you? In fact, people are kind of enjoying the domestic venues without tourists, especially given the high propensity of Westerners who refuse to wear mask ( even when they are vaccinated ).
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/04/19/in-...
The lockdowns are great for the privileged class that "works" via Zoom meetings and can afford to move to another country if the current one does not sufficiently serve its interests.
The West conveniently omits Taiwan’s and Japan’s continued success with Covid for 2 years while the West sacrificed millions. I’m living my life and commuting as normal. Commute hours are packed full shoulder to shoulder. I feel way safer than in New York. New Zealand is another pacific Island that received outsized acclaim from the West. Guess what’s the difference between New Zealand and those Asian countries?
There’s also Vietnam, which for a country much lower on the economic progression has done exceedingly well.
Ofcourse Westerners and the West will say these Asian countries have skewed data because the don’t have tests. It was nearly impossible to find a covid test within a 2 week time frame in my hometown American city with a population over a million and an NBA team. Even then, I had to use a bot to hog a spot, then pay $200. In Japan, you can receive a test on the day throughout the pandemic and it cost less than $30. 95% of businesses in Japan do temperature checks and require hand sanitizers throughout 2021.
Australia and NZ are usually considered part of "the west". Culturally and ethnically, this is certainly true. You're frustrated people lump everyone in Asia together, as if its all one country. Please don't make the same mistake with "the west". We aren't one country either.
If you want to criticise the USA's handling of covid, do so. Us westerners aren't a homogeneous block either. I'm proud that Australia's covid response was much closer to that of Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam than it was to the USA and Canada.
Different places are different. We may all be addicted to the same smartphones, but globally the way different counties responded to covid differed wildly. Even painting the whole of the USA with the same brush feels a bit reductive.
This is just as true in the west as it is in the east.
Local businesses in most other places of the world were hit far harder.
Then ofcourse the famous pilot from China.
Taiwanese people have always been comfortable with face masks because of being on scooters and the dust.
> Who said people want liberty above all else? Freedom requires responsibility
I have many photos on my phone of people wearing facemasks but not helmets on their scooters
> Worry about the host of problems in America, because Asia is doing just fine
The old America/Asia dichotomy!
> Asia is doing just fine
How "Asia" is doing is exceptionally country-specific
Have you checked out vaccination rates for older people yet? Over 75s, in Taiwan the vax rate is 68%, compared to 83% in the US, and 92% in the UK.[0] These are the people most likely to require medical care, and for whom taking a vaccine would have the biggest effect on not overloading the healthcare systems in their countries.
> scooters, which is most likely Taiwan or Vietnam
if you had any idea how ridiculous this comment sounds to anyone who's spent time in the region I don't think you'd have made it
> Tell me you’re not a white guy yearning for Asia to open up so you can travel without intentions of wearing a mask.
Born and raised in Thailand, and spent most of the pandemic there. Probably time you stepped away from the keyboard, eh? These hot-takes from a recent immigrant to Asia about how Asians feel are not a good look.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
Also since the omicron is milder and vaccines rather effective (as long as you don't refuse taking one), it's worth asking how much collective good is gained by personal inconvenience.
At least some people in South Korea seem to think that in the current situation the old restrictions are not worth it: https://www.ft.com/content/4be21b01-efd3-4f67-b353-7bad9eb33...
Not everyone in "the West" agrees with america's attitude to covid. All the things this article talks about are very similar to things we did here in Australia. (Though lets be honest - the system probably worked much better in Taipei.)
Here in Melbourne we endured 263 days in lockdown. We were allowed to leave our homes - but only for essential supplies, outdoor exercise, medical care or essential work. Unless you had a good reason, you couldn't travel more than 5km from home. We also had a nightly curfew, and all restaurants were closed (or take away only). And of course, we couldn't visit other people's homes. Wherever you went you needed to do QR code checkins so they could do contact tracing.
The city became a ghost town. After 9pm (or whenever the curfew was) the only people out were the occasional nurse or delivery driver heading home, and a swarm of ubereats / doordash drivers feeding everyone.
Everything has opened up again now that everyone who wants a vaccine has had one. And now we're just letting omicron do its thing.
For the most part, I support our government's response. I was watching the situation play out in the USA with horror. 1 million people dead, and nobody cares? What on earth? And there were apparently protests in NY about the "totalitarian" situation in Australia? Uh, what? We aren't the ones who need saving thankyouverymuch.
I had a friend visit from the USA for a funeral and she got put in hotel quarantine for 14 days in Sydney. She was so upset and angry over it all. I didn't know what to say - I'm glad she was in quarantine. Her right to go to the funeral didn't trump the rights of australians to stay safe from any disease she carried.
Covid made the world a big place again. Everywhere had different policies, and everyone had a different experience.
Context and time are relevant. Both Delta and an undervaccinated population were issues months ago. I would not say the virus is winning, nor would I call the response here a shit show. The CDC here has been saying since late last year that we will eventually need to live with Covid when it arrives.
A related response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31189893
No. I'm saddened that you believe this. There are plenty of people ineligible for the vaccine, and many of them are age 5 and under.
The virus is most certainly winning, at least in it's current form. The direction we're all headed right now is that vaccinated or not you'll get it and we must assume everyone will because we stopped measuring. A more lethal variant would be catastrophic right now, as if the past two years haven't been enough of a catastrophy.
If you read HN, then I assume you read the science, so there is no reason to peddle fear about kids and Covid.
This isn't peddling fear. Why have we normalized illnesses that we can otherwise prevent or avoid?
Parents of newborns must be vigilant, even against the flu. We cannot prevent Covid forever, just like we cannot erradicate the flu.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/highrisk/infantcare.htm#:~:text=Chil....
I'm pretty convinced this is an unproductive conversation given that you state we cannot erradicate the flu when we absolutely could erradicate the flu just like covid. You don't seem to understand how selfish it is to care more about personal freedoms than the accompanying personal impact to the health of others, such as that of toddlers. It makes me sick.
> I'm pretty convinced this is an unproductive conversation given that you state we cannot erradicate the flu when we absolutely could erradicate the flu just like covid.
Okay. That's a pretty extreme view. I've never seen or heard anyone argue that. Viruses can be endemic. Like weather, they are out of our control. Humans can only manage so much. In some areas, nature exercises its power over us.
> You don't seem to understand how selfish it is to care more about personal freedoms than the accompanying personal impact to the health of others, such as that of toddlers. It makes me sick.
I have toddlers, and I do care about their personal health. I'm not about to advocate we all take the full lockdown being done in areas of China right now [1]. Fire is more likely to kill than covid when you lock people in their homes. And, I can't imagine not letting a toddler go outdoors for weeks on end. Domestic issues will flare up.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/udtnvu/extreme...
https://taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2022/04/26/20037...
Judging from the experience of Hong Kong, without a lockdown, Shanghai would have quickly reached hundreds of thousands of new cases a day, and half of the city would have been infected within weeks. The death toll would have been several tens of thousands. Instead, the death toll is a few hundred.
Ironically, Shanghai is in the situation it's in right now because the city's leadership refused to go into lockdown early on, and just looked on as cases climbed into the thousands before doing anything. Other cities that took action early (like Shenzhen and Gaunghzhou) were able to get back down to zero cases very quickly, without anywhere near as much societal disruption.
But it seems unless you bring the China-style lockdown to every other part of the world outside China, it will just keep happening over and over again.
As Shanghai's case numbers steadily rose and the government did nothing, I was telling friends that the result would be a disaster.
What really worried me was when Shanghai announced that they were so economically important that they couldn't lock down. That convinced me that they had given up on zero-CoVID and were adopting the Western "living with the virus" approach, without fully admitting it to the public.
It's hard to see China reaching its goal of becoming a world leader if its people must remain cloistered indefinitely.
Because most of the rest of the world has decided to allow the virus to spread, China will eventually have to allow it to spread. However, China has bought two years of time to develop and deploy vaccines and antivirals. That's been immensely valuable, both in lives saved (about 4 million Chinese people would have died if China had followed the same strategy as the US) and in economic growth (China has outperformed most of the world economically during the pandemic).
In this Omicron phase, however, health outcomes from infection have been mild, and most susceptible individuals have had the opportunity to vaccinate. The extreme transmissibility of this evolution has resulted in its general circulation globally.
Therefore, "Zero Covid" is not a sustainable strategy moving forward - its health benefit has decreased, while its societal costs have increased as viral containment has gotten more difficult. There's also no winning condition in sight for this strategy - it'll need to remain in place in perpetuity to be effective.
Taiwan, the best country I've seen handle COVID globally, understood this shift and has gradually loosened restrictions as Omicron has found a foothold on the island. From my perspective, it's a result of medical and public health professionals making decisions, instead of politicians.
In the US, Omicron has killed about as many people as Delta did. It's slightly less lethal on a per-case basis, but much more infectious, so on a population level, it's just as deadly.
In Hong Kong alone, nearly ten thousand people died from Omicron when the government gave up the zero-CoVID policy.
> There's also no winning condition in sight for this strategy
Chinese public health officials have set out very clear and reasonable conditions for easing controls: a high level of vaccination, availability of antiviral drugs, overall mortality less than flu.
I'm in Taiwan and this doesn't track. Taiwan has succeeded because they have continually adjusted according to research. They were always ahead of the game, having been the ones to alert the WHO of the existence of Covid (see the timeline [1]).
There are a lot of politics here, like anywhere. Opponents to the current administration are looking for an edge to break through what's been a phenomenal response from the government. The challengers' chance will come eventually, but I'm not sure it will come as a result of the government's handling of this pandemic. In my opinion, the challengers' attempts to win small battles over which-day-quarantine-should-be-discarded is likely to make them appear more frantic than organized. Rather than organizing, they've been wasting breath over minor quibbles week after week for the entirety of the last two years. It's really kind of unfortunate because instead of competing with better ideas, they keep trying to undermine, yet in doing so they have mostly undermined themselves.
[1] https://taiwancanhelp.us/
As sensational and exciting as it might feel to write that, it's misleading. If you don't have your cell phone, you just grab a pen and fill out your phone number and the time on one of the cards they have right inside the door. Every place of business that has a QR code to scan also has the paper and pen option.
I've filled in quite a few over the past couple of years when going to a convenience store after a workout.
Considering it avoided both a mass outbreak and lockdowns, I'd say the system has worked out very well. There was some interesting work on making it maximally privacy-preserving, too!
Have you been following what is going on in Taiwan in terms of covid? There is a mass outbreak building up right now. Oh, and the contact tracing you are talking about -- are they going to start contact tracing the thousands of people who have covid now? How is that going to help?
Yes. It's where I've been from the beginning of the pandemic, all through last year, during the original SARS outbreak in 2002 and most of the years in between. The current wave is more contagious but quite a bit less lethal than the delta outbreak that Taiwan successfully stopped last summer via contact tracing and limited restrictions.
Yesterday they ended the QR code program. They've been continuously reducing quarantine for 'close contacts' of confirmed cases. It's down to 3 days at home quarantine, and then 4 days of self health management, during which you aren't supposed to go to the mall or things like that, but can still go to work. They've also reduced the number of contacts that they trace and which criteria qualify as "close contact."
For two years while most of the rest of the world was in turmoil, life was almost normal here. I still went to the gym, went to restaurants, worked in an office, positive GDP growth. Things just carried on, and without a massive body count. And now, that's it's basically a cold, the population is mostly vaccinated, and there is no hope of ever maintaining "COVID-zero" the government is slowly easing restrictions without overloading the health system. Taiwan's COVID response should be hailed as genius, yet you still have blowhards that feel like they were right all along.
Contact tracing is trending down. They just announced yesterday you don't need to do the QR code or leave contact info at shops anymore. You're only considered a contact of a case if you live together, and even then there is now home quarantine.
Government called up the businesses I'd been to over the last couple of days and got them to take a test and quarantine at home for a couple of days. I'm at home quarantining for 10 days which I would have done anyway. They even sent me a box of snacks, some garbage bags, and extra tests.
Honestly I can't think of a better, more reasonable policy, and result than what we're doing right now over here.
> For me, this brief quarantine in Taiwan was a glimpse into an alternate reality where pandemic response was not a shitshow. People knew what they were doing, there was a plan and adequate resources to make it work, and everyone seemed to be living in a shared reality when it came to fighting an infectious disease. Even though I was a foreigner and a potential vector for the pandemic they were trying to keep out of their country, at every step I was treated with kindness and respect.
The author can be forgiven for not noticing the clipboards used to record phone numbers. If you scan at the door you can easily overlook them.
Plus, even some reporters here still ask "what if they don't have a cellphone". From a summary of a recent CDC/CECC conference [1]
> Reporter asks about the elimination of QR code scanning nationwide. What if people dont have cellphones for the social distancing app? Chen replies if someone doesn't have one, then they don't have one (lmao).
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/taiwan/comments/ucws6c/8923_new_con...
Sorry for the wall of text.
It is time to change - probably overdue. I won't comment on future policy, but this article I think missed a lot of perspective.
I'm in a vulnerable group. I'd rather have been in Taiwan for the pandemic than anywhere else.
The article mentions masks, but it was common for people to wear surgical masks before the pandemic broke out, for example when visiting doctors. It's been that way for the 15 years I lived here. A cultural norm. It isn't seen as oppressive or some kind of anti-freedom measure or most hysterical as a human rights violation.
Until May last year, there was basically total freedom in Taiwan with no (internal) restrictions. We watched with dread at what was happening worldwide.
After May there were some minor Delta variant outbreaks. Then, Taiwan had scarce access to any vaccines. Effectively blocked from buying Biontech as part of China's vaccine diplomacy and suffering the global vaccine shortage at that time for anyone outside of a relatively small but powerful set of countries. I'm not criticising those places, just saying there was limited access in Taiwan as little as a year ago. Relying e.g. on Japan for vaccine donations which we were incredibly grateful for.
Since then they've developed their own highly effective vaccine Medigen and by mixing donations and the vaccines that could be bought, now most of those who want it have been vaccinated.
A year has made all the difference to reduce suffering in Taiwan.
Below 1000 deaths. No case explosion straining health services. No severe lockdowns experienced by so many places, although restrictions were put in place.
A year and a half ago now we did something like 10 days in a airbnb quarantine which was a challenge for me as I don't think I've ever stayed that long inside. Deliveries everyday, felt sorry for the staff dropping it at the door all the time but whatever.
General life was good, everyone wears masks. QRs on doors and contact tracing. Only one small outbreak due to a Korean pilot that went drinking with some girls iirc. They had news from the CDC everyday.
Then the vaccines came and most people got it sorted.
Now the gov has opened up more and even dropped the QR code system. Only one annoyance I have is I need a booster shot to train at the gym.
A couple of my partner's friends have caught covid and it will start to pass through.
Pretty happy with the response compared to somewhere like the UK or currently China and Shanghai.
I've traveled the world this last year, and have certainly experienced all sorts of stupidity, ridiculous bureaucracy and corruption in this regard. Like OP I discovered that I enjoy going through these Kafkaesque mazes, and found it pretty fun. Literally never knowing if I'm passing a border post or having to turn back (spoiler: I never turned back).
That said, I didn't go to any of the east Asian countries, because it would have been "too much" (as is clear from this post).
In Latin America and Africa, all the "covid policy" was just a clear corruption opportunity being taken advantage of. More things you could "do wrong" is a big boon for every corrupt official. In Africa, border personnel were happy to take a bribe as your "PCR test" (and the one time I actually did a PCR test, they did not accept it, they only wanted the bribe). Police were happy to enforce the mask rules (on white tourists only, in the middle of the night). Businesses were happy to convert to a "PCR testing clinic" by painting the walls white, sticking something in your nose, and giving you a piece of paper for money (even if you wanted a real PCR test, you couldn't know it's real). You see the picture.
Thing is, I've learned that the overt corruption in these "developing" countries is just less sophisticated version of what's going on in the rest of the world. So, the next time you encounter bullshit like this, just try to ask yourself why are they doing this? Who gains from this? Etc. It's a fun game, and sometimes you come to interesting realizations.
There is plenty of real corruption going on in the rich world. But there's also plenty of examples of good governance and good health advice making it into government policy. Its far too cynical to label all governmental responses to covid as corruption. Maybe thats true in Latin America, but Latin America and Taiwan are very different places.
If all countries had corrupt and ineffective covid policies, all countries would have ended up with similar covid mortality figures. But the data[1] shows a vast gap between the best and worst countries re: covid deaths. Plenty of countries made a good showing - and that speaks well for their ability to turn medical advice into action.
Taiwan has had 36 deaths per million people, compared to 3048 in the USA. You say their quarantine system is "insanity". If it were up to me, I'd pick Taiwan's "insane" covid policies every time.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
It is insane, because unless you plan to become a hermit kingdom forever, you can never keep something like the omicron strain out as long as the rest of the world exists. It will eventually get in. You will eventually lose control. The death toll will eventually be the same regardless.
All you do is delay the inevitable, while your policies are additionally causing internal societal damage (economical, psychological, political, etc) that rivals any reduced death toll you managed to avoid .
A quick Google show me Taiwan has 800 deaths so far. Massive 1M deaths does not seems very "inevitable" to me.
This is has been happening in Australia since January. We've essentially removed all restrictions at this point, and we're letting covid do its thing. I think we've had more covid deaths this year than we had in 2020 and 2021 combined.
The difference that delaying made is that we're only "letting it rip" after 85% or so of our population is fully vaccinated. (Everyone who wants a vaccine has one.) And the vaccines are a really big deal - they have a massive dampening effect on covid's mortality rate.
> The death toll will eventually be the same regardless.
We'll see, but I doubt it.
Life has been normal, other than the need to wear masks and scan QR codes when entering shops to enable contact tracing. There has been very little actual risk and fear of infection.
We haven't had a lockdown, and until recently, cases were below 10 per day. You can go a long way with good quarantine and testing policies.
Now the cat is out of the bag, and Omicron will soon be everywhere, but the health system will be able to handle it.
Tight quarantine gave us the opportunity to get people vaccinated. It was initially difficult due to lack of vaccines and interference from mainland China. The vaccination rate is now above 85%. There are still people who have been resistant due to the global anti-vax movement. This will cause unnecessary deaths, particularly in the elderly.
My main criticism of the government was that they have been unnecessarily strict in issuing resident visas. They also could have been clearer about how long people on temporary visas could extend them.
They made a booboo :(
There was a change to ARC which affected me. My wife and I married in Taiwan. When we move back to Taiwan (From Singapore) september last year, I had difficulty getting my ARC due to Taiwan requiring a Marriage certificate from New Zealand.
The issue is, in NZ/AU/UK if you marry in another country that is legally recognized you cannot get married again. So it's not possible to fly to NZ, get married, and get a 2nd marriage cert.
After 3 months apparently enough people were affected by this that these countries (and some others) were put on an exemption list.
Then I needed my criminal record, which took a while cos NZ>Auckland went into lockdown and a 2 week process took 2 months. :(
Got my ARC card 2 weeks ago.
> It was initially difficult due to lack of vaccines and interference from mainland China.
This was more a political decision from the Taiwanese government that it would not buy the BioNTech vaccine through the licensed distributor, because that distributor is a mainland Chinese company. Taiwan insisted on bypassing the Chinese distributor and buying directly from BioNTech, which would have been a violation of BioNTech's contract with the Chinese company. The reason the Chinese company had the license was that it invested in the development of the BioNTech vaccine very early on.
The Taiwanese government then blamed the PRC for supposedly blocking Taiwan from buying the BioNTech vaccine. The real issue was that given its politics, the DPP did not want to be seen to be relying on the mainland for vaccines.
China was pressuring the manufacturers, i.e. "Taiwan is part of China, so you should sell to us and we will give them to Taiwan." Then they tried to pressure Taiwan for concessions to get the vaccines to save their lives. Taiwan ordered vaccines, only to have them not show up. They had to trade chips from TSMC for access to vaccines.
This is the same as China using political influence and corruption to keep Taiwan out of the WHO.
The Taiwanese government knew exactly who to call up to order the BioNTech vaccine - Fosun. For political reasons, they refused to do so.
Instead, they knowingly tried to get BioNTech to breach its contact with Fosun. When BioNTech predictably decided not to, the Taiwanese government acted outraged and made a big media affair out of it.
> They had to trade chips from TSMC for access to vaccines.
No, that's not what happened. The founder of TSMC stepped in to buy vaccines from Fosun, so that the Taiwanese government could claim it hadn't done business with Fosun, a mainland company. This was a face-saving measure for the Taiwanese government. After declaring that they would never buy vaccines through a mainland company, they couldn't easily climb down, so the TSMC founder acted as an intermediary.