Thanks for another article about Taiwan’s current situation. Remember that the point of lockdowns are to stop people from passing the coronavirus by restricting gatherings, where it’s easily passed on after extended time with other contacts. Such restrictions on movement provide breathing space for testing, tracing, targeted quarantine/isolation to do the real important work to give Corona nowhere else to go.
“Hard” or “soft”, the goal of lockdowns is to reduce movement in the community and stop the virus being passed on. If it achieves that function at Level 3, why go harder?
As someone else commented, Level 4 should have a full suite of financial support for businesses and workers impacted by the restrictions and COVID-19.
By the way, another piece of advice: get used to monitoring daily case and death numbers for at least a month. 😁
Briefly, yes the current measures are too soft. Covid is spreading as I type this. We should go into a hard lockdown as soon as possible. This is what the numbers are telling us. Good article, Angelica.
This is another good article. But it should be remembered that Taiwan is not a welfare state like most Western nations, and, in addition, a large proportion of its population run small businesses in the form of 'mum and pop' stores, stalls and restaurants. Hence a long, hard lock down is not really tenable, unless you want people losing their livelihood and going hungry, or, alternatively, rioting on the streets.
Taiwan seems to be making the same mistake which the UK government made over the past 12 months. Delaying a hard lockdown means that things get worse and - when you eventually do have a hard lockdown - it will need to be far longer than if you'd had a hard lockdown earlier. In the meantime, the current semi-lockdown will cause more and more harm to the businesses, peoples' livelihoods and the economy.
There are definitely plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the current situation (with due respect to those already affected), but we have seen that a pandemic allows no room for complacency. One key difference between Taiwan and some other countries seems to be that ordinary people know and recognize their own responsibilities rather than ignoring or denying them or placing it all on the government.
However, from the education perspective, with the 'soft lockdown', it's possible that kids and teens won't be returning to school until late summer, while I can imagine that Taiwanese universities will be teaching the first semester of the 2021-22 academic year partially or wholly online; 18-25 year olds, as in other countries, will be a lower priority for vaccinations. That on its own might finish off several of the unis that have been struggling to attract students for years already.
I agree, me and the family are basically in lockdown mode. When we do venture out for essentials there are not a lot of people out and those that are seem to be cautious but from seeing and reading news about people not following guidance I think the government should enforce level 4 or it will just drag on like this and more people will suffer until the vaccines get out - that means sometime in fall at least. Crazy.
Hey Angelica,
Thanks for another article about Taiwan’s current situation. Remember that the point of lockdowns are to stop people from passing the coronavirus by restricting gatherings, where it’s easily passed on after extended time with other contacts. Such restrictions on movement provide breathing space for testing, tracing, targeted quarantine/isolation to do the real important work to give Corona nowhere else to go.
“Hard” or “soft”, the goal of lockdowns is to reduce movement in the community and stop the virus being passed on. If it achieves that function at Level 3, why go harder?
As someone else commented, Level 4 should have a full suite of financial support for businesses and workers impacted by the restrictions and COVID-19.
By the way, another piece of advice: get used to monitoring daily case and death numbers for at least a month. 😁
Briefly, yes the current measures are too soft. Covid is spreading as I type this. We should go into a hard lockdown as soon as possible. This is what the numbers are telling us. Good article, Angelica.
This is another good article. But it should be remembered that Taiwan is not a welfare state like most Western nations, and, in addition, a large proportion of its population run small businesses in the form of 'mum and pop' stores, stalls and restaurants. Hence a long, hard lock down is not really tenable, unless you want people losing their livelihood and going hungry, or, alternatively, rioting on the streets.
Taiwan seems to be making the same mistake which the UK government made over the past 12 months. Delaying a hard lockdown means that things get worse and - when you eventually do have a hard lockdown - it will need to be far longer than if you'd had a hard lockdown earlier. In the meantime, the current semi-lockdown will cause more and more harm to the businesses, peoples' livelihoods and the economy.
There are definitely plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the current situation (with due respect to those already affected), but we have seen that a pandemic allows no room for complacency. One key difference between Taiwan and some other countries seems to be that ordinary people know and recognize their own responsibilities rather than ignoring or denying them or placing it all on the government.
However, from the education perspective, with the 'soft lockdown', it's possible that kids and teens won't be returning to school until late summer, while I can imagine that Taiwanese universities will be teaching the first semester of the 2021-22 academic year partially or wholly online; 18-25 year olds, as in other countries, will be a lower priority for vaccinations. That on its own might finish off several of the unis that have been struggling to attract students for years already.
It must be very frustrating to watch Taiwan make the same mistakes the US made last year.
I agree, me and the family are basically in lockdown mode. When we do venture out for essentials there are not a lot of people out and those that are seem to be cautious but from seeing and reading news about people not following guidance I think the government should enforce level 4 or it will just drag on like this and more people will suffer until the vaccines get out - that means sometime in fall at least. Crazy.