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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 w

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.

philliphaydon 4y ago
> 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.
DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
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.
- jake_morrison 4y ago
  That's partisan nonsense. 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.
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    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.

philliphaydon 4y ago

> 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.

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago

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.

jake_morrison 4y ago
That's partisan nonsense. 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.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  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.