Thread by @WilliamYang120

I'm working on an explainer about #Taiwan's worst #COVID19 outbreak but I want to share some very sensible analysis by Professor Chi Chunhuei from Oregon State University, who has been closely studying Taiwan's disease prevention mechanism since the SARS epidemic:

"Taiwan has done well since the beginning of the outbreak by strictly guarding the border while domestically following a strict guideline of mask-wearing and maintaining social distancing. This allowed Taiwan to have no local cases by mid-April 2020.

The successful control quickly led Taiwanese people into what I called post-pandemic mode, largely living a very normal life."

"Unlike most countries around the world, they didn’t have the experience of dealing with the variants, including the B117 British variant.

Most government officials and the general public in #Taiwan have very little experience dealing with the B117 variant so they were shocked at how fast the variant spread."

"Since Taiwan has enjoyed normal life for nine to 10 months, the CECC no longer required the stringent safety protocols. This offers the British variant to spread quickly in Taiwan."

"Given Taiwan’s success in containing the virus during last year’s first wave, the general public and the government somehow neglected the need to catch up with the new knowledge the world discovered over the last year."

"One particular vital new information that most people in Taiwan up to now ignored was that the vast majority of transmission was done by people with no symptoms.

The vast majority of people become highly contagious from the moment that they are infected through the first two days of them showing symptoms. On average, the infected people remain contagious for a period of 10 to 12 days."

" Between 60% to 80% of the spread of the virus were done by asymptomatic patients. Taiwan needs to quickly adjust the preventative measures and I think the move to raise the level of warning to level three by Taipei City and New Taipei City is a very accurate move."

"Based on the experience in the US, roughly around 40% of the people who have been infected are asymptomatic. But being asymptomatic doesn’t mean that they are not contagious. For the 60% of the people who eventually develop symptoms, another 40% or so will have mild symptoms."

"It’s extremely difficult to contain the virus once it’s in the community, which is why in many parts of the world when they were at the height of the outbreak, the only way to prevent it from worsening is through some forms of lockdown."

"Earlier, I was urging that Taiwan needs to step up its effort in developing a domestic vaccine as well as obtaining international vaccines. Unfortunately, in this case, Taiwan seems to become the victim of its own success.

Since Taiwan was so successful, most of the government officials and the general public didn’t feel the urgency of getting vaccinated."

"If we use an arch as an analogy for Taiwan’s COVID19 prevention, the first half of the game, Taiwan did really well by a very strong defense. In order to win the game, they need to launch an offence in the second half, and that is vaccination. "

"Taiwan needs to quickly contain the outbreak, and by quickly, I think they need to vaccinate the high-risk groups. Also, one unfortunate thing in this development was that I look at statistics, up until the current outbreak, ...

... there was only a little bit more than 40 pilots among China Airline were vaccinated. Compared with its competitor Eva Airline, over 200 of their pilots have been vaccinated.”

"Had those pilots been vaccinated, Taiwan may not be in this outbreak at all. Pilots and flight attendants are high-risk groups for Taiwan.

Even though Taiwan has nine to 10 months without domestic cases, the groups that are most likely going to bring in the virus are the pilots and flight attendants. They were given an expedited, shortened quarantine, while all visitors are subjected to more strict quarantine."

"Within the next two weeks, I think the strict indoor gathering regulation is the number one priority for now and that includes limiting the number of people gathering indoors to wear masks.

I think most Taiwanese people are now refraining from going to restaurants or department stores or using public transportation. I have confidence in most Taiwanese people that they can stick to the regulations during this pandemic. "

To be clear, these are all the perspectives from Dr. Chi rather than from me, and I think there are some important insights for all of us to think about. In the meantime, off to my writing and see you all at 2 p.m. here.