Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

Things have changed in Taiwan. They went from 5 cases a day a week and a half ago to 335 new cases yesterday. Still fairly mild compared to Miami (which has a similar population density to Taiwan's cities) or the state of Florida (which has a similar total population), but the cases are increasing exponentially. They have had a total of over 2,000 cases officially, although there are rumors of the government hiding the true numbers and punishing counties that try to screen the population for Covid. My wife's family is telling her that things are in quite a panic over there right now.

 

Yep - my wife's family is telling her the same. Apparently the vaccine is not as readily available and their choices are limited, making people more leery about receiving it.

 

Europe should be opening up very soon, that will be nice. We had to cancel our anniversary plans last month to Austria, looking to go next year. Be nice to resume business travel to the Netherlands and rebook my trip to Scotland, a country I have never been to.

EU agrees to open borders to vaccinated travelers

 

It probably didn't help that the president of Taiwan refused to get the vaccine.

 

Right, they are having a “wave” but seems like the Olympics could be managed by having tourists kept out (already long decided) and having the athletes get vaccinated.

Without the vaccine, holding the Olympics would almost be as absurd as Desantis calling for a “full house” at the Super Bowl...this past year. But with the vaccine it seems doable even with the chart looking kind of bad. Should be noted Japan has been slow to roll out the vaccine to its own people though.

 

Punishing counties that try to screen? That seems an insane mistake to make at this point considering their “success” up to now was due to them being overly restrictive and 100% following protocols to contain the virus.

Maybe if they eventually get vaccines out it doesn’t matter, but it’s still basically playing with fire.

 

Taiwan has been a pretty good success story against Covid so far, but politicians being politicians, they wanted it to look like an even better success story, so they try to pretend there are fewer cases than there really are. I worked for five months in the county that was allegedly punished, and its a rural county with small towns scattered about. I don't know what they were worried about, except for possibly other more populated counties wanting to follow suit.

 

India has more problems than just the Covid outbreak. Thousands of their recovering Covid patients are dealing with something called black fungus. Their weakened immune system can't fight it. Over 90 have died so far.

'Black fungus' in India: What we know about the disease affecting Covid patients - CNN

 

Update in Taiwan, where the virus was quashed but an outbreak is occurring.

total cases - 3,862
new cases - 323 (this is a huge number, given the overall low number of cases)
total deaths - 17 (this number was 11 for about six months, with no new deaths until recently)

Word from my in-laws is that they are facing the U.K. variant. My SiL just received the Astrazeneca vaccine, because of her work in the medical industry. They appear to be about 5months behind the U.S. on vaccines.

 

Taiwan is also facing a drought of historic proportions. Coronavirus may not be their biggest concern right now.

According to this article, they have not had rain in 18 months, which is astounding. Sun Moon Lake in the center of the island is completely dry. This should be the middle of monsoon season, and there is no rain (and apparently no rain during last year's monsoon season, and none from hurricanes last fall). They are having to truck in water for the computer chip industry. People in central Taiwan have their water turned off two days a week.

Trucks of fresh water used to feed Taiwan's semiconductors as crops left to die in punishing drought

It might be time to look at desalination facilities, as hard to believe as that is.

 

Yeah, don't post that wu flu propaganda on facebook/twitter/youtube or it'll be a lifetime ban for you.

 

Factcheck.org

Interesting back and forth between Paul and Fauci. In depth discussions about the dispute by factcheck.. interestingly enough they come to no conclusion.

Paul grilled Fauci about whether the lab and NIH funded coronavirus 'enhancements'.

The Wuhan Lab and the Gain-of-Function Disagreement - FactCheck.org

 

The rest of the world will do what they always do. Wait for the payoff from China to keep their traps shut. If that doesn't work, China has had reasonably good success with threats and extortion--err, I mean, gentle persuasion.

 

I have very little doubt about this. As I have said before, the virus doesn’t spread outside, which is an indicator that it “learned” to spread and pass into tissue indoors. That also refutes a jump from an outdoor species to humans. Most viruses pass outside because animals are there. And it is quite adept at infecting multiple tissues, which points to experiments on those tissues. The virus is not engineered, but the escape from the lab theory is more likely.

 

Apparently, the latest thing is for tourists to come to the U.S. from Latin America to get their Covid shots.

Vaccine tourists are coming to America - CNN

 

What I'm hearing is that Taiwan is refusing to buy anyone else's vaccine, and is committed to making their own, which may or may not start to be available in August. (They are in round 2 of testing the vaccine.) The reason behind this seems to be that the president has spent much of her career history and has investments in biotech, and is either going to make a ton of money on this decision, or is rewarding friends with this. Rumor has it that she has appointed her own relatives (in-laws) to the government ethics watchdog agencies, so no official complaints are expected.