Posted on 05/02/2020 5:09:51 PM PDT by LoveMyFreedom
True. What was primarily responsible for the success in Taiwan was catching cases at the airport and contact tracing of those infected. However, wearing masks AND hand sanitation ( they both have to go together ) probably had some effect. There have been slightly over 500 cases in Taiwan. The vast majotity of them are from people who were infected in other countries returning to Taiwan. The rest ( except one, a cab driver ) were people who were living in the same household as an infected person. There have been no cases of it spreading in the general public. Now having said that, those are for cases that people showed symptoms. I am sure there were probably people who caught it and showed no symptons ( mostly younger people ). As for the amount of people wearing masks pre-Wuhan and post -Wuhan. , I can only go from personal observation. I live in Taiwan. In the area I live ( south of Taipei ) , I would say about 10 percent of people were wearing masks ( it was flu season and that is about normal ) pre Wuhan. The day after the Wuhan news broke, it was about 75 percent were wearing masks ( it would have been higher, but there was a shortage ). Right now I would say it is about 90 percent. I think the main advantage of mask wearing is not in protecting youself from inhaling the virus ( they have to be worn properly for that, and some people don't wear them properly ) , it is to prevent contamination of surfaces where other people can pick it up. The main thing masks prevent is someone rubbing their runny nose with their hand or sneezing into their hand and then touching something.
Most of the methods used here that help contain it can be used in the US. When you go into a store ( grocery chains, etc ), they spray your hands with sanitizer and take your temp. If temp is too high, not allowed in. ( same goes for the schools ).
The only thing they implemented that probably couldn't be done in the US ( though with some of these governors in blue states, I am not so sure ). It is with the 14 day self quarantine at home. At first it was done on the honor system. But you had people who were not obeying it (there was a case of a foreign homecare worker who was caring for an infected patient, who after she was done for the day was going out to karaoke bars at night, and there was one where a kid in the houshold was supposed to stay at home, but was working in his grandmothers noodle restaurant ). So they cracked down and issued those who were suppose to be at home for 14 days a cell phone that showed their location. Plus they would call it at random times to make sure the person was there. Violation resulted in a $40,000 US fine ( which is more than double the average annual salary here ). Now having said that, these restrictions only work for people that show symptons.
"On January 27, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) and the National Immigration Agency integrated patients’ past 14-day travel history with their NHI identification card data from the NHIA; this was accomplished in 1 day. Taiwan citizens’ household registration system and the foreigners’ entry card allowed the government to track individuals at high risk because of recent travel history in affected areas. Those identified as high risk (under home quarantine) were monitored electronically through their mobile phones. On January 30, the NHIA database was expanded to cover the past 14-day travel history for patients from China, Hong Kong, and Macau. On February 14, the Entry Quarantine System was launched, so travelers can complete the health declaration form by scanning a QR code that leads to an online form, either prior to departure from or upon arrival at a Taiwan airport. A mobile health declaration pass was then sent via SMS to phones using a local telecom operator, which allowed for faster immigration clearance for those with minimal risk. This system was created within a 72-hour period. On February 18, the government announced that all hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies in Taiwan would have access to patients’ travel histories."
I am not surprised by the rapid adoption of masks in Taiwan due to their awareness of the situation in China and prior experience with SARS.
Overall Taiwan did a great job of managing COVID-19, as you have noted a lot of what they did sets an example that other nations could learn from. Unfortunately the response in the USA has been more muddled in many local areas such as New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Now compare that to some of the blue states where it is mandatory that you wear masks. It reminds me of some videos I saw here from Shanghai where they police were literally dragging and throwing 80 year old women into vans and carting them away for not wearing a mask. It seems most of the blue states are acting more like China.
Another major factor is strong border control. There are not that many illegals here. With the home registration, as you mentioned, tied in with customs, they know who is coming from an infected area. Also health care system wasn’t overwhelmed. Most people do not go to hospital emergency rooms for minor things. They have clinics here. Just within a 3 block radius of where I live there must be 7. Some specialize - pediatrics, ENT, etc. They are usually open to 9 PM , 7 days a week.
The main efficacy of masks is when a sick person wears them because it cuts down on how they can disperse a virus and on how far the "exudation" can go if they cough or sneeze.
Medical personnel wear masks during surgeries to protect the person they're operating on. During outbreaks, staff will wear masks more to protect any who get sick from spreading it to patients/each other and they usually wear head covering and other outer covering to keep any bug from closer to their bodies so proper removal procedures can be taken to reduce the risk of virus residing on the body and making it easier to properly wash/decontaminate. (It's why they have the full-blown "spacesuits" with contained breathing for truly toxic environments and where they want as close to zero chance of spreading it to certain folks).
If someone w/o a mask coughs near you, and you have a mask on, this virus, like a number of others, can also enter via contact with the eyes...if one manages to close one's eyes and no virus gets on them before proper cleaning (and even possibly having enough time go by for the virus to lose it's ability to infect just as it does on surfaces other than the skin) the mask may very well have viable virus on it.
If you don't remove a mask properly, you are likely to transfer virus to your hands and anything else you touch, and if it is not decontaminated/disposed of w/o making contact to anything else, it has just created a potential transfer point or even multiple transfer points...proper removal and disposal of protective equipment can keep you safe and improper procedures can make you sick even though you "feel safe".
Most who wear masks in public, also have regular street clothes on with no outer protection - even if a mask were to prevent them from taking on enough load to get sick, and the outside of the mask was properly taken care of to not transfer any virus to an entry point, there is also live virus on one's skin where it wasn't protected and on clothing - one can take a mask and gloves off properly and then ignore that they also likely have virus on a LOT of other surface of their skin and clothing....it only takes one little slip and the protective equipment is not only useless, but also become more hazardous than not wearing it because one is capable of making one little slip.
If there isn't enough meat there, at least it may kick in the thought process for more personal research.
Some folks will opine that mass wearing of masks is a good thing because they know that if everyone wears one, then the population that may be sick will also be protecting others from their sickness...good trade off even if half the folks in masks are getting no benefit because their own mask isn't protecting them from the sick ones and they aren't sick so nobody needs to be protected from them....unless everyone wears a mask, then some sick folks will be spreading th evirus and even those with masks will be in danger of picking it up from them.
Yep, it’s fairly well understood that the mask isn’t to protect the wearer, isn’t it? The main thing is it blocks sneezes and coughs from a potentially infected person, thereby protecting everyone else. I’m no fan of the masks but the “sneeze blocker” logic seems sensible. Even a simple cotton bandana worn bandit style would cut down on droplets in the air.
Yep - it’s a simple concept but some have trouble grasping it...if they want to “suit up”, more power to them, but when they think everyone should, they are aiding and abetting the enemy...and the irony is that they don’t seem to realize the import of Pogo’s statement...”We have met the enemy and he is us.”
So, tell me again how a mask makes contracting the disease MORE likely?
Assuming the same behaviors, with and without mask.
I've mentioned many times that they learned their lessons from the SARS outbreak, and the US will learn from the corona virus outbreak, if we're smart - which remains to be seen.
I stand my statement up thread concerning the value of the observation made by USFRIENDINVICTORIA. If you know of any instance where this isn't true, please let us all know. Deer rifle ownership numbers excluded, of course.
Not wearing masks during contagious outbreaks only helps the contagion spread more. Your statement, "For Taiwan at least they did it using intrusive methods not generally possible here in the USA.", is false. While not since the Spanish flu outbreak has the US faced such a massive and deadly contagion, US localities have always had the means, authority, and laws on the books to deal with communicable diseases.
Controlling this would gone better if left to those same local and state agencies, if expressly ordered to do so and given proper guidelines. The CDC, NIH, FDA, have sorely underperformed in their mission to protect the health of Americans - to be kind. They don't know what they're doing. Practically every advice and action by these federal agencies was wrong - especially stopping the distribution/sales of the masks still available in the country at the time, not immediately sealing our borders, not ensuring for proper collection and availability of data, stopping the economy, ...
Our so called "experts" should have been on a teleconference with Korea, asking what to do. I seriously doubt Korea was on the phone to us, asking what to do - as claimed, as our token healthcare "experts" were claiming masks were ineffective while half the populations of Asian countries can be seen wearing them in the streets. Sorry it the truth stings - I hate f'n liars - especially when governments lie to cover someone's sorry ass. Our CDC is worse than worthless, having even helped to fund the creation of this viral killer in the first place. If heads don't literally roll, you can be assured that our POTUS has been assimilated by the Borg.
After reading many of the flubro's comments and seeing the news reports about those wanting to open up, not the economy, but concerts and sporting events, where large masses of people gather, and how it's their constitutional right NOT to wear a mask, I realize we in the US still haven't learned our lesson.
So, while Korea had zero fatalities yesterday, and their economy is getting back on track; barring a cure, the fight against the virus will go on in the US. Much of the gains we've made will be lost. More will die, more of the economy will shut down, food shortages will become widespread, etc, and I will need to redo the ending daily fatality index for my US projection, as I'm pretty sure it will be falling even further short of its previous estimation of fatalities in the US.
Just my 2 cents...YMMV.
So tell me how it would be possible in the USA for the government to create a database linking everyone's health records to their travel records and personal household data in one day?
If you read the material I provided links to you would know that:
"On January 27, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) and the National Immigration Agency integrated patients’ past 14-day travel history with their NHI identification card data from the NHIA; this was accomplished in 1 day. Taiwan citizens’ household registration system and the foreigners’ entry card allowed the government to track individuals at high risk because of recent travel history in affected areas."
No such databases officially exist in the United States. If they did, then the approach used so successfully in Taiwan to do tracking and isolation could have been done here too. But we don't have those kind of intrusive federal databases here in the United States.
Mask wearing clearly helps if the mask happens to intercept and trap an airborne pathogen you are exposed to.
You don't have to convince me of the ineptness of government responses all our our country. The CDC, DIA, and the CIA should have had accurate data from Wuhan long before the rest of us got it from Twitter or other reports from Chinese social media. And as you noted governments at all levels here did a lousy job of intercepting virus carriers from Europe and elsewhere.
That said, the impact of mask wearing as a factor that lead to the success in Korea and Taiwan is probably not nearly as important as the other steps they took.
There's no need to recreate something which already exists. There are additional data elements needed, or reserved data fields put to use. Reporting standards and information requirements need work, portal and query systems implemented. Extremely minor tasks for an agency of the US government with a multiple billion dollar budget. Seven days would be more than enough time to begin collecting information relevant in the fight given a small team of IT specialists with presidential authority.
I've done similar implementations. Not to the scale this would requite, but certainly within similar time constraints. Not bragging, but I remember one particular instance when a website I developed under a very short time limit, which used geospatial data was demo'd to some government VIPs while I was finishing the backend, and gave the word over the phone to go ahead and click the link to display such and such information on the big screen.
It's not rocket science. Or even hard to do today. There is no excuse for the CDC not to have the above already in place. In fact, I'd call it dereliction of duty.
You would be astounded at the amount of information in digital form that exists on you, not to mention other information
...not to mention other information which is able to be derived from primary information in databanks.
Surely you can grasp that when the SG said they "may be" more dangerous than not wearing one, it was because he knows how people often slip up "just a teeny bit" when handling protective gear - and that's the professionals.
I have nothing against those who want to wear a mask - but I don't want them using twisted logic to try to compel me or others to wear one too...I know they don't make me any safer if even one sick person is out there w/o one.
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