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I'm a little confused. So there is NO quarantine. Yet the "Self-Initiated Prevention" sounds like a quarantine? 7 days that you aren't supposed to 'walk around' or 'do anything', right? Or do I have that wrong? Does it just mean you test yourself for 7 days, but you can walk around?
Or that you can't walk around or go out? A little bit confusing.
When we visited in 2020 we had the police call us every day to check that we were adhering to the 14-day quarantine and having no symptoms. Cell phone trackers were required, the works. However, there wasn't much outdoor masking and even indoor was spotty, because there was no virus on the island. Or it was at undetectable levels and not able to spread.
When we arrived in late 2022 just after the second (smaller) peak of the omicron wave, the system was dismantled and restrictions totally ignored. You got a leaflet outlining points about how to act, but it was pretty clear that no one really expected you to take any special precautions. Just don't go shouting about it on youtube. Even the self-imposed restrictions are kinda meaningless. They just want you to try not to spread disease. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Don't visit people who are high-risk. Try to avoid crowds.
Self tests are expensive in Taiwan and the government didn't buy them like Halloween Candy, so they are pretty stingy. Back then they gave you 2 tests; one to take a day after arrival, and one to take at the 7th day of "self-monitoring". We did this and all were negative.
A much greater % of Taiwanese had active infections at the time than did Californians, plus we had all had our bivalent boosters timed to give us maximum resistance during the trip.
People were wearing masks outside, but they would take them off indoors in crowded cafe's and restaurants. Not super effective.
It's just part of the difficult transition from Zero-Covid (like really, zero, not the mainland pretending they're at zero) after 2 years to facing up to the fact that everyone is going to get infected.
Since the Taiwanese have a strong social fabric and healthcare focus, everyone will be wearing masks (even outdoors) for quite a while yet. Taiwan dropped the outdoor mask mandate when we were there, but there was still 100% outdoor masking.
However, now that China has completely given up and is trying to pretend that they never did a thing called "zero COVID" expect Taiwan to sort of follow along and become much less restrictive.
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