comment: >
  
  Yeah and that may have made sense until it was determined how quickly the virus mutates. Even if omicron never came around, they would have had to deal with people with other strains that push through immunity filtering into the country as time went on. The major benefit of mRNA is that the vaccines can be rapidly modified, but we couldn't keep up with both regulation and manufacturing to a point where we could always innoculate and hope for zero Covid. Maybe that was still a dream into 2021, but not so much this year and last.
context: Maybe I’m a dumbie but why aren’t they tested before they leave China? >
  
  Taiwan wants to be in control. They wouldn't trust the results if China were to do the testing. Besides, people might test negative before departure, but positive on arrival. It's much better to test on arrival. >
  
  What does Taiwan do if someone tests positive upon arrival? Just quarantine them? >
  
  Don’t places like Taiwan have more systematic methods of containing this due to experiences with initial SARS outbreaks? >
  
  I think everyone has given up on containment and moved on to mitigation. Even Australia gave up on it and my wife had friends living there during peak covid, going to concerts etc and saying “we don’t have covid here!” But it happened. It’s not sustainable, but sensibility about how to exist within it is sustainable. >
  
  I think "given up" is the wrong thing to say here. It was always the goal to get to a good vaccination / immunity rate (bonus if the virus mutated to become less dangerous) and then move to mitigation. It was never possible to contain this. >
  
  Optimistically, it sounds like they are past their peak then. >
  
  Looks like that is the case for the big cities only. In the countryside the wave has yet to reach the peak. >
  
  Wait til after lunar new year. >
  
  Milan a few weeks ago said it was 50% so the wave must be waning. I was looking at some Chinese themed subreddits maybe around 5 days out of covid curiosity and there was an informal poll of who has caught Covid in this wave and around 80% said they've caught it. The original Omicron wave hits super fast and is over in like 6-8 weeks. So since they opened up at the end of November or early December and with that informal poll, this thing could be almost over and the last locked down country will join the rest of the world. >
  
  It was 50% in one flight. That's not a representative sample. >
  
  It’s burning out fast in China.  Everyone I know had it last week.  Factories were reporting half of the people out sick over the last couple weeks. They think it peaked in the major cities already.  I expect everything to be back to normal by the time CNY ends >
  
  Those planes are flying petri dishes! >
  
  All planes are flying petri dishes >
  
  Only 20%? >
  
  This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 62%. (I'm a bot)
  
  
  Taipei, Jan. 5 China's COVID-19 pandemic is still peaking, with about 20 percent of arrivals from China at Taiwan airports testing positive for the coronavirus, according to the Central Epidemic Control Center on Thursday.
  On Tuesday, of the 1,001 arrivals from China at Taoyuan International Airport and the 140 arrivals at Taipei Songshan Airport, 186 and 18, respectively, tested positive for the disease, resulting in a positivity rate of almost 20 percent, according to the CECC at a press conference.
  The CECC does not plan to use the electronic fence system to monitor arrivals from China for now, nor will it open the border to Chinese tourists soon, said CECC head Victor Wang at the press conference.
  
  
  Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: China^#1 arrival^#2 CECC^#3 test^#4 Airport^#5 >
  
  The Chinese are sending covid positive patients to infect and weaken the Taiwanese population. /s >
  
  Sending covid globally actually,  and calling it racial profiling to test chinese travelers, this is the same way covid originally spread globally, chinese people needed to be healthy to travel domestically, but international flights had zero restrictions.
  Don't underestimate the selfish immorality of the chinese government. >
  
  I don't know how the CCP thought that zero Covid was the answer. It was way too contagious that I was going to die out rather than be endemic and everyone knew that in like Jan 2020. Every other health care agency on the planet took a "slow the spread to keep our hospitals functioning" "flatten the curve" approach, and for good reason. There was never going to be a zero Covid way out of this after field hospitals were built in Wuhan in like March 2020. It was already basically all over Italy by then. What did they expect would happen if they eradicated it in the entire country? Never let anyone in again? You'll never catch every case coming in after the fact and they would have been fighting with it until the end of time. >
  
  They were developing their own mRNA vaccines. I guess the original plan was to wait until those are approved and have been administered to most of the population. But it took longer than expected and Omicron was way too contagious for them to be able to stick to Zero COVID any longer, so they ripped off the band-aid.