Apolcalypse from a distance

These are very strange times. Strange enough to justify a post, the first in a long time. I have arrived in Taiwan in a set of circumstances that feel like the start of a story of global dystopia. I’d brought my flight forward in the fast-changing situation, choosing to fly on Friday 13th in the hope that it might not be a popular one. In a virus panic you don’t want to be surrounded by crowds in a metal tubes for hours. That part of it didn’t work. It was almost a full flight, and the empty seat next to me was the only one I could see. Almost everybody wore a mask. Having promised I’d be scrupulously careful, I wore a mask myself. I also wiped down every surface with alcohol wipes, and then didn’t move from my seat for the twelve hours flying time. The airline staff disinfected the toilet after every visitor, but it still felt like the riskiest place. However, it was a good choice of flight, because while I was in the air Taiwan raised the threat level of arrivals from the UK from one straight to three, and so we were the last into the country before really stringent restrictions kicked in. Even as it was, having already filled out two entry forms on the plane, there was a new two-part form rushed around after landing. Then there was a long queue way before immigration, as we all had to pass through disease screening. Anyone with a Taiwan mobile number could be screened online after scanning a QR code, but the rest of us had to wait patiently for the manual version. They wanted to know where we’d recently been and where we’d be staying, a contact name and number for the next fourteen days, and for us to complete a health check every one of those days on the form provided. What was particularly impressive to me was that they actually called the number each person gave, live, to check it was valid. As a level one arrival, I am allowed to go out as long as I wear a face mask. If I’d arrived a day later I’d be obliged to stay indoors by myself, and I’d have a tracking app on my phone so officials knew where I was for the quarantine period. If I didn’t have a smartphone, they’d give me one. As it is, I have my form, take my temperature morning and evening and tick the boxes to say whether I have any symptoms, and get a text message every evening to check on me. I have to answer: 1 if I’m OK, 2 if I have any of the symptoms, or 3 if I have any other problem. If I don’t answer at all, they assume a 2, and someone gets in contact straight away. There’s a free phone number to call at any other time too. The clever thing about all this is that the Taiwan government knows the whereabouts of every possible source of virus infection, which means they haven’t had to shut the country down in other ways. I’m extremely happy to be restricted for two weeks if it keeps a whole country safer, and it feels like a much better solution than anything in Europe. But meanwhile I look at the news from Europe and the UK and that sense of dystopia grows and grows.