[jameshush]

Out of the box suggestion: I moved to Taipei.

There’s no COVID here so besides the 2-3 month lockdown last year I’ve been able to go to many in-person meetups like normal.

Virtual is _fine_ but for my personality meeting in person is still my preferred way by far. I can’t recommend moving here enough to anyone who needs a place to live a normal life and wait out COVID.

[ghiculescu]

Genuine question, how is there normal life + no COVID there? I’m Australian (but stranded abroad) and thought we’d now run out of countries without it.

[40four]

Also, spending time in basically any ‘red’ state in the USA can get you the same result. We’ve been living life as usual, almost no restrictions, since at least April of 2021. It’s nice, and believe it or not, the sky is in fact not falling. It’s not as hard as ‘they’ would like you to believe, to be smart & stay safe, while also leading a normal life.

[TranquilMarmot]

My mom lives in a red state (SC) and works at a hospital... they're going to have to call in the National Guard because of all of the covid cases. If you get in a car crash, good luck getting into the emergency room.

[nxm]

Same is happening in blue states like Rhode Island…..we have to move on and live with the virus, and red states knew that way before blue states. Don’t look at the case counts media is using to scare you, but rather hospitalizations and deaths

[40four]

> ”we have to move on and live with the virus”

Thanks, this is the crux of my point really. There will never be ‘no Covid’ from here on out. We will never be able to eradicate it. The sooner we’ll all accept this the better. We will have to live with it for the rest of our lives.

[smileysteve]

> but rather hospitalizations

The hospitals are all on bypass where they're calling in the national guard.

[smokey_circles]

Genuinely curious question: how do tell the sky hasn't fallen? American media is so polarized and dramatized that I imagine it's as disorienting on the inside as it feels from the outside.

For context, I believe covid has killed more Americans than anything else in your history (though I haven't been able to confirm that, most wartime figures are estimates).

That doesn't mean lock down and mask up but surely doing nothing is equally bad? Just seems like covid has become political theater and it gets minimized somewhat as a result

[lmilcin]

> I believe covid has killed more Americans than anything else in your history

It is difficult to tell because it depends on how you measure.

You could for example, logically, surmise that it does not matter what we die of. Everybody dies, it is just a question of cause of death. From that point of view covid has killed nobody because if they haven't died of covid they would eventually die of something else.

Is a death of 90yo the same as death of 20yo?

What about lack of medical help that could extend the live of an ill person by couple more years? I can assume a lot of people could have their lives extended by at least a year or two given proper care.

When grandpa dies it is definitely tragic event, but it does not leave the same mark on the family as young parent or a child dying because we do not expect the young ones to die. Young person's death frequently leaves scar on the family forever while at the same time we are used to the idea of old people dying, eventually.

I think these things should be measured on "How many healthy years it has taken."

From that point of view wars are extremely damaging because they not only kill people, but mostly young healthy ones that could have long lives ahead of them. They destroy families, mark people with violence.

US does not really understand what war is because the wars it has fought were not on US soil. It only has second hand stories of wars and some number of grieving families.

I live in Poland and my grandparents lived through a real war. Real, scary, unrestricted, inhuman violence. The signs of WWII are here everywhere TO THIS DAY. The personal stories that I heard turned my stomach inside out when I heard it.

[mperham]

Except for the “no Covid” part…

[iratewizard]

Turn off your TV, delete your reddit account and covid goes away.

[AlotOfReading]

Does it? I've had 3 friends of friends die of it since Thanksgiving. I don't know whether they had TVs or Reddit accounts, but I don't think getting rid of them would have helped much. There have also been a lot more exposures in my immediate social circle than previously.

[smileysteve]

Even in SE states, even when the positivity rate was below 5% (which was roughly 2 months at a time) we didn't get back to regular tech meetups.

[xyzzy21]

It's Taiwan. Still the lowest COVID rate and from early on. Still one of the last democracies that aren't corrupted.

[ghiculescu]

Yeah, my question was why. What is so different about it?

[jameshush]

To my understanding SARS hit Taiwan REALLY hard, so they've been extra extra careful about COVID ever since it was discovered.

[legerdemain]

The constant threat of imminent destruction bringing people together?

[moneywoes]

Is it possible to live on English?

[jameshush]

It's _possible_, especially in Taipei, but you'll want to take some classes before you go. I have non-Taiwanese friends who never learned Chinese, but they all regret it.

I find language learning fun though so it's definitely a feature, not a bug, for me personally.

[xyzzy21]

Depending on what your skills are, some industries are conducted entirely in English.

Learning Mandarin has major benefits.

When I moved to Taiwan, I spent a non-trivial part of my time in Mandarin classes. It absolutely helped with daily life and connecting with other people even though my industry is one of those "entirely in English" ones.