Regarding the mandatory quarantine thing, the first hypothesis to my mind in that situation is “if vaccine/testing proof from abroad is too easy to fake, it’s much easier to have everyone go through locally-verified quarantine than try to figure out who’s faking and risk political blowback and/or catastrophic outbreaks depending on which mistakes you make”, or more weakly “that was the evaluation of some part of the Canadian government independently of whether it is actually true”.
This is doubly true for any kind of “I have recovered from” attestation, and (especially if not from a medical system) that has the extra dice-roll of “was the disease properly identified”. In both of these, the risk will come substantially from the worse end of the distribution, so even if median people are reliable-and-trustworthy enough, too much variance could be a huge deal.
Edited to add: also, the Twitter link in that paragraph points to a tweet about FDA authorizing tests without a prescription, which seems like it might’ve been mixed up with a different link?
In the specific case of Taiwan, the only sane strategy (which they are doing) is to require all newcomers to undergo a two-week quarantine.
Incoming visitors have a strong incentive to avoid quarantine. It is difficult for the Taiwanese government to confirm whether someone from the United States or another country has been vaccinated. Allowing visitors who claim to have been vaccinated enter the country without quarantine guarantees a COVID outbreak. Taiwan has COVID under control. Taiwan has few citizens vaccinated. A COVID outbreak in Taiwan would be a national disaster.
A mandatory quarantine may not make sense for Canada on consequentialist grounds since COVID has long since gotten out-of-control there. But the general principle of a mandatory quarantine is sound.
Regarding the mandatory quarantine thing, the first hypothesis to my mind in that situation is “if vaccine/testing proof from abroad is too easy to fake, it’s much easier to have everyone go through locally-verified quarantine than try to figure out who’s faking and risk political blowback and/or catastrophic outbreaks depending on which mistakes you make”, or more weakly “that was the evaluation of some part of the Canadian government independently of whether it is actually true”.
This is doubly true for any kind of “I have recovered from” attestation, and (especially if not from a medical system) that has the extra dice-roll of “was the disease properly identified”. In both of these, the risk will come substantially from the worse end of the distribution, so even if median people are reliable-and-trustworthy enough, too much variance could be a huge deal.
Edited to add: also, the Twitter link in that paragraph points to a tweet about FDA authorizing tests without a prescription, which seems like it might’ve been mixed up with a different link?
In the specific case of Taiwan, the only sane strategy (which they are doing) is to require all newcomers to undergo a two-week quarantine.
Incoming visitors have a strong incentive to avoid quarantine. It is difficult for the Taiwanese government to confirm whether someone from the United States or another country has been vaccinated. Allowing visitors who claim to have been vaccinated enter the country without quarantine guarantees a COVID outbreak. Taiwan has COVID under control. Taiwan has few citizens vaccinated. A COVID outbreak in Taiwan would be a national disaster.
A mandatory quarantine may not make sense for Canada on consequentialist grounds since COVID has long since gotten out-of-control there. But the general principle of a mandatory quarantine is sound.