It was a warm spring evening in Taipei and more than 100 celebrities, founders, venture capitalists and tech executives gathered for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. The headline event, a fireside chat, was just an excuse for Taiwan’s best-connected people to socialize, enjoying the kinds of freedoms the rest of the world lacked amid another wave of COVID-19 shutdowns.
Notable was that many in the crowd were not long-term residents of Taiwan. While quite a few were born there, or had family connections, most had spent little time in their ancestral homeland while building their lives in Silicon Valley’s tech hub, the academic institutions of New England or on Wall Street.
As COVID-19 spread around the world, these people grabbed their Taiwan passports or scrambled for an exclusive Gold Card visa and headed to a sanctuary where life remained normal.
A similar scenario was playing out for the privileged and well-connected around the world. With money, passports and flexible employment, they managed to pull off the greatest trade of all — COVID-19 arbitrage. The choice of where to live, how to work and which international schools to attend provided relative comfort for the rich, while billions of others scrambled for vaccines and grappled to balance the demands of their jobs and homeschooling.
For wealthy Indians, escaping the ravages of the pandemic involved chartering private jets while their home nation was brought to its knees, as waves of COVID-19 patients gasped for oxygen. Bollywood stars were spotted heading to the tropical archipelago of the Maldives, while entire families decamped to Dubai, where one-way flights from New Delhi cost US$20,000 per person. The Emirati municipality has become so popular among Indian expats that it is jokingly referred to as the “safest Indian city.”
The uber rich in other parts of the world, from the US to the UK, also found ways to hide. Jetting off to far-flung New Zealand, seeking out doomsday bunkers or simply retiring to holiday homes far from the crowds.
In Taiwan, which shut the border to foreigners by March last year, passport holders and authorized residents could re-enter after completing a mandatory two-week quarantine. Having taken early action to combat a virus that originated in neighboring China, Taiwan’s government managed to steer its people through a mix of restrictions, such as mask mandates, while maintaining a degree of flexibility that ensured most institutions and entertainment venues remained open.
Parents seeking to ensure their kids did not miss any class time, and well-heeled young professionals wanting to enjoy the party life of Taipei’s nightclubs and KTVs started flooding in. Within six months of the US experiencing its first wave of lockdowns and school closures early last year, the city’s elite international schools had reached full capacity.
The flipside of this transaction came to bear when Taiwan, having managed to keep COVID-19 at bay for more than a year, suffered a spike in numbers in May, after a few cases broke through its quarantine defenses. Suddenly, more than 2,000 new infections within a week was seen as a national disaster (India reported 311,170 in a single day during the same period), and shops, schools and businesses were ordered closed or curtailed.
After enjoying a golden summer last year, residents of Taiwan were left facing a socially distanced summer this year with clubs and bars closed, and dining severely restricted.
Coupled with a shortage of vaccines, caused in part by political pressure from China, those same people with money and means hopped on flights back to the US, where inoculations were widely available and schools ready to reopen. With outbound departures in the months of May through July double those inbound, data showed that Taiwan had served its purpose.
Now, governments around the region are facing pressure to open their borders for tourists, business travelers and returning nationals. Vaccination rates above 90 percent emboldened Australia’s federal government, and state leaders who have control over their own territories, to let citizens and qualified visa holders back in. Thailand began experimenting with a “sandbox” strategy that allows tourists to visit the resort island of Phuket while keeping the rest of the nation largely isolated.
Meanwhile, Taiwan remains cautious. Business leaders and chambers of commerce want the government to ease up, citing the impact on foreign trade and its robust exhibition and convention industry. With vaccination levels rising and local COVID-19 cases hovering near zero for more than a month, Taipei might well relax controls.
Yet many Taiwanese do not want the borders to reopen. Instead, they want to hold on to that most precious of pandemic pairings: freedom and safety. In a world of COVID-19 arbitrage, many realize the value of playing both sides of the trade.
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