It is insane, because unless you plan to become a hermit kingdom forever, you can never keep something like the omicron strain out as long as the rest of the world exists. It will eventually get in. You will eventually lose control. The death toll will eventually be the same regardless.
All you do is delay the inevitable, while your policies are additionally causing internal societal damage (economical, psychological, political, etc) that rivals any reduced death toll you managed to avoid .
A quick Google show me Taiwan has 800 deaths so far. Massive 1M deaths does not seems very "inevitable" to me.
This is has been happening in Australia since January. We've essentially removed all restrictions at this point, and we're letting covid do its thing. I think we've had more covid deaths this year than we had in 2020 and 2021 combined.
The difference that delaying made is that we're only "letting it rip" after 85% or so of our population is fully vaccinated. (Everyone who wants a vaccine has one.) And the vaccines are a really big deal - they have a massive dampening effect on covid's mortality rate.
> The death toll will eventually be the same regardless.
We'll see, but I doubt it.
There is plenty of real corruption going on in the rich world. But there's also plenty of examples of good governance and good health advice making it into government policy. Its far too cynical to label all governmental responses to covid as corruption. Maybe thats true in Latin America, but Latin America and Taiwan are very different places.
If all countries had corrupt and ineffective covid policies, all countries would have ended up with similar covid mortality figures. But the data[1] shows a vast gap between the best and worst countries re: covid deaths. Plenty of countries made a good showing - and that speaks well for their ability to turn medical advice into action.
Taiwan has had 36 deaths per million people, compared to 3048 in the USA. You say their quarantine system is "insanity". If it were up to me, I'd pick Taiwan's "insane" covid policies every time.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/