simon43

Lumping all vaccines into one group called 'vaccines' over-simplifies the situation. There are 'live' vaccines which contain a tiny amount of the pathogen. These trigger our immune system into producing antibodies, thus increasing our protection should we become infected with that pathogen in the future. (Note - vaccinations do not stop you contracting the illness - they simply allow your immune system to tackle it head-on before the pathogen causes serious illness symptoms). There are 'dead' vaccines which contain completely inert 'dead' pathogen, and therefore can do your body no harm, but fool the immune system into thinking that your body is being attacked by said pathogen, and therefore produce antibodies. (Actually, the immune system is a little 'stupid' - it can be tricked into thinking some harmless substances are dangerous to our body, think of food allergies etc). Then there are vaccines which contain no live or dead pathogen, but contain some man-made substance that 'looks like' the pathogen, but obviously can't infect one with the real pathogen. Some bacteria are dangerous and some bacteria are not, but all viruses are harmful to some extent - there are no good viruses. The problem with viruses is that they are physically very small, much smaller than a bacteria cell. This means - in simple terms - that if you are infected with a virus, your immune system wastes important time searching for what is making you sick - it's a virus hiding inside your cells. For this reason, vaccinations are very important to fight virus pathogens, because they forewarn your immune system of what each virus looks like (every virus has a unique pattern, I think Covid virus has a triangular 'key' shape). Therefore the Covid vaccination (live, dead or man-made) informed the immune system "Hey bro, if you ever find this pattern hiding in your cells, zap it!!". Since each virus has a different pattern shape, you need a different vaccination to protect your body against each virus. That's why you need vaccinations against common viruses such as: Chickenpox Covid Polio Measles, mumps, rubella Hepatitis Flu HPV (for females) and so on.... For a very small number of persons, the immune system may react violently against this 'foreign body' (vaccine) entering one's body. That's very sad, but the number of people adversely affected by vaccinations is statistically very small.

"It’s ruining their lives, their relationships, and what remains of their mental health." FFS, it's just a mask!! Why on earth would wearing a mask ruin your life and your fragile mental health? 🙂 I have delicate lungs. I have the best quality face-mask with removal/washable filter. I often wear my mask when outside to protect my lungs from air pollution. It works! I wear my mask always on planes to minimise the risk of inhaling something nasty from the air circulation system, (yes I know airlines claim that the recirculated air is about the cleanest on Mother Earth, but I call bollax on that claim...) Wearing a mask has not ruined my life - it has made it immeasurably better. I have also stopped talking with rabbits, so I guess my mental health has also improved... Frankly, I don't give a flying fick what people think of me for wearing a mask (TBH, not one person has ever made a negative comment or given me a dirty look).

I'm living 'somewhere' by the sea in Thailand - see photo. A 2km long beautiful sandy beach and I'm the only person on it....

Great news about eradicating Polio. However, Polio has already been all but eradicated, thanks to a very effective vaccination program. Where does it still exist? In rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the goat-shagging men chase away the doctors, stopping them from eradicating the kids. Therefore, I hope that Bill Gates funds a program to eradicate these men, because that will be the best way to make Polio an 'extinct' disease.....

@PPMMUU and Lorry - thanks very much for your explanations. Indeed, my exhaling ability is reduced, but the degradation has not changed in 25 years. I have never had a CT lung scan - since the doctors that I previously consulted in the UK and Thailand all stated that there was nothing wrong with my lungs and no further investigations were therefore necessary! I do keep up to date with the various vaccinations against pneumonia (13 and 23), and flu etc. Right now at Khanom Beach, my bronchitis from the smoky air in Laos some 3 weeks ago has almost disappeared and my lung mucus is minor and thin, so all good news 🙂

"You refer to doctors as totally useless...." No, I refer only to the specific doctors that I have visited in the UK and Thailand. IMHO, they have been useless! @PPMMUU, why would bronchiectasis produce an abnormal lung function result? The function of exchange of gases in my alveoli should not be affected by this illness. My blood oxygen levels are fine, so perhaps I just have ugly toes.... The use of N-acetylcysteine has helped a great deal! It thins the mucus so that I can cough it up more easily. Right now I am at Khanom Beach in south Thailand and my coughing is much reduced in this clean, salty sea air 🙂

The reason why so many Americans are mentally unhinged? Because they visit therapists.....!

Absolutely! I topped up DTAC this morning with 300 baht - easy as pie 🙂

[quote] ... That's BS, if talking about shooting a round straight up, and bullet simply falling back at gravity. ''' [/quote] Thai gravity not same as farang gravity......

Well, I'm almost ready to 'hangup my hat' with teaching mostly primary grade science 'online'. I've been doing this successfully for many years, but as I grow older, I assume that the number of young students who want to learn from an eccentric old man will diminish.... For that reason, I have been creating learning videos of the complete primary/elementary science school curriculum, from grade 1 to grade 6, covering every single science topic in the curriculum. Typically, one school year of teaching science will have about 30 science topics to learn, and I have mimicked this with my own videos about each topic. Thus, a student can use my video to revise a science topic that they have learned at school, or can watch the video prior to their in-class lesson about this topic. So there are about 30 videos per grade - that makes 180 videos, each about 55 minutes long 🙂 I hope to create a residual income from marketing these videos. But where to promote them? My friend Mr Google suggests the Udemy website. Hmm, that website has a huge range of content, but almost all of the content videos target adults. My videos are aimed at young students. YouTube? Well, I would have to get my videos monetised first, and then I'm not sure that the pay-out would justify the effort. A major problem is that my popularity as a primary grades science teacher is mostly in China and Russia, not in the USA/EU (this is because of timezone differences). YouTube is blocked in China unless a VPN is used, and the payment methods on Udemy and other learning websites favour the western world (Google Pay etc). Perhaps I should 'go it alone'. I can host my videos on my own website (onlinescienceteacher.com I own the domain but have suspended the website for the moment). Then I would have to pay for a large amount of web-space to store my hundreds of videos. I do have a suitable payment method (WeChat, Alipay, CC) set up with Stripe. But I would still have to make potential end-users aware of my products.... Any suggestions? I think my videos would definitely sell at the correct price (parents pay about $25 for a 'live' online lesson on a topic, so a video sale price of perhaps $10 would be attractive no?)

... Or perhaps some sausage-seeker was outraged when they didn't get a sausage......

It's not just the foreign/western kids that suffer. The informal school for the children of Burmese workers on KP was raided and 4 Burmese teachers arrested (this is the school where I previously taught English and Thai as an 'illegal' volunteer). These Burmese kids can't attend the government school because many of them don't understand enough Thai language. They all want to improve their Thai language skills. The informal school can't become legally 'formal' because they will have to employ 4 Thais for every non-Thai worker, which doesn't really work when you need to speak Burmese to do your job! I can't become a legal volunteer because the volunteer visa is only available for those working for a registered NGO. Ho hum.... stupid catch-22.

Absolutely! Although I think they are a dying breed nowadays...

Suspenders????

My understanding is this: Healthy lungs and the bronchi airways are lined with mucus that is produced by the body to 'catch' particles and unwelcome bacteria, and coughing is a natural process to remove some of this mucus, which is then replaced by more mucus in a thin layer. But with Bronchiectasis, the bronchi airways are wider than normal, due to some original issue, such as pneumonia, (which I had several times 25 years ago). Therefore, the body naturally produces too much mucus to try to line these wider airways. In my case, if there is no irritant breathed in, my excess mucus stays stuck to my widened airways. I can feel it, but it doesn't cause me a major problem. But if I have some irritant, then the mucus starts to do its job, except rather than needing to cough up a small amount of mucus, there is a large amount to cough up, and it sticks to the bronchi walls like superglue! So special hugging coughs or even slapping the chest area (as is done with cystic fibrosis patients), is needed, or medication to thin this thick mucus so that it can be more easily coughed up. As for cigarette smokers, I guess that the smoke is inhaled and then exhaled - it doesn't remain in the airways.

The only men who should have beards are Santa Claus and nautical folk. I regard anyone else with facial hair either as too lazy to shave), and that laziness probably carries across into other aspects of their life). Or they are trying to make up for the fact that they are bald, but said beard simply makes them look silly, as if their head is upside down!

^^^ I got my Thai reciprocal ham licence about 20 years ago, based on my UK ham licence. I had obtained that when I was about 18 years old, but I rarely used it in the UK. Anyway, being in Thailand, I found my radio signal to be somewhat sought after by other radio hams across the world. Nowadays I mostly spend my time designing and testing short wave wire antennas for this hobby, and mostly send and receive SSTV images, receive satellite signals, or occasionally send signals via the ISS.

I missed this thread for a long time, so not sure if the OP is still in the forum. Anyway, my comments might be of interest to the OP and others: "Short wave radio" could involve the following: - listening to short wave radio broadcasts, music etc from different stations across the world - build up a collection of the confirmation of their reception 'QSL' postcards (either hard copy or e-QSL cards) - listen to domestic radio stations on the medium wave band, but from far-flung countries - receive interesting shortwave signals, such as weatherfax maps (there is a maritime weatherfax broadcast station in Bangkok) - receive SSTV (slow scan TV) images from radio amateurs or from CB stations across the world - receive data signals and images from the ISS (international Space Station) or various small 'Cubesat' satellites from mostly Russia, but also Japan - receive weather map images from USA and Russian satellites - Transmit and receive signals as a licenced radio amateur in Thailand. All in this list except the final one require no special permission or licence to receive the signals, and usually the required equipment is cheap and physically small. You often can use a simple length of wire as the receiving antenna, or a specific length of wire to provide enhanced reception. For example, you no longer need a bulky radio receiver. You can use an SDR (software defined radio) 'dongle plugged into your laptop, plus some free software. I use this to receive the various satellite images from the NOAA weather satellites, ISS and Russian technical college satellites. Attached are images that I've received from weather satellites, the ISS, shortwave weatherfax and Russian cubesats. To transmit signals, you need a radio ham licence, and that is a difficult route to follow, unless you already hold a ham licence from your home country, and then again only if it's one out of a very limited list of countries. If anyone wants to know more, please do comment!

That must have hurt a bit..... Reminder to self: Don't get p*ssed as a fart.

double-post.....

We Brits could use Pitcairn Island, St Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha, even St Kilda that's closer to home. The UK government should follow Trump's lead and incarcerate criminals and illegal immigrants on some cold, wind-swept island in the middle of nowhere and throw away the .. er .. key to that island!

How can he charge more when you have less hair due to aging? 🙂

For musical entertainment, I play 'Reggae Do Maranhao' in the background. This is a series of reggae music channels from Brazil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVMxsORwntE There is some personal sadness in this music. A couple of years ago, my young Thai niece was dying of TB. I rented a little wooden cabin to stay and care for her (her mother had to work to earn money for the other family members). It was near to the hospital, but the doctors wouldn't admit her because they said she was beyond help. Every day for a couple of weeks, we would stay in this little room and she listened to this soothing music all day. If I stopped playing it, she would motion for me to play it again 🙂

I've found that the intelligence level of 'Dr Google' seems to depend upon that of the person asking the question. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. But ask a specific question, based upon your own scientific research etc, and Dr Google can certainly help to identify possible causes, diagnoses etc.

Yes, that's one of my daily channels to watch - Simon speaks the truth. Another factual channel that I often watch is: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkFeltonProductions a factual history channel