pjmorton

The government has a responsibility to respond to emergencies, but endemic Covid is no longer an emergency. As long as the shots are available through regular health care providers, like flu shots, it is probably better for the government not to be involved.

Syrians?

Please define LMG.

Please define STV.

For the information of others who might be in a similar situation, how would the situation be handled, if the Thai wife were the one hospitalized?

I have had crocodile in three different countries, and alligator in New Orleans, with a wide range of impressions. Alligator was dark and oily, while crocodile was light and white. But the frozen croc bought here in Khonkaen Big C was very tough, while the restaurant meat I ate in Australia and Taiwan was delightfully tender. I suspect this difference was related to the age of the animal.

We had this problem last year when we bought synthetic sheets to replace our previous cotton ones. After a while, we put the cotton sheets back and suddenly no more ants. Go figure....

I renewed my US passport last year and was surprised to find that the waiting time was much shorter here in Thailand than it would have been in the U.S. That may be because at that time the pandemic was much more serious in the U.S. than here, but don't take for granted that you will be at a disadvantage getting it done outside your home country.

I have not dined in the Philippines often enough to rate the recipes and the ingredients, but I would definitely object to the lukewarm temperature at which the food is typically served. Cooked food always tastes better when served hot, and there are some sanitation issues to be considered too when you don't know how long it has been standing around.

Expect courier services like DHL,UPS or FedEx to lobby their governments to get the national post offices out of the international parcel delivery business altogether. It's only a matter of time.

I'm sure they will want to insure that the sample came from the person they are admitting. This will require direct supervision of the collection process.

Slightly off topic, but my wife subscribed to True for our home internet plan, and frequently I can't use it to access overseas url's via my browser. Most of the time it works OK, but several times a day I hit one that fails to return anything but a "connection timed out" message. The problem disappears immediately when I tether to my cell phone, which is subscribed to AIS. Maybe this problem is related somehow to the SMS blockages mentioned by the original poster.

Let me suggest a topic that some might find useful: a glossary of abbreviations and acronyms. LoS, non-O, OP, and so forth, all may save time for the writers but create stumbling blocks for the uninitiated reader and contribute to an unnecessarily cliquish atmosphere of insiders and outsiders. Maybe this isn't well suited to the hierarchical forum structure - but a contributor intent on attracting a lot of views would probably be well rewarded for setting it up.

Statistically speaking, how many false positives and how many false negatives would we expect to see in 59K tests?

I have the same problem with True home service. Many overseas url's simply won't connect - I thought it was because they were using a bad DNS server. Have complained now and then but don't have the patience to sit home and wait for the technician to arrive. The simple fix is to . tether through from my AIS phone connection presto - problem solved.

Don't know the procedure here, but in Taiwan where I lived before coming to Thailand, the big courier companies negotiated deals with customs authorities. In return for a flat fee, the couriers bought the right to self-assess the customs duty owed by the addressee, and then simply pocket it. I assume this is the norm in many countries, but not publicized for obvious reasons. I happened to hear about it from a recent MBA graduate who found her first job with one of the big 3 couriers. By contrast, when you use the not-for-profit post office they often don't bother with the tariff on the small items, and for large items they actually consult their ad-valorem tables to find the correct rate.

When Thailand was among the least infected countries in the world, there was a good argument to be made for restricting inbound travel. But now that it is one of the most infected countries, who are they trying to protect, the foreigners?

Cold pizza.

Seems to me if the government and not just the press are calling it a "Tourist Entry Fee", then Thai citizens would probably be exempt, but we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.

Sometimes people change their views more flexibly when they figure things out for themselves, instead of getting lectured to by someone else. (For example, an adult who is considering whether to get vaccinated should be allowed to consider what choice will give the best chance of survival. No need to complicate the issue by counting up the debating points.) Tip 1- Give the other person the intellectual space in which to decide what is really in their best interest. Tip 2- When you feel obliged to make a choice that the other guy will probably disagree with, just go ahead and do so without a lot of self-justifying rhetoric. Be prepared to explain your views if asked, but if nobody asks, just let them guess. Tip 3- Bear in mind, when you hear a person say something like "the earth is flat" it may not mean he really believes it. It could also mean that he knows you believe the opposite and he is trying to get your goat. Don't rise to the bait, don't hyperventilate. It will only encourage him.

In fairness, Sinovac was the first vaccine available here. At the time it was better than nothing. But it was purchased, not donated as the posted article implies. The consumers are entitled to form their own opinions as to whether they got good value, and whether it makes sense to buy more. So give credit where due, while continuing to search for better alternatives.

Didn't the lockdown of spring 2020 (in the absence of a vaccine) help to buy us 8 months of almost covid-free life? And then the lack of a lockdown, (coupled still with no vaccine) in spring 2021 accelerated the current surge. Easy for a retired person to say. Even if we all get Covid sooner or later, personally I would rather get it later

Google Translate will optically translate small passages. Maybe enough to get you started. Most DIY tests work in a similar way. The important parts are how to collect the sample, how long to wait, and how to read the result.