suzannegoh

5 hours ago, Sheryl said:

 

None. No problem to get both.

 

The only problem with waiting till you arrive in US is you might get infected enroute or immediately on arrival.

 

Might want to call these places to see if any have Northern Hemisphere shot 

http://www.healthcaremedicalclinic.com/contact-us.html

https://www.facebook.com/TravelMedicineClinicChiang

https://www.cmmediclinic.com/vaccinations.html

FWIW, the second link that you poseted was broke.  It should be https://www.facebook.com/TravelMedicineClinicChiangMai

4 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

No. What is used here is the so-called "Southern Hemisphere"strain, US is the "Northern Hemisphere". So not only is timing different but also the vaccines. People planning to visit US or Europe in the fall or winter need to find a travel clinic here to obtain "Northern Hemisphere" flu shot. Do not go to a regular Thai hospital asking for a flu shot in that instance as what you will receive will nto be the one that protects for the strain of flu found in those places.

Is there any harm in getting both the Northern and Southern hemisphere shots?  I already got a flu shot at CM Ram and need to go the the US.  I could chase around here to find the Northern Hemisphere version of the vaccine, but I was thinking of just getting the shot when I arrive in the US as I know it will be easy since usually they give out that shot at every supermarket and CVS story.

On 3/23/2020 at 12:05 PM, Bogbrush said:

Getting some meds here can be problematic and expensive; I’ve just paid 6 500 baht for Xarelto 20mg (28 tabs) which is twice what I pay in my home country. I cannot get Zopidem in any pharmacy as they all refer me to a hospital which, for opioids, I understand and respect. I suspect it will be a mission to get them, with a doctors consultation probably mandatory as well. 
 

is it not possible to have prescription meds couriered from overseas? Surely, if accompanied by a copy of the scrip and possibly an accompanying doctor’s letter stating the urgency, Customs would be pragmatic? (yes, I know....)

I too have found that a number of drugs that I've been prescribed in the US cost much more in Thailand, sometimes multiple times as much even for generic versions of those drugs.  This surprised me when I first encountered it because I thought that Americans in America paid more for everything.

On 3/22/2020 at 12:02 PM, Don Mega said:

My Pharmacist asks me if i want brand name or generic..... I'd be gobsmacked if they asked if I wanted fake.

In other countries they would use the word "generic" rather than "fake".

21 hours ago, Sheryl said:

 

It is true that the peak  flu season here is from June through around November (i.e., the rainy season) and that each year's vaccine generally becomes available around May and people should get vaccinated each May.

 

However it is not the case that being vaccinated later is a waste of time. It is better than nothing; even in the "off" months there is always some flu around.

 

Anyone who failed to get vaccinated at the start of this year's flu season can certainly benefit from being vaccinated now..but in future should go in mid to late May for it.

Do you know if the flu vaccine being administered here is the same at the one that is being administered in the US?

1 hour ago, Jeffr2 said:

Stick with Fauci, or one from the NIH, etc.  Hard to go wrong with Fauci.  45 years in infectious diseases.  And not political at all.  If someone bashes Fauci, they're a covid denier.

How about Sanjay Gupta, can we trust him?

1 hour ago, robbioff said:

What we’re seeing is a mass over-reaction by most governments around the world. The cure is worse than the disease. Life needs to go on. Healthy people need to work. Unhealthy folks need to protect themselves.

In that regard, Thailand is handling the situation better than most places. 

2 hours ago, Hamus Yaigh said:

 

3 hours ago, simon43 said:

"New normal lifestyle"?  I'm intrigued also as to what this is.  My lifestyle is absolutely unchanged.  I can only think it refers to international travel, which certainly has been affected.  Otherwise, no changes here....

2 hours ago, Hamus Yaigh said:

So you haven't noticed the global pandemic? How odd.

That would be quite possible for soneone who doesn't go out much and spends most of their time in their living room. TV and the internet still work fine.

2 hours ago, jerolamo said:

You are champion of rhetoric, i admit, but close to null in mathematics, and rhetoric doesn't works with me.

An infection rate of 0% where population are tested positive is not 0% and you will failed to demonstrate them to be false positive.

You put the logic upside down, and you seems to be happy with that, but it is not logic at all.

 

But let's go deeper in this story COVID fear story scam time...

1/ some tests search deep to 35 level down and will find any virus who is actually dead in the body (wrong positives), but ask yourself why do they do that test if not relevant (there is always a reason) ?

2/ In all the country around the world where infected population is low, there is not much test down, are you able to make the correlation ? I think yes... would you like to just do it ? Maybe not... question is: why do you lie to yourself ?

3/ The COVID does mutate himself already more than 20 times and has low power, in some country, they said everybody who die is from COVID... what ever sick with... it is COVID (so wrong number of real die because of COVID). But why ? When you look at how many people die last year and year before again, it is close to the same... we are not stupid (but looks like they try to use the fear... do you know what is the fear used for in the communication and by who ? instruct yourself and ask yourself some questions more).

4/ When you look at COVID, the "r0" (transmition rate) is around 2.8 (you have one who contaminate 2.8 people). Where ever you go it is around 2.8 because it is the same virus. But now, look at the numbers and analyze (i know you are unable to do so, because your logic is poor and demonstrate that you can not and prefer rhetoric colored sentences, but let's try... there is a start for everything): compare the death with the contaminated number, and the population number with contamination number, then test number done... when ratio between countries is around 3.5 maximum, there is a clue that ok, they play the same game to test and report well, but when difference is up to 60, there is a bug who show a kind of lie/error on the target.

The tax administrative office use kind of statistics (many better to look closer, really we can do that as we do everyday) to predict where is a bug (a false declaration) and then we know at 100% a corruption is happening there.

We can just do it with country for COVID around the world and see the facts as no surprise, there is many bugs there.

Just do it, don't lie to yourself just because you are stubborn, it will failed in front of the statistic reality.

 

I think COVID start one day and there was fear for many reasons. Then next to this, it becomes a world wide virus and then a world wide fear propagation. Next to this, economic had lot of problem already (due to corruption) and there is not enough liquidity in all the bank. There is also not enough gold to paid the money in virtual circulation from long times ago (and maybe that is the real deep problem). Some businessmen only use what exist in the actuality news to make business and invest... now they did invest in COVID vaccine as it is sure a world wide business and then a very profitable business to invest with...

Now the reality is not what they expect it to be and they can loose lot of money. The virus doesn't kill much really, but need to propagate the fear for the business to not failed.

I'm not sure, but there is so much corruption with pseudo-expert who speak as official in TV propaganda (and designated by government for doing that) with close to no experience/knowledge but paid by pharmaceutic industry a lot (interest conflict). Opposed to hundred of higher reputation medics who contradict them (official designated experts) and sign petition against them but who are not authorized to speak in TV propaganda... it is so clear !

It is the new corrupted world of lie and fear... COVID does exist, and we should take care to the fragile population, sure, but it doesn't kill much and there is a big deal in the background and to much corruption, world wide. The world wide economic system is very open to corruption... to much... and that is why there is more and more problems with corrupted businessmen who can now corrupt nations.

Look at this story as if you were a police officer who makes an investigation ... locate and write down the facts which show a cheating which is never judged, look at where is the motive of a crime, what are the psychological profiles and the credibility of the official personalities which are designated to speak, their own relations with personal interest, etc...
There is a big problem ... bigger than COVID, that's for sure.

Let's suppose that the Covid19 cases in Thailand are being dramatically understated.  I think that is the case.  But how would Thailand be better off if those numbers were not understated?  If having more accurate numbers doesn't improve public health then the numbers don't have much utility, and if the epidemic can be hidden just by jiggering the numbers it must not be a zombie apocalypse.

4 hours ago, jerolamo said:

But at 100% sure, if you don't test, you will see nothing. And because of that, better would be to not speak about what you can't know about to not loose credibility.

 

Nice ad hominen, but it's a mathematical fact that the lower the infection rate is in the population that you are testing the higher the specificity of the test needs to be.  In the most extreme case, if the infection rate in the general public was 0% and you tested 100% of the population, then ALL of the postives would be false.  In such cases, more testing would be counter-productive.  If you want to say that Thailand actually has a high infection rate, I'd say "maybe", but it's simply not true that more testing is always better.

1 minute ago, Sheryl said:

 

Mullis -- who died before COVID was ever identified -- never said anything of the sort.

 

What makes you think Thailand is using a high amplification? And not factoring amplification into its diagnostics?  In fact prior announcements have done exactly that, i.e. specified when the amplification was such that the person was unlikley to have live virus present.

 

Note that you will not get a positive PCR result at higher amplifications unless the person has at some point had COVID and still retains some of the virus's genetic material. No amount of amplification will cause a positive result otherwise.

Let's just take at face value the statement from the medical moderator in this forum that the specificity of the PCR test for Covid is 95% and that by repeating the test it becomes 99.75% percent.  That implies that for every 10000 people you test that you'd get "only" 25 false positives.  There are roughly 60 million people in Thailand, so it you tested everyone there should be 150,000 positives just due to the specificity of the test being less than 100%. That compares with the official number of there having been about 3700 cases in Thailand.  So in that sense Trump might have a point about it not being a good thing to test everyone; if Thailand tested more than just those showing symptoms or those who recently entered Thailand they'd have tens of thousands of cases instead of only a few thousand.

 

3 hours ago, hioctane said:

 

If you understand how a PCR test works, you will see why it is very accurate. You take a sample (provide it has been collected properly) and amplify it. If you have a certain viral load, you are considered infected. You can’t mess up seeing the genetic material in the sample! Keep in mind this only tests for active infections. If you have a low viral load, it won’t be detected. 

Is the math different because of that?  Previously it was stated by the medical expert in this group that the specificity of the test is 95%.  Based upon your understanding of the test, is it somehow more accurate than what a 95% specificity would suggest?

42 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

 

A little over 95%. So 2 sequential positive tests would have only about 0.2% chance of being wrong.

 

Specificity, on the other hand, is pretty low at only around 70% for test by nasal swab.

 

 

But let’s suppose that it’s only random error that we need to be concerned about and that it’s correct that if someone is tested twice there’s only a 0.2% chance of getting a false positive.  At first blush that sounds pretty good, but if the actual infection rate of those tested was less than 0.2% then more than half of the positives that are detected would be false.  To understand why, let's suppose that the infection rate was zero in the general public.  Then we'd still get 2 positives out of every 1000 tests just due to the test's specificity but all of them would be false.  If the real infection rate was 0.2%, then we would find 2 real positives per 1000 people tested plus 2 per 1000 arising from the test's specificity, so on average, 2 out of the 4 positives would be false.  Thus the lower the infection rate the higher the specificity of the test needs to be.

1 minute ago, Sheryl said:

 

 

Yes, specificity refers to the chances of a random error.

 

What do you mean by a "systematic" error?

 

There is certainly no indication of any problem with testing equipment or procedures in Thailand, if there were there would be many false positives occurring and there have not been.

 

The woman has symptoms suggestive of COVID-19 and has had 2 sequential positive tests. No reason at all to think she does not in fact  have COVID.

I didn't know that Specificity was a measure of only random error.

Systemic error is when the same error occurs by the same amount every time you run the same test on the same patient.  An example would be if something was present in the patient's system that tricks the test into false positive and that something is still in the patient's system the next day, then that patient would still test positive the next day. 
 

9 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

 

A little over 95%. So 2 sequential positive tests would have only about 0.2% chance of being wrong.

 

Specificity, on the other hand, is pretty low at only around 70% for test by nasal swab.

 

 

Wouldn't a 95% specificity mean that there's a 0.2% chance of two tests being false positives only if the error was random rather than systemic?

3 hours ago, Sheryl said:

 

not correct. The test is specific to COVID-19. False positives are very rare (but false negatives fairly common). And when someone tests positiev a second test is immediately done to conifrm. Odds of 2 sequential false positives are miniscule.

 

Now PCR can indeed pick up dead cells from prior COVID-19 infection, but as she is symptomatic that is not likely to be the case here.

Do you know what the Specificity of the PCR test for Covid-19 is?

22 hours ago, userabcd said:

Showing baht 500000 in a bank account would not be considered as being rich.

The way that I hear it, 500000 baht would be enough to live like a king in Thailand for a decade.

9 hours ago, farang51 said:

Article in New York Times that says the number of deaths was normal from January to April:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

That article does not say that the number of deaths was normal, it says that "At least 263,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic than the official Covid-19 death counts report" in the 32 countries that they tracked.

On 9/26/2020 at 9:17 PM, EVENKEEL said:

Before going to the beach I prep the cans in the freezer for 30 min then put in small cooler with ice. I drink Heinekin, not sure if that should matter. Anyways I'm a can fan for now.

Heineken tastes best poured from a can into a glass.  In bottles it tends to skunk.

On 9/7/2020 at 2:36 PM, jonwilly said:

Please be so kind to tell me what service you use.

john

If AIS is in your area, AIS Fibre works well and the 1 Gbps package is now less than 1000 baht per month.

On 9/1/2020 at 12:24 AM, nobodysfriend said:

This herb is known for it's ' consciousness enlarging ' abilities .

And that is exactly what is desperately needed these days ...

It makes people think about what they are really doing , and if it is worth to do so ...

Don't have to be stoned all the time , but a tea from time to time helps a lot already .

People who like that are definitely more peaceful , and think twice before starting wars or other problems ...

Laugh about it , laughing is good for your ( mental ) health . 55

It's not consciousness enlarging, it just makes people think that trivial observations are profound.