bkkcanuck8

3 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:

Not sure I understand it but as someone else mentioned, no blue.  And, I would assume at least half and possibly the majority of 2 shot folks are Sinovac as most people seem to be waiting for their second Astrazenica.  So, is this evidence that Sinovac  (2 shots) is in fact preventing death?

I had no doubt of that (though Bangkok area is prioritized as AZ for first shot, and Sinovac the second shot; provinces the reverse)....  The evidence is that it is not as effective, but being partially effective is very likely to have a greater impact on the severity and thus the mortality rate.  A vaccine does not prevent infection, it prepares your immune system to recognize the virus and thus the speed at which it is able to fight off the infection... which typically means less likely to have symptoms, and much less likely to have severe symptoms (and since the Delta sheds in 4 days, potentially does not stop the spread of the virus as much as other vaccines).   The evidence of this is the 600+ medical staff getting infected after receiving full vaccination... and having medical staff infected and either being a spreader or at risk and thus potentially leading to a collapsing healthcare system -- very problematic.

26 minutes ago, mtraveler said:

Nice that it reminds you of that.  But they're not the same.  That's a false equivalency.  

 

Wrong?  Well, that's your opinion. 

 

As a taxpaying American, MY opinion is this:  I think there's some merit to my being allocated a vaccine, inasmuch as it's a small percentage of what is being donated, and it would be nice if some of the donated vaccine were allocated to us citizens.  Were there sufficient good quality vaccine here, that would be a different story, and I'd wait my turn for something offered to me. 

 

In addition, most of us foreigners are either over 60 (which I am), have risk factors, or both.  I've waited a long time for an opportunity to get the vaccine, and still waiting.  So, this to me seems fair.  

It is my opinion as well.  Everyone that chose to move to Thailand for whatever reason from our original (I will use United States in this thread - but it extends to all countries) country, chose to leave the United States and live under the rules, and regulations of Thailand.  You have that freedom to leave your country and do, but once you leave the borders of the US and move permanently to another country - you are choosing to live under that local jurisdiction (Thailand).   There is no medical priority of because you are an expat you have a higher priority, and any deviation from those medically decided prioritization are wrong...  US has no authority or responsibility for people living under another countries jurisdiction, though the US through it's embassy may exert pressure to make sure you are treated fairly and equal to a local citizen.  There is also a concept political of reciprocity, where the US does something for foreign nationals and can pressure foreign countries for similar treatment (it is under this that foreign diplomats generally were prioritized -- mainly since by sending them on a foreign post -- they are responsible to ensure they are safe -- and you cannot close an embassy or foreign mission and have everyone work from home). 

So there you have an example of hypocrisy generally speaking, there is talk of vaccines should be prioritized based on medical conditions and vulnerability... but then they want to change the priority to favor themselves and use other criteria such as nationality which is not a medical criteria to push themselves up as they see themselves deserving of special treatment by right of birth.

---

You should be treated equal to a Thai over 60 that has risk factors, it is medical criteria that must determine access to vaccines in Thailand.  Once you chose to live in Thailand, you chose to live under that jurisdictions laws and regulations.  The US has no responsibility to extend social programs (free vaccination is socialized medicine) to foreign jurisdictions.  If you want to be prioritized to the same as the US, you should take a PCR test, put on an N95 mask and hop on a plane and go home.

3 minutes ago, Danderman123 said:

You don't seem to understand life expectancy statistics. Life expectancy of 78 years is at birth. 

If someone is already 77, their life expectancy is not 78, it is much higher. 

Yes, it is arbitrary, just like someone picking 55+ is arbitrary.  Absurd misuse of math deserves and absurd misuse of math in response.

1 hour ago, jazzdog32095 said:

That's as wrong and twisted as anything I've heard ever. Lets play God and while we're at let's call Soylent Industries to come pick up your over the hill Mom and Dad, a couple aunts and uncles, and have them returned as a box of Soylent Green. Dude, seek some help.

Oh, I can be much more twisted, I can see humour in pretty much anything as humans generally are absurd quite often.   Any time you make life and death decisions in areas where you have a shortage, you are playing god... and that happens every day in the area of medicine...  The US healthcare system is rationed based on affordability, most other western countries are rationed based on agreed upon criteria on who they think deserves treatment (kidneys, hearts, etc.) and who does not - effectively rationed based on some made up criteria.   What I was responding to was effectively an abuse of math, where did the 55+ years come into play (I can only guess the person was greater than age 55 and less than 60), what rational was this age to split into two groups... in effect the purpose was first you had a conclusion they wanted to back up with some math and then through together some math to 'prove' their point.   Yes, vaccines are in short supply in Thailand, and MEDICAL professionals have to make life and death decisions on the prioritization of those vaccines... as ethically as they could...  I am fine and support professionals making those decisions and I have often said on many forums that people will just have to wait in line for their turn based, not try to jump ahead of Thais (as many were calling for earlier).  That said, you have made some fundamental mistakes ... Soylent Green should only be made of humans in their prime or at least the majority of it...  As far as COVID and aunts and uncles... well, I have mostly aunts very few uncles... and I have lost two of them to COVID....    Life is often absurd, humour is the only way to stay sane when the world goes insane.

4 hours ago, jazzdog32095 said:

I'll make it simple to understand and then you decide. In the US since 01/01/2020 till 07/31/2021.

Covid killed 606000 and of that 560000 were 55+ meaning 46K were less than 55.

If it was Big Foot ready to kill you are you going shoot it in the arm or head? Over 55 has affected 12:1 over 55 and under. Immunizing that group first is a no-brainer. Do the math , you have 100 jabs.

Give 50 to each group, the 50 to the under 55 group saves 1.25 lives, the 50 you give to 55+ saves 46.25 lives. A combined 47.5 lives. Give all 100 to the 55+ and 92 lives are saved. Point is to save the lives first and work your way to the least affected. Your implying an unfathomable change in infections that more than likely affect both groups. Spending limited jabs on the 8% and not the 92% is plain foolish. 

If you are going to silly math then maybe you should calculate the number of years saved ????  Average life expectancy (both sexes) in Thailand is a little less than 78, so if the person is 75 then you are saving only 30 years for that ten individuals.  Hmmm... I am sure there are some young people of lets say 30 years that if you saved one for those 10, you have saved more life years...   Math can be abused.  (I won't even get into weighting it by average productivity / contribution to society - which takes place for most people before 65; with the exceptions that take an active interest in charitable activities in their retirement). 

Vaccination is as much about trying to get to the point of herd immunity, and having society return to some level of normalcy (for economic reasons) as it is about protecting those that are at risk. 

3 hours ago, steven100 said:

agree ......  the Philippines has the correct approach 

Sure Philippines have the correct approach -- if you believe being a criminal to eliminate a criminal is the correct approach.

4 hours ago, anchadian said:

Bangkok Governor said today that he is confident that 70% of the population of the capital will have received at least one dose of vaccine by the end of this month.

Unfortunately the government (on many many issues) have been 'very confident', then failed and readjusted and were again 'very confident' ad nauseam.  When you are always confident, but rarely if ever match that confidence with results... there is another word for it.... delusional...

34 minutes ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Any idea of locations ?

The ones that reported on here already seemed to be Bang Sue.

I highly doubt the Aug 1 signup @ expatvac.consular.go.th would send out invitations to locations outside of the region you are in...  since this version of the program was designed apply the vaccine in the provinces where you reside.   My guess, is the ones at Bang Sue are for those that signed up to an earlier version. 

44 minutes ago, dinsdale said:

Let me say this before certain others on this forum do.

 

Hopefully this drop represents the peak. 

If you want to track whether the trend is up or down, you really will have to use something like the 7 day average tracking numbers.... 

3 minutes ago, DoctorB said:

But to put a more positive spin on the endless speculation look at India. Cases have declined almost as steeply as they rose. The same may well, for all we know, happen in Thailand. 3 months ago the media were full of pictures of bodies in the streets and floating on the Ganges; this last week the UK moved India off its red list opening up travel without enforced hotel quarantine. A great many people lost loved ones and covid is clearly not finished, but when there is good news, then acknowledge it.

I am afraid their would be way way more pain before it would crest...  not enough for herd immunity, and the controls in place are not enough to break up the upwards trajectory at this time...

1 hour ago, DoctorB said:

This is so blatantly not true. There have been a great many mutations; a very small number have been flagged as 'mutations of concern' ; the Delta mutation has been of greatest concern due to hightened infectivity but is not regarded as more deadly. Finally non of the mutations so far have significantly threatened the vaccination programme. Don't try to make the situation appear worse than it is.

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants

Above is a list of variants (not all of them - only the ones that WHO has deemed worthy of recognition).   Below is a tree diagram of COVID variants on wikipedia (COVID is not a particularly fast mutating virus... pretty normal actually that a virus mutates - the vast majority of them would not even make this diagram). 

17 minutes ago, georgey said:

Your table is v useful, & as you have said, & accepting also the comments of Blumpie below, there are a number of significant shortcomings in the quality of the data. Certainly deaths will be under-reported, probably in all these countries, with the likely exception of Singapore. IMO, however, the biggest variance is likely to be in total cases; obviously the Myanmar numbers, for both total cases & total deaths, are wildly under-stated. I think, as far as the rest are concerned, the most obvious inaccuracies are the numbers of, first, Indo, and then the Phils., where the absolute inability to test, due to enormous logistical difficulties of doing so in two countries where islands are spread over enormous areas, & societies which in the remote areas are seriously primitive. That, to me, suggests a likely overstatement of mortality rate, given how much easier it is to count deaths than to test the living. For the other countries, it would be necessary to understand their political agendas, & I wouldn't pretend to do so. So, ending up with TH & Malaysia somewhere in the middle seems about right. Indo & Phils, plain wrong. Brunei & Laos, no real idea as to their agendas. But the Singapore numbers are likely to be accurate, &, in spite of their excellent health system dragging the mortality rate well down, I'd feel that the MR for most of these countries is probably a bit overstated, predominately due to their reluctance &/or inability to test at s meaningful level.

Understand though that there are lots more non-public metrics that can be deduced by are not part of any dashboards.  As the other person indicated with the CFR, but the CFR cannot be calculated from dashboard data, only rough calculations if a country has had only one wave and primarily skewed into one wave etc which is accelerating.  i.e. you would have to have the data associated with each case since each case has different temporal values for infected date, recovered date, death date.  Also understand that governments will typically have much more data than is released on the dashboards and many countries will have people creating models that can be fairly accurate that includes other statistical information (such as random sampling of non-COVID patients that indicates whether they were ever sick with COVID -- which may be included in some value like "likely COVID" for purposes of modelling or generating dashboard data for the government. 

Also different countries do different aspects of pandemic management well, but very few unfortunately get everything right (e.g. Canada/US do the testing part well, but really fall down when it comes to rapid tracking and tracing [takes a lot of manpower]), I suspect Thailand's testing has been lacking, but they do a better job of tracking and tracing. 

If you are a researcher though that has a valid need for this data, many countries provide access to much much more detailed anonymized data for research purposes.

6 minutes ago, JensenZ said:

You're doing quite a bit of time wasting here. I gave you an out, but you continue to bang your drum.

 

You're entitled to your opinion of what you personally think is inhumane. After you made that point, which you are quite entitled to make, all other discussion is irrelevant because our definitions of inhumane differ.  

 

It's amazing you cannot get this. 

To accuse a country of being inhuman the inhumanity has to be systematic and pervasive.  (all countries make admin decisions, and all countries make many admin mistakes).  That said the separation of children and parents has to be a medical decision and that means it is done on a case by case bases depending on many factors.   The preference is not to separate children from family when possible, but reality means it has to be a case by case decision.

7 hours ago, anchadian said:

Southeast Asia hit a new high on Friday, reporting 105,287 new Covid-19 cases, and a record 3,069 deaths, the highest on a single day. #Asean #COVID19 #TheNationThailand

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40004333

 

I took that data and transformed it based on population and gave a mortality rate based on that data.   Mortality rate in the US was around 1.74%, and in Canada a smidgen higher.  Now I suspect that people living here have no deficiency in Vitamin D so I would expect the mortality rate to be less, possibly more if the health care system has collapsed in the country.  That being said some of the data seems to indicate data may be under-reported for certain values (likely due to failure to do comprehensive testing for non-hospitalized cases). 

10 minutes ago, Almer said:

It matters not what you posted everybody else is talking about the new expatvac. Consular site, are you still adamant you from this  site have already had your inoculation when they say they are not arranging app's  until after the 10/11 Aug

Not to mention that assuming his clock was not off by more than 5 minutes (i.e. smart phones, computers typically get updated over the internet and are generally never out by more than a few seconds -- unless you disable it).... I was actually sitting on the web page and they were actually a bit late (after 11am) bringing up the website live.  The only way to sign up earlier would be if someone with non-public details gave you an address for a back door to the site that could be used before going live.

10 hours ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Plus, they are now saying that appointments to be issued via SMS.

 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1153177365194550

 

English language starts at approximately 28 minutes.

 

( thanks to @Chris B for the link )

Now they are just being silly, they verified the email address was correct... but not the phone number... If they were going to send out the appointments by SMS they should have sent a confirmation code to the phone and then you enter it to continue.

5 minutes ago, wensiensheng said:

I wonder what will happen when bangkok first doses reach 7.7 million, and there is still 2 million odd people looking to be vaccinated? And when they get to 9.7 million first doses, Will it show 130% of people have had their first shot?

Simple, if you expand the list of people being vaccinated or vaccinate a thai not registered in Bangkok -- then you add one to the numerator and one to the denominator...  

2 minutes ago, jacob29 said:

You don't need to be fully vaccinated to see benefits. There are reports of 40% reduced mortality for single dose sinovac, and 40-80% single dose AZ. Based on the BKK vaccination of 60% for 60+ in Bangkok mentioned in the post above yours, that's going to have a big impact on numbers. Which can be expected to diminish as cases increase outside of Bangkok.

Sounds about right (without checking the numbers)... it will take a while for the first jab to 'teach' your immune system (weeks is what they expect) to recognize the pathogen... after that you will have some protection (probably quite a lot), and the second jab (to be quite honest not sure what all it does to have two jabs) will help you retain that longer as far as I know (maybe also increases the protection). 

Every measure taken has some effect on reducing the spread of the virus.  You wearing a mask will reduce you from spreading it if you get it (asymptomatic or not), reduce the spread through surfaces and reduce viral load, same for the other person... staying 2 meter+ away adds more, not going around like a social butterfly reduces the changes of widespread distribution as well.... all of it adds up and when you bring R₀ down to less than 1.... the number of new infections per day on average starts dropping...  Vaccinating enough people is a big part of the equation.  The sooner we can reduce it to less than 1, the sooner society can return to some form of normalcy. 

2 minutes ago, steven100 said:

Think I'll just book a Pfizer jab at the hospital and pay for it.  At least you know what your getting and it's not with 2000 other farangs in a line.

Lining up with farang no problem - just bring your pointy 2 meter stick - or a cow whip while maintaining a insane look on your face.

48 minutes ago, renaissanc said:

I got an appointment on the expats vaccination website for the 12th, but I cancelled it. I received the email reply within 2 days. I don't live in Bangkok and I'm not going to travel there either (9,700 new infections yesterday), or stand for hours in a crowded Bangsue railway station. I've seen the back-to-back and closely packed lines on TV. They don't seem to give you a choice of vaccine, and I expect they'll give Sinovac + AZ.  Sinovac is ineffective. 

That sounds suspicious since I doubt they are assigning people jab locations in Bangkok if you live elsewhere -- unless you lied about where you reside. 

9 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

Sure we do...

 

Being an outlier can be a good thing.

 

But I have yet to see any appointments mentioned, other than yours, anywhere (not just here).

 

I'm sure you have an appointment for today. It's just that it may not be the result of expatvac? Maybe an intervac registration got pushed directly to MoPH?

 

 

 

 

 

yeah, when signing up it asked if you were in one of 7 disease condition groups by made reference to needing a medical certificate... seemed silly to wait and get a certificate saying you are fat and have high blood pressure... so I said no... 

7 minutes ago, Marvin Hagler said:

Can you give me an example?

Give each nurse a 30baht per dose bonus and make sure the officials are not around distracting everyone by wanting to have pictures taken for 3 hours while people wait... and they will easily be able to achieve a much higher rate of jabs per session.

4 minutes ago, anchadian said:

About 6.46% of the population is fully vaccinated with two doses. 14,783,001 (+290,616) people have received the first dose, 4,178,702 (+92,991) have been fully inoculated, and 175,190 have received a third shot. #วัคซีนโควิด19 #COVID19 #ล็อกดาวน์ #KE

https://twitter.com/KhaosodEnglish/status/1423582923937042440

 

 

Your line should be moved down to something like average or mean.... it only goes through two days - one at the beginning and the other as of the last day....  maybe they work hard one day a week to jab as many as possible so they would have the rest of the weak to jab the stragglers and wait for the next delivery ????  I bet a good portion of that 'big day' is the pfizer for medical professionals...

3 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

They have ordered only 10 million for August

Really, or that is what they have announced...  Last time I read anything they had actually only ordered (confirmed) between 3 and 4 million doses, which AZ had indicated they could get more if they actually bothered to join COVAX (which they finally did)... while at the same time they had been saying they had orders for 10 million a month... but the documentation showed it to be a lie.  (then they got a present of 1.5 million pfizer from the US, and an order for private hospitals of 5 million til the end of the year for Moderna - of which the government took 1+ million and reallocated that order to Red Cross)...  So where are these additional jabs coming from?