khunjeff

They're talking specifically about the much-discussed and much-delayed "Pattaya Move On" sandbox scheme, not general entry of travelers. Different rules, assuming it ever comes to fruition.

The same thing has happened in a number of countries experiencing outbreaks (I thought even the UK, though I could be mistaken). You get a lower efficacy, but you get it right now, and it's still much better protection than what you're getting from the single dose you already received. Waiting an extra month to get better efficacy from the second dose leaves you more vulnerable in the meantime, which may be undesirable if the virus is running rampant in your area. It's just a trade-off.

"One item currently being discussed is to advise people travelling to the 14 provinces in Southern Thailand to avoid Hua Hin by using the Cha-Am to Pranburi bypass road, in order reduce the risk of potential infections in the town." Does Covid now seep in and out of moving vehicles?

I'm sure all the rideshare companies will be overjoyed to receive instructions from these very wise men on how to set their fares ????

What "talks" are required when a gift is offered with no strings attached, and how could the "results" of those talks ever be in doubt? I would think a simple "thank you" would do the the job very nicely.

Let's see. Tammy Duckworth has absolutely no incentive to lie, since this issue is of zero importance to her constituents. Anutin, on the other hand... And just for laughs, let's pretend that the information from this expert in protocol and diplomacy is accurate. Why didn't the Thai ambassador just tell Duckworth "hey, for our internal purposes we kind of need a paper from your Embassy in Bangkok, would you mind providing that"? It would have been sent the next day. But more to the point, someone is publicly offering you a gift worth $30 million that your people desperately need. Why would you sit back and wait silently for the document you want, rather than immediately getting on the phone to the Embassy and asking "we really appreciate the offer, how can we get this done as quickly as possible?"

Remind me again of which country was boasting that it would be Astra Zeneca's vaccine hub for Southeast Asia?

Are you thinking of the Royal Plaza collapse in Korat? It was illegally modified, but from three stories to six, so not a high rise per se. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Royal_Plaza_Hotel

Then I guess it depends which circles you move in, since all of my Thai friends are either fully vaccinated or eagerly waiting for a second dose (mostly of AZ). I do agree that most Thais have developed a fair amount of skepticism for Sinovac, feeling that it was being foisted on them by the government for reasons unconnected with health, but that distrust for government officials has also piqued their interest in Pfizer and Moderna, which are seen as the good vaccines that the ministers are trying to prevent them from getting. Ironically, the Thai medical establishment itself seems to be a barrier of sorts to widespread vaccine adoption. They continue to play up very rare side effects in the media, and raise distrust through their experiments with mixing vaccines and changing doses, strategies which Thais can see are not being used in other countries. They are also telling people that their Covid shot has to be separated by 2-4 weeks from other vaccinations (the US CDC says you can even get other vaccinations on the same day); that you can't get vaccinated if your blood pressure is elevated when you arrive for your appointment (hypertensives are actually at a greater risk from Covid than others); and telling older people with chronic conditions that they shouldn't be vaccinated (when in fact those are precisely the group most in need).

Absolutely. If large numbers of people start coming in from abroad, there will realistically be no choice other than to accept foreign certificates, even if those can't really be verified. This is already the way things work in many other countries, where the folks checking at the door pretty much let in anyone with a plausible looking certificate from any nation. I'm not aware of any country that issues a certificate for vaccinations performed in a different locality.

Yet more nonsense about this system. First of all, AOT doesn't use the system for anything - they're an airport management company. The system is used by Immigration and Customs. Second, the system has never been used "to detect air passengers with criminal records to help contain transnational crime". Contrary to claims they've made since APPS was introduced, it does not somehow give them access to criminal records from other countries that would otherwise be unavailable to them; all it does is send passenger information ahead of the flight so that authorities can (theoretically) screen the data before arrival and know which people are of particular interest. In theory that could speed up arrival processing, but in practice that hasn't happened at all, since immigration delays rarely have anything to do with blacklisting or other obvious red flags. Finally, the system cannot be used "to check the health certificates of air passengers" (another report claims that it will actually verify the authenticity of those documents). All it will potentially do is allow the uploading of information provided by the passenger so that it can be sent ahead of the flight. This could again theoretically allow for faster processing on arrival, but I think it's a virtual certainty that there will still be multiple manual reviews of the same paper documents that were already transmitted. I'm hoping to be proved wrong.

That form has been required for the last few years - you may have just forgotten that you signed it last year. Criteria (5) on the form covers the combination method - it's just phrased in a somewhat confusing way.

Since CDC will accept all WHO-authorized vaccines for immigrants entering the US, it seems virtually certain that the same will apply to nonimmigrants once the requirement goes into effect, but of course we won't know for certain until it's officially announced. "The COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in these Technical Instructions, hereinafter referred to as “approved COVID-19 vaccines,” are those vaccines authorized for emergency use (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or listed for emergency use (EUL) by the World Health Organization (WHO) (see “Status of COVID-19 Vaccines within WHO EUL/PQ evaluation process”)." https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/panel-physicians/covid-19-technical-instructions.html

You don't need biometrics to check passport stamps, you just look into the arrival-departure system and see whether the stamps correspond with computer records.

...and the incredible detective work involved in foiling this crime of the century consisted of sitting in a chair at the airport and noticing his overstay when he presented himself voluntarily for inspection. Medals and bonuses for all involved, please. Yes, important to bring biometrics into it - an imposter might have taken his passport to try to cash in on his overstay ????

This is a key question, and one that they haven't addressed at all, even in passing. They keep yakking about the 9 trillion direct international flights that will magically start flying into HH airport, but never clarify whether the one million incoming foreign tourists will have to fly directly to HH (which would be absurd), or whether they can be picked up at Suvarnabhumi by a hotel car and brought to their SHA+ lodgings by road.

One of the main reasons for collecting biometric information is to make sure that the person in front of the desk is the same as the person in the computer record. They took your prints last year, and they take them again this year and the machine compares them and confirms that it's still the same guy. That's actually exactly how the system is supposed to work. Why they scanned your fingers on two different machines is a separate question. If you applied for a reentry permit in addition to the extension, they probably would have fingerprinted you separately for that (that's what's done at CW anyway). If you only did the extension application and nothing else, I have no idea.

What do you mean by "accept"? Do you mean as proof of being fully vaccinated for the purpose of getting a COE for the Phuket Sandbox, or as general proof of vaccination - for instance, to enter a restaurant or shopping mall here (if they ever really implement that requirement)? For the Sandbox, Thai embassies and consulates seem to be accepting whatever is normally issued by the country in which they're located. The US, for example, issues Covid vaccination records on a paper card with absolutely no security features at all, but that is definitely "accepted" for entering the Sandbox. For general purposes (restaurants, etc) in Thailand, there has been zero discussion by the Thai government about what foreign documents might be useable - all they talk about is Mor Prom for those who were locally vaccinated. They'll clearly have to figure something out for foreign vaccine records if they're at all serious about opening to large scale tourism, but so far there's been nothing. (The various hi-so and celebrity folks who were vaccinated abroad will presumably also insist on having a way of entering restaurants...)

"Chiang Mai, Chon Buri (Pattaya), Prachuap Khiri Khan (Hua Hin) and Phetchaburi are set to reopen on October 1st, pending CCSA’s approval." So that's 12 days away, and the CCSA hasn't even considered it yet? And therefore no one knows what the rules will be, such as how people would get to Chiang Mai in the absence of international flights. Exactly when do they think would be a good time to start thinking about this?

That threshold was established with the idea that the only possible way numbers could go up on the island would be if tourists brought in the virus. As it turned out, though, the sharp increase in infections had nothing whatsoever to do with the incoming Sandboxers, and stemmed pretty much entirely from locals infecting locals. As such, it quite properly ended up being ignored. I agree with you to the extent that the Sandbox fell far short of the overly optimistic projections that had been made, and that implementing it meant stopping most domestic tourism to Phuket. My guess is that the program ended up creating a net loss over what they would have had without it. To the extent that it served as an experiment in seeing how to "reopen" the country, however, I think it had moderate success (albeit at the expense of the people on the island).

Oh, so these bills are against torture and enforced disappearance - I had naturally assumed the opposite...

Given who is involved, I'm thinking that Buriram is the actual focus of this scheme and that Udon was just tossed in to make that less obvious.

So they're transferring the management of public properties from a government department to a for-profit publicly listed company first, and then figuring out how the government will be compensated. Seems backwards to me, but what do I know?

All of these recent pieces talk ominously about heeding the lessons of the Phuket Sandbox, without ever really explaining exactly what those lessons are. The implication seems to be that the Sandbox was some kind of superspreader event in which foreigners brought illness and death to a vulnerable Thai population, even though the statistics tend to indicate that foreigners were more likely to be infected by Thais than the other way around.

Easy, just start with one day and keep going...