ExpatLife

1 hour ago, Number 6 said:

All that plastic that was used on bags can be directed to cheap plastic junk. So genius.

 

Largest drought in two decades.

 

 

 

When I was still back in Hua Hin, the 7/11 closest to me adopted that rule for 2 days, before resorting back to plastic bags. The Family Mart on the other hand has seemed to keep with the no plastic bag rule 

3 hours ago, Samuel Smith said:

The media are blowing this up, not the govt.  Govt reacting correctly.

yeah that's true enough, one would suggest both are doing their 'jobs' - the government and the media 

7 hours ago, Emdog said:

I am a tad concerned that some of those out of work may choose the option of mugging old expats like me.

This is actually a real concern, or at least should be. Desperation pushes people to do things they normally wouldn't, and this situation if you listen to WHO, isn't going to disappear over night. It's one factor that contributed to me leaving for a period until this is in fact over; safety and security could take a huge nosedive amidst an economical and sociological shutdown

1 hour ago, madmen said:

Vietnam is being honest based on what, a gut feel? 

 

Were you on the. Vietnam loves us more bandwagon just before they announced the very shocking we  love you less visa changes? 

 

Vietnam screwed themselves just before Corona and I know 3 friends heading back to Thailand in the coming months 

 

 

What did they change? I know of an English couple who packed up and moved there mid 2019 

7 hours ago, SteveK said:

That was SerpentZA on YouTube.

It's crazy how he has been given the green light by the government in China to film and produce videos for so many years, all the while bashing then country and culture daily. He does say positive things here and there, but it really is quite an odd setup he's got going 

1 hour ago, Nowisee said:

The only reason that could possibly make sense for this clowns approach is because the country is incapable of containment.  So rather than being seen as incompetent, better to be seen as invincible.
This is not going to go well in the coming days/weeks.

 

It would not surprise me if I get quarantined when they see I am arriving from Thailand.  

 

 

That is one reason to leave sooner rather than later, also the fact that I personally wouldn't want to be in a 3rd world country during an expansive natural disaster such as an epidemic. 

5 hours ago, Thian said:

Well BKK is just as busy as Singapore...and i bet they ALL wear 3M N95 mouthmasks there, nobody in BKK even wears a cheap one.

Many Singaporeans are self isolating and the government is really hunting down infected people and who they have come in contact with. Singapore has also closed many social events, schools and are considering a 24 day quarantine on infected people with the new potential of the incubation period. Thailand is running business as usual, only the business is not doing so well as the Chinese are not coming in as much as they used to ????

35 minutes ago, freestyle said:

A lot of people mocking Thailand, but they'll probably get away with it, because a flu type of virus like this does not spread well in such a hot climate:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/hot-climate-wuhan-virus-vaccine-12389694

 

"Studies done many years ago showed that the “regular” coronavirus (which is one of the causes of the common cold) can survive on surfaces 30 times longer in places with a temperature of 6 degrees Celsius compared to those where the temperature is 20 degrees Celsius and humidity levels are high.

More recently, scientists from Hong Kong University (HKU) including Professor Malik Peiris and Professor Seto Wing Hong showed that low temperatures and low relative humidity allowed the SARS virus to survive much longer than they would in high temperatures and humidity."

From what I have seen from some research; viruses are inactivated at temperatures between 60 °C and 65 °C, but more slowly than bacteria.
I assume that is the point at which the virus is totally degraded, but maybe it can degrade somewhat up until that temperature. Just like how snow doesn't melt all at once at a single moment, but I'm no scientist lol

Is it just me, or does this decision make absolutely no sense compared to other decisions made? Why stop 1 ship with a single possible case (from what I have heard) and not stop 3,000 daily visitors via air with multiple cases?

12 minutes ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Does this formula take into consideration the number of unreported cases of the virus or is it too ignoring this important statistic to make the figures seem more sever than they are?

No it does not, that would bring the mortality rate down somewhat. However, in China there was many reports of people dying in their homes. I heard a statement from one of the emergency workers there who answered calls for the emergency hotline, where people were crying down the phone saying 'I don't want to die' but they literally could not come and collect them because they were understaffed. Those dead in their homes could have simply had pneumonia or the virus, but they get sent off to the crematoriums and are not counted. So it's very difficult to estimate a mortality rate for multiple reasons. I personally think it's a little higher than 2% and probably somewhere between 5-8% .. but that's just me guessing based on everything at the moment 

1 hour ago, FarFlungFalang said:

"The fatality rate of coronavirus is currently 2.16 percent of infected patients." This is a quote from the story in the link.

 There is no way to confirm the fatality rate without definitively knowing the number of infections which the "official health authorities say is not possible with this outbreak instead they base this 2.16% figure on confirmed infections which give an inaccurate fatality rate hence this statement is false news. 

While the SARS outbreak was ongoing, WHO had it pinned at 4%, after all was said and done it was revealed to be 9.4%. The problem is, especially with his virus, that the symptoms take a long time to become apparent, and also the symptoms are deadly many days after they show, as pneumonia takes a while to kill. 
It's often wise to look at recoveries compared to deaths, or rather in this current situation compare deaths today to infections 10 or so days ago. 
This website has a bucket load of information and statistics 
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Another interesting data sample to look at is CFR:
 

CFR = deaths at day.x / cases at day.x-{T}
(where T = average time period from case confirmation to death)

This would constitute a fair attempt to use values for cases and deaths belonging to the same group of patients.

One issue can be that of determining whether there is enough data to estimate T with any precision, but it is certainly not T = 0 (what is implicitly used when applying the formula current deaths / current cases to determine CFR during an ongoing outbreak). 

Let's take, for example, the data at the end of February 8, 2020: 813 deaths (cumulative total) and 37,552 cases (cumulative total) worldwide. 

If we use the flawed formula (deaths / cases) we get:

813 / 37,552 = 2.2% CFR (flawed formula).

Instead, even with a conservative estimate of T = 7 days as the average period from case confirmation to death, we would correct the above formula by using February 1 cumulative cases, which were 14,381, in the denominator:

Feb. 8 deaths / Feb. 1 cases = 813 / 14,381 = 5.7% CFR (correct formula, and estimating T=7).

1 hour ago, Old Croc said:

Thaiger has video of the actual collision, as well as disturbing vision of attempts to revive the children.

Both drivers (won't call them captains) were speeding in the channel and neither seemed to attempt to swerve to avoid the other.

 

https://thethaiger.com/news/phuket/phuket-speedboat-collision-2-confirmed-dead

They were speeding at a pretty alarming rate in such a small channel. I doubt anybody will be prosecuted for this, despite the 2 poor children who lost their lives 

Just now, Monkeyrobot said:

I walked down to. central Embassy and also to the Tops supermarket in Central Chit Lom , both we’re near empty , this was at Midday on a Sunday, seems the Thais are staying at home, do they know something we don’t ?? I realise it’s a long weekend but the last time I saw the streets this empty was when the riots were on. 

It's wise, before I left LOS at the start of this month, me and the other half stayed in apart from essential trips for supplies and what not. You have to either be ignorant, stupid or simply don't care about the virus to go out and carry on life as normal in the current situation 

18 minutes ago, sambum said:

"Almost all of the patients are Chinese."

Well, there's a surprise (not!) - well done Sherlock!!! 

 

And the performance of Thailand has NOT been most excellent - why have they not closed their borders to Chinese? (Which, by the way, if you hadn't noticed, is where the outbreak started and there are now many THOUSANDS of people infected - according to one reputable source:- "The new figures brought the total number of deaths in China to at least 636. And the total number of confirmed cases rose to 31,161."

 

To answer my own question - baht, and the reluctance to risk "offending" the puppet master!

Most things that are decided upon are based around money or power. The ruling forces in LOS especially are money hungry as most of us have seen throughout the years. The thing is that other governments around the world also really care about money and their economy, hence why they are closing borders and doing all sorts to protect their work force (the common citizen) and to save their economies from as much damage as possible. LOS cannot see that far ahead as they lack that kind of intellectual insight, so their idea of holding onto money is to keep letting in Chinese tourists, which will inevitably be one element to the downfall of the economy this year 

23 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

It's also been reported previously that the public health systems in both Laos and Cambodia may not have even been equipped to do the tests necessary to diagnose CV... And on top of that, they both are likely to be even less transparent/more opaque that Thailand is regarding a China-related situation like this. Folks could be dying there, and we might or might not end up hearing about it as a CV issue. Recall, the Cambodian health minister was quoted a week or so back as saying Cambodia was too hot for the CV to survive there.... 

 

Those are some good points, thanks for bringing them up. 

1 hour ago, smutcakes said:

so 3 days ago they closed some crossings, kind of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. If what you said in your original post about Thailand having thousands of peple walking around infecting people, by the same token that would still be the case in loads of other major cities..

Thailand was the first to have a case outside of China, so there are ahead of other places in terms of time spent with the virus within their borders. They should have acted long ago when the first warning signs were obvious. It takes 2 weeks for people who are infected to become sick, and so we are still waiting globally speaking to see how much damage has been done, and is still being done. Couple that with dubious statistics from governments on infections and deaths, who knows how far it has already progressed at this point 

Just now, SkyFax said:

OK so then then will BKK look like Wuhan?

No idea, but it should be quite easy to see that the way things are going, it's going to be a similar situation. Wuhan has a population of 11 million, Bangkok has 8 million. The outbreak in Wuhan started with 1 person, there is at least 1 infection in Bangkok. Thailand is doing very very little to stop this outbreak, or moreover they are not implementing effective strategies, while letting in potentially infected people daily. How many people are currently walking around Bangkok with the virus without symptoms in the incubation period, passing it onto people? Nobody knows but it is probably in the thousands.. How many people will have the virus without symptoms in 2 weeks? Nobody knows, but again it's going to be a lot.