JCP108

Um, according to the TAT today, now it's 1-2 days of quarantine. COE now has a new name, too.

So, "no quarantine" means one to two days of quarantine and the COE remains but with a name change.

Can Thailand lure any foreigners?

Still confused. Still can't make my travel plans. I'm probably not alone.

You understand it correctly.

Please refrain from references to logic when posting to this forum.

When I fly to Phuket from Bangkok, I always go through two busy airports and have to sit for long periods in a confined space while waiting to board and during the flight.

I would wait a week. They are going to maybe say something more concrete about all of this tomorrow.

See this study: https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work Also, reported here: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccinated-people-are-less-likely-spread-covid-new-research-finds-n1280583

No doubt. But, I was responding to people expressing concern that the proposed plan to let in vaccinated travelers would cause a spike in Covid cases. You're right that it's the unvaccinated locals that are the concern.

Yes. If you look at the annual death numbers for Thailand for 2016-2019, then look at the numbers for 2019-2020, there were 37,000 extra deaths than the prior trend would predict. Covid hit Thailand late in 2019 unless there's another explanation for that increase.

If you only let in vaccinated travelers, every traveler who arrives increases the percentage of vaccinated people in the country. That shouldn't make the number of cases increase significantly. Might make it go down.

The false positive rate in the world (outside of Thailand which has reported a full false and true positive rate in the sandbox of 0.17%) is 0.4-0.7%. See article below. If 100k people arrive each day and the false pos rate is 0.4%, then 400 people a day will be shipped off to mandatory 14-day quarantine. https://www.icd10monitor.com/false-positives-in-pcr-tests-for-covid-19

They might go down. If the percentage of fully vaccinated people entering the country is higher than the percentage of people in Thailand who are fully vaccinated, then each new person increases the percentage of the fully vaccinated.

Now I get it. Steven100 really is a spoof account! Good job, Steven100! You have been very convincing.

Please refrain from using "Thailand" and "logic" in the same sentence.

Right. Why not just keep your mouth closed until you are ready to say, "Okay. Here is the specific plan which will surely be implemented on this date."? These speculative announcements are only more confusing and don't provide the concrete information travelers need when they are making costly and consequential travel plans.

Any mention of getting rid of the COE?

In regards to proving where you will stay for the whole trip to get the COE: I plan to get a 90-day visa to come to Thailand. I might choose to do the sandbox for 7 days on arrival then travel to my apartment in Bangkok. Thus, I won't actually stay in a hotel for the whole time I'm in Thailand. What does one do about that?

This is October 11. Can we please have clear and specific information about what is happening November 1? Some of us need to plan our travel in advance.

Get rid of the COE. Get rid of tests after arrival for vaccinated travelers. Get rid of quarantine and sandboxes for vaccinated travelers who have a neg test prior to travel. And, tell people that if they test positive after arrival that they will be re-tested and, if asymptomatic and negative on re-test, they will not be required to do a 14-day quarantine or hospital stay. Many of us are not coming due to possibly getting a false positive test and having that consequence.

Every day they delay clarifying the policy is another day of confusion that allows people to make other plans. High season in Thailand is Nov-Feb. You can't decide once you get into that time frame that it's time to let people know how to get into the country to try to salvage it.

Your question about cycle rate is very important and not being talked about AT ALL by Thai authorities (as far as I can tell). One clue that they are fudging with the cycle rate is the percentage of positive results of tests done during the Phuket sandbox. According to the number of tests reported and the number that were positive, they are reporting 0.17% positive. That includes true positives (infected) and false positive (test error which is part of every test of this kind). Per the published studies, the mean false positive error rate for Covid PCR tests is 0.6%. The low end of reported false positiver errors for that test is 0.4%. Even if there were absolutely no infected persons showing up in Phuket in the last four months and all their positive results were false, that doesn't fit with the known error rate. Given the number of travelers reported to have gone to Phuket during the sandbox and each getting three tests, 440 of them would have been positive just from the false positive error rate (even going with the low end of 0.4%) if they were running the cycle rate within the normal range. However, they only had 130. See article below... https://www.icd10monitor.com/false-positives-in-pcr-tests-for-covid-19

Still three weeks left in October. Not like anyone plans their travel in advance, according to TAT.

Look how much they care about the chronic, high amount of daily road deaths from having zero enforcement of traffic laws for that statement about Covid-related deaths to make sense.