chessman

A strange statement. Not according to the law of most countries.

Would you also argue that seatbelts shouldn’t be mandatory because they don’t completely stop serious injury and death during car crashes and it should be a ‘personal choice’? if governments can tell us how to behave in our own cars, what’s next?

Personally I think the mainstream media narrative has underplayed how disappointed governments and health officials must be with the current rise in cases. Yes, it was expected that mass vaccination wouldn’t stop all cases but I don’t think anyone expected so many cases in so many highly vaccinated countries. but instead of turning to vaccination conspiracies, I attribute these issues with the difficulty of dealing with a new virus. It seems so much of the anti-vax narrative has revolved around the fast development and roll-out of vaccines and this potentially meaning the vaccinations are unsafe when in reality it seems much more likely that such fast development would lead to vaccines that were not as effective as they could have been. I also think we can take some solace in basic data from countries like Israel. This is the third Covid 19 wave in Israel and it has resulted in more cases but significantly less deaths than the previous two waves.

Lerdsin Hospital in Bangkok

This is already happening. At my vaccination appointment this week I was offered AZ or Phizer. When I had the first dose 3 months ago I was offered Sinovac or AZ.

Better that stories like this are reported than not reported but they do feed the circular reasoning that people against vaccines use to justify their beliefs. if there are no investigations then that must be because all the serious problems are being swept under the carpet and not reported. if there are investigations then there’s no smoke without fire and there are probably serious problems.

Is there anywhere in the world where this is not the plan?

I don’t think anybody thinks that. the point of lockdowns is to reduce the R0 number so that the speed of spread is slowed.

Imagine a world with no speed limits on the roads and a government that tried to introduce them. Some people would complain bitterly about their personal freedom being restricted and ignore and twist every piece of evidence about people that drive very fast being more at risk. Imagine a world with no schools and a government that tried to introduce them. Some people would complain bitterly about the forced indoctrination of their children and reject any notion that a more educated society would be in the best interests of the majority. Imagine a world with a novel virus killing millions of people and scientific evidence that overwhelmingly points towards vaccinations being the best way to to help us return to normality. People will complain bitterly about regulations aimed to encourage vaccination and discourage unvaccinated people from being in places where they could spread the virus. Yes, the government is restricting your personal freedom but it is already doing that in a million other ways.

Indeed, apart from doubling world life expectancy in the last 100 years, what has medical science ever done to help society?

Sweden also has one of the highest rates of people living in single households in the world. Also one of the highest rates of people who work from home. Also, very generous rules concerning sick-pay if you are absent from work (and these rules were made more generous during the pandemic) Also, very low population density. These characteristics make it very difficult to say that similar things would occur in other countries if they had had similar rules to Sweden. Of course, the countries most similar to Sweden are Finland, Denmark and Norway and these countries faired much better in terms of stopping the spread but took basically exactly the same hit (in terms of 2020 GDP) to their economies as Sweden. Perhaps this is why the King of Sweden (who usually would not comment on things like this) apologised to the Swedish people for the country’s failure.

Right, but look at the UK now. They got up to 70% ish double vaccinated and a lot of the restrictions are gone. Nightclubs and pubs fully open, football stadiums full. It changes the date you get it to a date (after being fully vaccinated) when is it much less likely to kill you. When Thailand reach a similar 70%ish figure (in December or January at the current vaccination rate) most of the restrictions will be gone here too.

How are you defining ‘worked’? If life was lived normally, the Delta variant would probably double the number of cases every 3-5 days. the purpose of a lockdown is to reduce the R0 number and the speed of the spread. If that is the goal then they undoubtedly ‘work’. Whether reducing the spread is worth the economic and social costs of a lockdown is the real question although allowing the virus to spread among an entire population would also have extreme economic and social consequences. That is why most governments around the world have tried to walk the line between restrictions to inhibit the spread whilst allowing the majority of economic activity to continue.

Thailand are going to follow the western countries… look what they are doing. The western countries are opening up pretty quickly with vaccination rates at about 60%+ (double jabbed). If Thailand can continue to vaccinate about 500,000 a day (the current rate) then it will get to 60% in December.

Easy to ridicule this decision but not only has New Zealand had less deaths and hospitalisations than most countries but it has also had far less internal restrictions for the majority of the last 15 months.

Indeed. as there are in EVERY country.

Not just in Thailand… even with a lot more testing in the UK and US, it was assumed that the official case numbers were a big underestimation.

It depends on how busy it is… but I think you’d be absolutely fine if you have the mask around your chin and just pull it up if you’re next to a group of people or see someone with authority. that’s what I do and no problems so far