chessman

1 hour ago, Kevin Taylor said:

I think I know what your getting at, I have looked myself but the information seems to be veiled sum what. An interesting fact I just searched out was the annual deaths in Thailand pre covid. It's quoted in 2019 as being 7.79 deaths per 1000. That's over half a million deaths annually. Easy enough to check that, I checked it a few times myself as I was surprised. It does make me wonder why everyone in the world has lost their minds over covid, it would be interesting to know what percentage of the covid deaths would have ended up in that category if there wasn't any covid.

Most developed countries publish the numbers of people who die each month and each year… countries hit hard by Covid generally had 10-15% more deaths than a normal year. 
 

2 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

I would certainly expect (hope more like) that at-risk Farangs would get precedence over fully fit young Thai caddies at golf courses.

 

It should NOT be a matter of Thai vs. Farang, it SHOULD be a priority a-risk based system.

 

But unfortunately that's not what's happened.

Sure, but if there are also youngish foreigners who are vaccinated (like I was at the start of June) before elderly more at-risk Thai people then the issue becomes less about ‘apartheid’ and ‘racism’, words that are used far too often on here, and more about a disorganised roll-out with some people, both foreign and Thai, not given the priority they should have been.

People seem to have forgotten but interestingly, even though they are now seen as countries who have been efficient and successful with vaccinations, there was a fair amount of criticism of the US and UK in their media in the first few months of their vaccine drives.

23 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

I received my AZ vaccination before my Thai Wife, before my Brother in Law and before both my Mother in Law and Father In Law. I received my vaccination before many of my Thai friends. 

 

I don’t think Thailand has operated in a Xenophobic manner towards foreigners, but it has been completely ignorant and indifferent to the plight of foreigners in high risk groups. The Thai government has been also been completely indifferent to the plight of Thai’s in high risk groups.

 

This is simply ineptitude, the Thai government are completely overwhelmed by idea of vaccinating over 55 million adults - they can’t get hold of vaccines, they are in a panic and are struggling to plan beyond the next step - us minority of foreigners have hardly registered on the radar of the Thai government.

Yes, and it also has unfortunately become about who you know and who can arrange things for you. My employer was able to vaccinate its foreign staff at the start of June in the first few days of mass-vaccination. This included people in their 20s and 30s who should have been low priority. I also know of several cases of youngish (Thai) people whose employer organised vaccination well before their elderly relatives were able to be vaccinated.

Currently Thailand’s Covid death rate is 16 times less than the world average and it is the  country with the 164th highest death rate. 
 

if you think Thailand is guilty of such gross mismanagement of the virus that it rises to genocide, why not try prosecuting the 163 countries with a higher death rate too?

9 hours ago, Jingthing said:

All of those protocols are overkill.

You may consider them overkill but can you imagine what would happen if someone had a bad reaction from a vaccine because their blood pressure was abnormal before the shot, or they weren’t monitored properly for 30 minutes afterwards?
 

if anything, embassies would be even more cautious.

there is no way it could happen without it being administered through hospitals.

As in all of these threads, there seems to be very little acknowledgment of the organisational infrastructure needed to vaccinate people. It’s not as simple as the US just sending over the required amount of vaccine.

When I had my vaccine here, there were 8 different stations I had to go through, filling in forms, going through my medical history, having my blood pressure taken and the like.  Most had nurses at them. 

Embassies would have to do it through hospitals and one can understand that Thailand may not be happy with Thai hospitals being used to vaccinate people, some of whom would be much less at risk than Thai citizens who were not yet able to get the vaccine.

What should happen is that governments should be able to reach an agreement on ‘donating’ vaccine that would guarantee the citizens of that country a jab. Say it was a 3 to 1 ratio. So if there were 50,000 American expats in Thailand who need 2 jabs, the US would donate 300,000 doses and US citizens who wanted a vaccine would be guaranteed one. Everyone wins if this is done.

6 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

I use Kasikorn online banking. Because I use it all the time I have a billing template for the MEA.

When I click on that (on the bank online banking page) I see how much money the MEA wants. Another click and it's payed.

And after I pay it it's right away updated. So if I accidentally would try to pay the next day again it would clearly show me that I paid already. 

This online banking works from everywhere and I don't need to see the MEA bill - or to be precise I need to see that bill only one time to be able to enter my MEA account number in the bank form. That MEA account number never changes so no need to ever look at the bill again.

I do exactly the same. Very easy.

This would be the easiest.

If the main purpose of your trip is to visit the USA and travel there, that is fine

but

have you considered that the trip to the USA would likely increase your risk of exposure to the virus by a lot more than staying here and waiting for Thailand to get its act together with the vaccine.

Also, research is starting to point towards gaps being beneficial between virus doses... one dose seems to still offer a significant amount of protection.

1. If you look deeper at the ‘50% effective’ statistic often given for Sinovac, it came about after trials with frontline healthcare workers in Brazil... So research  with  people exposed to Covid constantly. Just under 50% did get Covid... but most of the cases were mild and there were no deaths. In research with more representative samples of people the efficacy of Sinovac has been higher.

2. the travel question is a wild card. I think countries desperately want to avoid vaccine passports because it will be a red tape nightmare. But if cases and deaths increase again in the Autumn and winter later this year (as they did last year) then I think they will become inevitable. Then you have to wonder if the US, UK and EU will approve the Russian and Chinese vaccines and whether having it will cause you any problems if you wish to travel to those countries.

3. without minimising this virus, it is also true that surveys have shown that people are massively overestimating the danger of the virus. Depending on your own health situation and your ability to avoid risky situations, I don’t think it’s crazy to conclude that you are at very low risk of catching it and waiting for your preferred virus.

5 hours ago, cclub75 said:

But when a country like Singapore, 5,6 millions people, orders 1 month of lockdown because they have 486 "actives cases" (source Forbes)... or when Thailand, 69 millions of inhabitants, closes its airspace april 3 2020... for a few thousands of cases (in 2020)... most of them without any symptoms.... I mean that speaks a lot.

 

Loud.

 

It won't be over anytime soon.

 

The only real question is : where do we set our collective "sensivity threshold" ?

 

Asian countries are very sensitive... Therefore... it's likely that the crisis will continue. For a long time.

Not just Asia,

if you look at excess deaths in 2020, countries with high numbers of reported Covid deaths have over 10% more all-cause deaths than would be expected. But some countries with low Covid deaths have had significantly less all-cause deaths than a normal year.

Examples:

South Korea -2.9%

Finland -3.1%

Norway -3.6%

Denmark -4.3%

despite Covid, these countries had less deaths than in a normal year.

Source: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countries-in-2020/

but all those countries also took strong measures against Covid.

Thailand is not among the listed countries but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it  was part of this group that had less all-cause deaths than expected.

Some people will look at the mortality figures in these countries and see evidence that the strong measures were unnecessary but some will see them as evidence that the measures did the job and perhaps prevented the country from having this 10%+ increase we see in the worst hit countries.

5 hours ago, CALSinCM said:

I'll take the John Hopkin's official number instead of making up my own statistics with multipliers. 
I trust the science.  I have faith in John Hopkin's University.

If you’re interested in ‘science’, you’ll know that the most reliable way of counting deaths in a pandemic is to look at excess deaths. That’s the most reliable way and is even used to calculate yearly flu deaths.

John Hopkin’s University are just collecting and counting up official figures released in different countries and there are many reasons why a country’s official figures may be incorrect. 

Rather strangely, the Seychelles haven’t reported new Covid figures (cases or deaths) yet in May... not sure why... but I doubt that the news will be good when they update their figures.

1 hour ago, Scott said:

Even with a large number of cases, is the death rate higher or lower than would be expected?   Is the vaccine helping to prevent serious illness and death?

Very few deaths in the Seychelles, they’ve never had a day with more than 2 deaths. But there is a lag between cases and deaths so I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks if this increase in cases leads to deaths.

25 minutes ago, covidiot said:

yeah, it did occur to me that they are publishing these articles to cover their butts. 

Or maybe (whisper it) they are publishing these stories because transparency with issues like these are healthy and it will help sensible people weigh up the risks and make informed decisions. 

6 minutes ago, covidiot said:

Yeah, that's pretty funny. I wonder how many relationships will break up because of vaccine differences.

Or the vaccine you took will show up on dating sites and Pfizer women will not want to get hitched up with Astrazeneca men, or even worse, anti-vaxxers. 

There’ll be a lot of money for the person who comes up with the first dating site that matches you to the vaccine of your dreams...

4 hours ago, covidiot said:

The Western media is schizophrenic. One day they tell you the vaccines are safe and the following day they publish an article about bloot clots.

This is an odd argument, and of course the media is damned if they do and damned if they don’t... can you imagine what would happen if the media were suppressing news stories about potential issues with vaccines?

There isn’t much data about suicides yet, but in the USA they declined in 2020 by 5.6%... https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-mental-health-26196eaf-a245-4d21-85eb-eeb864a24449.html

7 hours ago, chessman said:

I applied on Friday morning and am still pending (Bangkok)... 

 

am not worried yet... the last time I applied it took 3 days but was eventually approved.

Approved now.

Applied Friday Morning and approved Monday afternoon.

On 4/23/2021 at 9:43 AM, chessman said:

 

I have just applied and my application is pending. Will report back when and if I am approved!

 

I applied on Friday morning for the online 90 day report and have just been approved. 
 

Good news as I wasn’t looking forward to a visit to immigration at all.

4 hours ago, Martinpeter said:

Pending still?

I applied on Friday morning and am still pending (Bangkok)... 

am not worried yet... the last time I applied it took 3 days but was eventually approved.

2 hours ago, Ramdas said:

which has created more questions for me, such as where do you get such documents ?! Do you need to give them your email address or will you get them at your home address ?

In your initial application you have to give your email address. If the application goes through it will take you to a screen where you can view/download/print the details of your pending application. This pending application will include a reference number.

Then, next time you go into the system you have the choice to “check the status of your application”. It is the 2nd option on the screen. If you click on that you will be able to search for your application using either the reference number mentioned above or your passport number. When you have done that you can see if your application has been approved and if it has then you can view/download/print the approved notice and (more importantly) the document that states when your next report is due.

Immigration will email you to let you know that your application has been approved but that email won’t have the documents you need attached so you will need to go back into the system (as described above) to get them. They do not post anything to your home address if you use the online method.
 

5 minutes ago, Ramdas said:

Another questions comes to my mind, do you get a receipt ?! Like the one they give you when you do it in person ?!  Thank you in advance ????

If you do it on a pc:

When you are able to successfully apply, you get a pending document that is similar to a receipt. Then when it is accepted you get an approved document + another document that says when your next report will be. All of these documents are PDFs you can easily download.

one of the current issues with the system is that whatever the problem is, you seem to get the same error message. So that means people who are unable to do it online (a new passport seems to be one reason for that) and somebody who could do it online but makes an error when inputting data will get exactly the same error message.