CygnusX1

The death rate from the virus hasn’t been remotely near enough to cause any effect such as that. Also, like it or not, the death of an old, retired person such as myself is enormously less disruptive to the community than the death of a young person with family responsibilities.

And of course, the average age of those killed in road accidents would be far lower than that of people succumbing to coronavirus, so there are way more years of life lost in road accidents, year after year.

Well, doesn’t that mean that it IS the mask wearing that will put future foreign tourists off?

And there won’t be too many of those in future if Thailand continues with its obsession with masks as they disappear from much of the rest of the world.

Two totally self-contradictory posts made within 5 minutes of each other.

I was actually talking about Australia, so maybe off topic sorry. Yes, you’re correct that electricity is charged a lot more fairly in Thailand, with only a very small fixed charge.

But it’s not like filling a car with petrol - to charge an electric car even at a rapid charge station takes a long while!

Had a look at your map, a 3km walk to the nearest one for me, and I live in a pretty central area of town. An electric car definitely not possible for me at this time.

But my point is that a massive project to construct charging stations would add to these fixed costs, they’d be another addition to the costs of “poles and wires”. I wasn’t talking about people who are completely off the grid, just about the unfairness of people who only use a small amount of electricity having to pay a huge fixed charge.

Don’t tell that to an Australian who has to pay $500 a year fixed electricity charge for “poles and wires”, even if he uses zero electricity.

Yes, that will eventually happen, but not for a few years. Also problem of who’s going to pay for construction of the charging station, unfair to charge occupants of a block of flats who don’t have an electric car, or maybe not any car at all.

Would need a 200 metre power cord for my flat in Australia, don’t think the neighbours would be pleased, and as for my condo in Thailand on the 21st floor…

I’m another one who has different glasses for reading and for the computer. Just showed the optometrist (in Australia) how far I sit from the computer screen, and the appropriate lenses were made. They work very well.

Never realised that I was getting myself into James Bond territory. I’ve actually been approached by so many Russians on Jomtien beach over the years that I had to learn the Russian for “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Russian!”

That doesn’t seem right. Not sure how it exactly relates to average wage, but according to World Bank website, net national income per capita in $US in 2019 was $8,940 in Russia, $6,069 in Thailand and $1,822 in India. Same rough ratios for GDP per capita in CIA World Factbook. Of course, that doesn’t account for the collapse in the rouble, or likely effect of ongoing sanctions.

Agree. Russians I’ve met on Jomtien beach have been gracious people, happy to try out their limited English. I’ve even been given food by Russians who probably have way less money than I do. Not their fault that their leader’s an evil psychopath.

Since NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, assume you mean something like if India, Nepal, Vietnam etc formed some kind of alliance. That would absolutely not justify China’s invading one of those nations. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Turkey/Cyprus conflict, or if Turkey should have been sanctioned, it does not excuse Putin’s actions in any way whatsoever.

With no internal conflicts? I suppose Saddam’s torturers were pretty efficient in enforcing order.

That’s almost unbelievable!!

Huge difference is that whatever the horrendous mistakes made by US administrations, all of the major conflicts that the US has been involved in have been in countries already riven by terrible internal strife. It takes a special kind of evil to invade a peaceful, stable nation, only someone like a Putin or a Hitler being capable of that.

Lady next door to my apartment (in Australia) smokes outside on the common walkway, and the smoke often drifts into my place. Although it’s not ideal, I’ve never complained about it. Why? Because she’s a totally quiet long term neighbour who never plays music, and that is so wonderful that it makes up for her smoking a hundred times over.

I thought the glass floor was fantastic, really weird feeling. Yes, you do have to put on special slippers to avoid scuffing the glass. After catching the lift back down, you have to navigate a lengthy maze of souvenir shops. Can’t remember if it was cheaper to buy in advance. Now would be a great time to go, with no masses of Chinese tourists.

Even if it’s eventually reclassified as endemic, does that mean that all restrictions, such as those horrid face masks, will ever end? In an age in which we’ve become utterly obsessed with health and safety, I’m not so sure. Just look at the continuing airport security theatre 20 years after the 9/11 attacks. I think SARS 1 disappeared because it never became remotely as widespread as SARS 2.

But we didn’t have incredibly sensitive PCR tests back then. As the virus will never become extinct, new cases will always continue to be found, so I can’t see how it can ever end, unless we acquire some common sense, which seems unlikely.

A drunk driver goes straight through a stop sign without slowing down. A stoned driver stops at the sign and waits for it to turn green. I know, old joke…