ThLT

It is completely illogical for a tourist to have a Thai bank account. IO will see you are not a real tourist. You suggesting to do this is ridiculous and risky of being refused. Although if you want to risk it, feel free to do so. For a work visa, Thai bank account is maybe fine. For a tourist visa? Actually needing bank statements from a Thai bank account for a tourist visa? 100% non-sense and false. You completely made that up. What is best, as a tourist, is to show bank statements from your bank in your home country. If you have a Thai bank account... flash news, you're not a tourist. And you will possibly get refused your tourist visa by an IO who has attention to detail.

These are also important: - Have 20K or equivalent in cash (probably no ATM at area where you might be asked) - There are reports of people who had a valid SETV being refused entry at Bangkok airport - Have proof of onward travel, for Cambodia and especially when entering Thailand - Have proof of a booked accommodation of your hotel in Thailand printed and ready to show - Don't dress like a hippy after a night of partying, at embassy or airport, you're just asking for issues

Are you sure you actually need 3 doses to enter Cambodia? Where did you get this information? Do NOT show bank statements from a Thai bank. You were applying for a tourist visa. Why would a tourist have money in a Thai bank? If you did this, you are seriously lucky you got the visa. You should really edit your post, as anyone doing this will almost have a 100% chance of getting refused their visa, if showing statements from a Thai bank. Thanks OP @traveller2022 for the report!

Yeah, however. . . the thing is that all of the CDC stats you posted are based on being "18 years and older"—which includes the majority of deaths, being in the 60-85 age groups. ???? A 80-year-old and a 20-year-old contracting a disease is very different. Maybe, for example, it might be true that unvaccinated 80-year-olds have a 100x more chance of dying from a disease, but it could also be the case that unvaccinated men of 24 years old have only a 1.4x chance of dying of that disease. However, grouping both together to say everyone has a 50.7x chance of dying is misleading and false. Here are the age groups of deaths in Thailand: Source: https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=death-statistics (bottom-left corner) The large majority of deaths occur in 70+ group, as well as 50-69. Grouping all age groups together is misleading and even results in essentially false odd likelihood ratios. What is rather needed is an odd ratios based on age and vaccination status, like with this: Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/59757395

I did take into account the discrepancy in population—which is 4.71. And it doesn't change anything much—the only difference is the y-axis that changes. Like I said, the per million rate of deaths, is 20x as high in the US than in Thailand in some instances. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/united-states?country=USA~THA

This thread—sub-forum, and most of this forum—is about Thailand.

Omicron doesn't "seek out the unvaccinated," nor does it do "its worst to them." COVID is a virus—a non-living organism, let alone having conscious thought. Portugal has a 90.2% fully vaccinated population, and 58.7% boosted, and it still had 300 deaths in the last week—a rate of 43 deaths per day. And 102,129 new cases. The portion of unvaccinated is 6.4%—which with a population of 10 million—equates to 64,000 people in total. Unless unvaccinated people are cloning themselves... then that means: Half of cases would be vaccinated (but it's probably much higher, considering the virus is ploughing through 9.36 million people, rather than simply 64,000). So no, COVID doesn't seek out the unvaccinated. John Hopkins University: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/portugal

It's interesting to see how the US has similar vaccination rates—and a 4.7x higher population—but a monumental higher level of COVID deaths than Thailand. Like 100x more in some instances (20x higher rate, when adjusted for population). Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/thailand

Mind posting a source for your claim? You keeping making large claims, with zero sources.

Much lower than that for Omicron—especially considering Thailand has used mostly Sinovac (37%) and AstraZeneca (71%): https://www.healthdata.org/covid/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-summary (Boosted is higher—although the page does say booster data is included—but even if it weren't, the booster vaccination rate is still at 27.5% in Thailand as of now.)

Sure. Vaccinations are doing a serious part in keeping those serious cases and deaths down. But exactly like you say, with such high vaccination numbers—70.8% fully vaccinated, 27.5% boosted—are the unvaccinated to be blamed, like the current topic of the OP? It would rather be interesting to see number of unvaccinated deaths and hospitalizations vs. vaccinated, also based on age.

18,883 new confirmed cases per day 77,071 total current hospital patients 89,326 total current community isolation patients And 32 deaths per day The number of daily deaths are currently almost at its lowest since March 2021—although it seems like it's picking up. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/ In 2021-09, when the rate of daily deaths was 250 deaths per day, the daily infections were at 15,000 per day. So: - 19,000 daily cases of Omicron = 32 daily deaths = 0.17% death rate of confirmed cases - 15,000 daily cases of Delta = 250 daily deaths = 1.67% death rate of confirmed cases Being a rate (therefore regardless of number of cases) of death of almost 10x lower for Omicron. And the deaths based on age groups (per 1 million)—although this is for the whole pandemic:

Your sources were solely about children hospitalization due to COVID. I'm still waiting for sources regarding your four or so following claims:

7.1 per 100,000 children as opposed to 1.8 per 100,000 hospitalizations. Not deaths. Hospitalizations. Yeah, definitely "brutal." ???? 17,000 teenagers being killed on the road every single year? No one here bats an eye. All is fine. https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/30369535

Do you have sources for all of those four or so claims? I'll be waiting. By the way, I never claimed it wasn't affecting under 50's. You're making stuff up. I said the risk of hospitalizations for under 50—as in young healthy adults, with no comorbidities—was extremely low. You're just taking a small general statement I wrote hastily and making a witch-hunt out of it. Even though I corrected myself and already provided sources. Well, yeah, using words like "4x higher," "brutal," "new highs," and "record cases" is mostly just sensationalist journalism—considering children were considerably resistant to earlier variants. Most children were/are also unvaccinated. And even if you take into account children, they are still counted in the rate of hospitalizations of Omicron, which is half of that of Delta, whether vaccinated or not (with South Africa having a 75% unvaccinated rate at the time):

So you asked me to provide proof of something you already knew. . . and now you even provide a study to support my initial claim? ???????? Reduced variant severity results in reduction of hospitalizations, by definition. For all age groups, and especially for those in the much healthier 20-45 age groups, and without comorbidities—since many in the older 50-75 age groups will be hospitalized no matter the variant. Or are you saying that severity is much lower, but hospitalizations remain similar or even at higher rates? ???? How does that make any sense? Severity implies hospitalization and deaths. And by the way, your medRxiv preprint study, which if you didn't know yet, is part of journal that entirely consists of non-peer-reviewed studies, seems to be incorrect. The hospital admissions for Omicron in South Africa which was 75% unvaccinated at the time—(Gauteng, in this case) is much closer to 50% of Delta: https://www.ft.com/content/b0cd9239-f2df-4afc-912f-b3f87fc676ff

A section of one of my posts was removed, regarding the mildness of Omicron—whether one is vaccinated or not—which I considered common knowledge, but was questioned by a member, probably due to... a lack of that common knowledge. Here is a substantiation of it, from The Lancet, with South Africa, which was around only 25% vaccinated at the time: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00056-3/fulltext But some extreme vaccine people will still probably be yelling on rooftops to get a second booster, even if you're 20-something years old with zero comorbidities.

It's not "my concern." The quote about B and T cells was from your Forbes article that you posted. Either you: 1) didn't read the article, or 2) you are currently both refuting and contradicting yourself.

Thanks for mentioning those points, @TallGuyJohninBKK. A discussion with you seems like it would amount to more (although I don't plan on doing so past this post). The points I was making in my previous posts were about 1) the Omicron variant 2) boosters, and 3) especially about waning. Some would say that, with Omicron, continuous boosters is overkill in many situations—extremely pro-vaccine people will say you should get multiple boosters every year to protect against Omicron, no matter your age, at risk of your life. I'm more in the middle, and dislike and don't agree with those at either extreme end of that spectrum. Yes, precisely. From 90% to 75% after only 10 to 14 weeks. You also left out the sentence before that, mentioning a 25-35% effectiveness after 25+ weeks: Yes, at 50 years and older. And for Omicron. "After 2 or more weeks following a booster." (By the way, posting carefully selected percentages, and specific older-aged demographics to make your points doesn't add weight to your arguments.) Anyway, my point is that waning is considerable, and current vaccines aren't that effective for Omicron—and considerable lack of efficiency of preventing transmission being another important point. Those things are exactly the reasons why experts are recommending boosters every 6 months (from vaccines waning), and why Omicron-specific and variant-proof COVID vaccines are being researched.

You say that the effectiveness and waning of boosters in the UK Health Security Agency report is doubtful, because you think there are probably few people who were boosted in that sample and during that time? Here is what you said: You keep repeating that. It's now the third or fourth time you've said something along those lines, and I've pointed this out to you each time, but you still seem to not grasp the issue with your point: If the data in a study is about the waning of effectiveness of a booster, it means the sample of people of that data have had a booster. How is that difficult to understand? To have data about boosters requires that the sample has had a booster. This makes your first point above entirely baseless. Regarding your second point, you say that the entire report should essentially be ignored because of a "warning" in the report? First of wall, it isn't a "warning." And most importantly, that isn't what the "warning" means or says at all. Now, instead of continuing with the previous report—which you say was not reliable because too few people had been boosted at the time—let's take the comprehensive findings from the February 17 report of the UK Health Security Agency (which, by the way, is a government agency and team of epidemiologists, statisticians, and scientists responsible for the COVID pandemic in the England at the moment, if that wasn't clear): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1055620/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_7.pdf As above, for boosters and with Omicron, it's around a 65% effectiveness, and reduction to around 45% after 10-14 weeks for Pfizer—with a bit more in both cases for Moderna (although Moderna boosters are 50 mcg mRNA compared to 30 mcg for Pfizer). And here is the section, from the February 17 report, of the effectiveness and waning against Omicron BA.1 and BA.1: Which, for boosters (dose 3), is around 70% after 2 to 4 weeks, and around 45% after only 10 weeks. By the way, I looked at your Forbes article that you keep talking about, regarding a "82% efficiency of boosters." The studies mentioned in the article only talk about efficiency of boosters in general. The article doesn't cover the issue of waning of boosters, which is what we are talking about. It is ironic that you're asking me to provide information of waning of boosters, when your Forbes article doesn't even cover it. Not only that, but the part of the article that does briefly talk about waning of effectiveness actually supports my argument:

I'm sure North Korean hackers have a Binance account, with their address and other personal info on there. ????

Yeah, Omicron appeared in the later part of 2021. But the previous variants such as Delta were also more contagious than their predecessors. https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/5-things-to-know-delta-variant-covid

Yeah, crypto North Korea have stolen. So "wise," according to you. ????

You don't take into account Omicron, which is as much as 400% more contagious than Delta. They are working at preventing transmission, but aren't very effective at it. However, vaccines have significantly reduced the number of serious hospitalizations and deaths, which they are highly effective for.

You said that the chart excludes boosted people. That isn't written anywhere. So yes, you entirely assumed this, based on nothing, and made that up.